If the question is, how can increase my chances of coming into contact with a Bird Flu infected animal, yes backyard chickens are the answer
If you're afraid of exposure to harmful microbes, it's generally a bad idea to live on Earth.
Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
861–870 of 879 posts
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#862Earlier quoted context omitted.
My expectation is that what you're tasting is the difference between a very fresh egg and an older egg; there's no doubt that's real (older eggs aren't even functionally the same as fresh eggs).
I doubt that there can be any difference in the egg whites, but the egg yolks certainly have a composition in fatty substances that varies with the kind of food used for the chicken, which should lead to noticeable differences. While there are some taste differences in egg yolks, the taste difference in meat, between chicken that ate mostly what they had found themselves in a large area with abundant vegetation, inse…
Yes, the constitution of the chicken's feed matters enough to change the color of the yolk, so much so that organic chicken farms introduce additives to feed specifically to color the yolks. And yolk color may indeed cause you to enjoy the egg differently! But there is apparently no discernible taste difference, once you control for egg age.
Multiple groups have done tests on this. Kenji did a somewhat informal test, where he dyed the eggs so you couldn't discern the farm egg. The Japanese have done expert panel chicken feed tests. It's interesting stuff!
I think people want this "farm egg" thing to be true more than it really is true. People got mad at me on Twitter when I griped about those Vital Farms eggs (don't buy those eggs! they cost more than 2x as much as commodity organic eggs!).
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#863Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#864Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The quality of the eggs is absolutely miles above what I already considered really good eggs though. I must drive past a dozen (lol) honesty boxes on the way to work offering the sale of eggs and this is my general experience as well. Its amazing how individuals can produce and sell a product as cheap if not cheaper than mega corps with such staggeringly different quality.
I mean if you add everything up - land value, labour, food costs, etc - I'm fairly sure they're selling eggs at a net loss, however, it's not a capitalist endeavour unlike the industrial production. And IMO that is the key difference, that is, they produce for themselves and sell the excess and earn some money off of it, it's not their primary goal to do so.
OTOH for shop bought eggs you also have to add transport (fuel/truck maintenance), storage, commercial land rent/interest costs, electricity, and of course the mark-ups along the way by processors, distributors, and—most of all—the shops themselves, that use their monopoly powers to reduce the margins for everyone else. And if we're doing like-for-like, you have to buy certified 'Pasture Raised' eggs.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#865Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you think you're spending too much on the eggs then you're not perfectly happy. I grew up with chickens and my family also grew up with them. I'm just saying, something is really wrong with the way you're doing it if you think it's not worth the money. There are ways to do it economically. What do you suppose the big farms feed the chickens to make it economical to not only grow the chickens but also package and s…
I never voiced an opinion other than "buying chickens ain't the way to save money on eggs". Do you always jump to conclusions and imagine peoples' motivations and mindset like this?, because you're making this whole thread up in your head.
Hmmm the thread isn't all made up in my head. To recap:
You said your way wasn't saving money.
Then I said you're doing it wrong if you're not saving money.
Then you said you're happy doing it your way (which doesn't save money).
I then questioned whether you're really happy not saving money, because you've obviously done calculations to figure out if you're saving money. If you didn't care, would you really do that?
My comments aren't all for you. We've established that you don't care if you save money or not. My comments are for those who might be looking at raising chickens to save money, and would be discouraged by your failed attempts. As I said, the fact that chickens are raised for profit all over the world disproves your claim (at least, if you don't count your own labor; obviously you can't bill even a couple of hours on a programmer's salary toward raising a handful of chickens and still save money).
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#866The egg price is due to the H5N1 epidemics, which also means that this is the least indicated time to get a backyard chicken. The US should have dropped battery caging, like the rest of the world did 15 years ago.
Is H5N1 the cause of current egg prices, or an excuse? From the article: Egg prices may be impacted for reasons beyond the scarcity of laying hens due to bird flu. Farm Action, a farmer-led advocacy group, has written to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, requesting an investigation into “potential monopolization and anticompetitive coordination” by the egg industry. “While avian flu has been…
10% of all egg laying chickens in the US have been lost due to H5N1. And people will still pay $8 for a dozen eggs instead of eating something else for a few months, so of course there are record profits.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#867I genuinely don't understand why the focus is on egg prices. Who out there is paying more than a total of $3-$5/month more in eggs? And no, even to the absolutely poorest among us, that's not a meaningful amount. Yes, egg prices, as a percentage are going up a lot, but as an absolute value? I can get a dozen eggs from Walmart right now for $5.46. That isn't, by any measurement, a lot of money more than I would have p…
People who eat eggs for breakfast are going to go through 2-3 per day. A family could go through an entire dozen in just 1 breakfast. Eggs here went from $3/dozen to $8/dozen.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#868Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you post your chicken coop and instructions on how you built it?
It's probably best not to get specific instructions. They constrain you too much. The cheapest way to build a chicken coop is to go to the local rubbish tip, or tip shop if the top doesn't let you fossick. Be a little imaginative with your design. For example, you can build them out of PVC water pipes. They are light, don't rot, wire can be pop riveted to them, and they are very easy to glue. I also turned a 80 litre…
This guy knows.
If you're building a chicken coop out of materials you didn't find lying around on the ground, you're doing it wrong.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#869Rayts. They bring rats. Lots of them. Ok if your in the countryside with big land and farms, horrible home infestation s if not.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#870Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what cervical dislocation is. The cervix is the neck. You're dislocating the head from the body, via the neck.
AFAICT, biologists didn't screw up and give two different body parts the same name. Neck bones are called cervical vertebrae.
I see where you're going with that. The other body part is also a narrow passageway, which in many contexts is called a neck or bottleneck. In my language, we call that other body part "The neck of the womb" צוואר הרחם.