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Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

(civileats.com)
310 points greenie_beans | 8 comments | 19 Feb 25 21:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source | bottom
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qq99 ◴[20 Feb 25 05:00 UTC] No.43111299[source]▶
As someone who once built a large coop [1] then just bought a pre-built shed for the 2nd coop, it's definitely _not_ the _monetary_ solution. You will probably lose money overall for quite some time. I'm still probably underwater.

BUT, there are definite upsides:

- Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent. You will grow to love all the silly things they do. You can pet them, they are super soft, and can become quite tame. They can purr.

- I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it because I really only eat my own eggs, but perhaps I just got used to them

- It's fantastic to get ~8 free eggs per day (from 13, 3 are not laying this winter)

- Morally/ethically, it seems like the best way to eat eggs if you're caring for them in a loving manner (compare to factory farms)

Consider the downsides:

- You may have to euthanize a chicken, likely by hand (literally) via cervical dislocation. It still ranks among the worst things I've ever had to do in my life. Imagine euthanizing your dog or cat by hand...

- Predators, foxes and hawks, you need defenses

- Veterinary services can be harder to find. Most vets don't want to deal with chickens. However, it also tends to be cheaper than a vet for a dog/cat.

- Your wife may one day want a chicken to live inside the house. You may one day agree to this, and then miss it when the chicken is living outside the house again...

- If you really like eating chicken, you may end up finding it difficult to eat them again in the future after you develop a bond with them.

I think there are more upsides than downsides, but you should think about these downsides before taking the plunge. Don't let it dissuade you. Overall, they have enriched our lives immensely and I would recommend it to others!

1: https://www.anthonycameron.com/projects/cameron-acreage-chic...

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pjerem ◴[20 Feb 25 13:03 UTC] No.43114166[source]▶
I do own two chickens since maybe 6 months for random reasons. Before that I thought they were pretty "stupid"/"uninteresting" animals but I was really wrong.

They are in fact very lovable little beings. They have interestingly complex relationships between them, they are very social and I do have a special bond with the first I got, especially because we hadn’t the necessary hardware to keep her hot enough for multiple days, we had to literally keep her warm between our hands.

Now she is a grown up chicken and she loves it when I go outside.

Also they are in fact pretty intelligent animals, and they are really curious about what happens around them.

I’d ever go as far as saying that they could be the perfect household pets if only the evolution gave them sphincters.

That was a nice personal discovery.

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whycome ◴[20 Feb 25 13:20 UTC] No.43114298[source]▶
It’s not the egg industry that will lose out if more people have backyard hens. It’s the poultry industry and the eating general. More people will start to find eating intelligent emotional animals as abhorrent as eating dogs or cats.
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crazygringo ◴[20 Feb 25 14:18 UTC] No.43114913[source]▶
People have been keeping intelligent animals like chickens, pigs, and cattle for millennia. And continuing to eat them.

Ironically, vegetarianism really only started to become popular in the Western world once people lost their connection to farms, and meat and poultry were something you bought in pieces, plastic-wrapped.

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erellsworth ◴[20 Feb 25 14:44 UTC] No.43115256[source]▶
It makes sense to me. If you grow up seeing animals slaughtered on the regular you probably won't think much of it, especially when the adults around you treat it as completely normal. You grow up in an environment where you might think meat comes from the magic meat factory, when you see an animal slaughtered for the first time it's likely to be shocking enough to turn a lot of people away.
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partitioned ◴[20 Feb 25 15:37 UTC] No.43115959{3}[source]▶
Why do people always think its the killing? Almost every vegan/vegetarian has most of their issues with how its raised and treated its whole life. The constant meat eater trolling about how its natural to eat meat and animals do it, ignore the fact that its not natural to keep animals in pens where they cant turn around for their entire life that is basically pure torture from birth to death.

If all meat was produced the way it was farmed 100 years ago, youd see way less vegans.

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1. jorvi ◴[20 Feb 25 17:08 UTC] No.43117297{4}[source]▶
You're a reasonable / pragmatic vegan. Vegans that won't eat meat because of the kill are ideological / dogmatic vegans.

There's even a small amount of vegans that consider lab meat to be something immoral (how they loop their head around that one, I do not know).

I'm currently dating a girl that's vegan and is super chill about it, but when I was 16 I dated a vegan girl also. My mother made two separate dishes for her, one specifically with esoteric stuff she would like (Christmas being special and all that). Then my mother made the mistake of quickly flipping some burning food with some meat in it, then using the same spatula to muddle the vegan dish. That girlfriend immediately said she would not eat that dish.

I nearly decided to break up with her at that moment.

I'm never quite sure it it's anecdata, but it always feels like there are much more obnoxiously stringent vegans than there are obnoxious meat eaters.

On the other hand, I've seen firsthand how vegans have to consistently defend their lifestyle choice, because by making that choice they reveal the "default" was never really that. Same with those who chose to be sober.

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2. r00fus ◴[20 Feb 25 18:09 UTC] No.43118079[source]▶
These dogmatic vegans aren't born that way - they're created by a completely unethical farming environment and detachment from farm life as /u/partition mentioned.

As I grow up I am beginning to realize just how many "bad personalities" and "horrible life choices" are really just driven by a poor environment - and that speaks more of our society and governance than the individuals.

3. dowager_dan99 ◴[20 Feb 25 18:45 UTC] No.43118454[source]▶
part of Western society ethos is our quick action within any sort of realm to "pick X; be a dick about it"
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4. meowface ◴[20 Feb 25 19:39 UTC] No.43119168[source]▶
I think I and most vegans also wouldn't eat it. It has nothing to do with rudeness or even the specific ethics of that situation or something. Just I wouldn't be able to physically stomach it. I would feel guilty but I wouldn't be able to eat it.
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5. jack_pp ◴[20 Feb 25 20:12 UTC] No.43119547[source]▶
Best course of action imo is watch yourself in that moment, understand that people are going above and beyond for you even though they don't fully understand you, they are trying to accept you. I'd go to the bathroom, try to reason with myself that no animals are being killed specifically for you, the accidental touch won't give any flavour to your dish and it's all in your head. There's no ethical issues whatsoever in that situation.

If after that you still can't make yourself eat it then you should apologize, explain it to them, tell them you tried to make yourself but couldn't and I bet you'd get a LOT more sympathy.

6. SoftTalker ◴[20 Feb 25 20:12 UTC] No.43119548[source]▶
> Vegans that won't eat meat because of the kill are ideological / dogmatic vegans

I've never met any other kind of vegan person. If they were concerned only about the living conditions of the animals, then they would eat free-range ethically-raised meat. They don't. Even if it's really free-range and not what the government allows to be called "free-range."

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7. kelnos ◴[20 Feb 25 21:02 UTC] No.43120145[source]▶
Eh, not sure I buy that interpretation. Ensuring that the meat you eat only comes from ethical sources is hard, especially if you eat at restaurants, or if you eat food that other people have cooked. (Do you really want to be that person who goes to someone's house for dinner and on-the-spot refuses to eat because their host isn't sure of the provenance of the meat?) It can also be significantly more expensive. It would be entirely reasonable to decide to give up meat rather than deal with all that, if it matters to you.

And on top of that it does make a statement about one's values. Even if someone was ok with doing all that homework, they might want to give up meat as a form of protest against all the factory animal farming out there.

8. papertokyo ◴[20 Feb 25 21:09 UTC] No.43120222[source]▶
I absolutely love this characterization of modern discourse.