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!
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.
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.
As a small child, I used to spend a part of the summer vacations with my grandparents, who had some land cultivated with a variety of crops and trees and they also raised some animals, including chicken which roamed freely through a big garden.
I liked to play with the chicken, and by rewarding them with maize grains I have succeeded to train some of them to respond to a few simple commands, like coming to me when called and sitting down, waiting to be petted, and standing up upon commands. (Because those chicken were used to roam freely, they were shy of human contact. Normally it was difficult to catch any one of them.)
My grandparents and their neighbors were astonished, despite the fact that they have kept chicken for all their lives, because they believed that chicken are too dumb to act like this.
The kinds of intelligence they display is really interesting.
They can't figure out obstacles very well if they can see where they want to go, but are impeded. They just pace back and forth, frustrated, instead of walking around the obstacle.
They are very social, recognize people, and can be trained in some limited ways (eg. to return to the coop with whistles, if you associate it with treats).
> 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
At 2 years old my son could blind taste test tell the difference between my neighbor's chicken's eggs and store bought eggs.
He refused to eat eggs (still doesn't) until we convinced him to try one of the eggs from our neighbor's chicken's. He liked that egg. Every time we've tried to pass (fancy!) store eggs off to him as our neighbor's eggs he's called us out for lying to him.
He'll reliably eat eggs from the chickens across the street and nowhere else.
My 2 year old daughter never liked eggs. We started buying some from a neighbor who pasture raises his lay hens (and feeds them more chicken-appropriate feed).
She eats her eggs and asks for more. If we run out and I fry up some store bought ones, she refuses to eat them - even when I don't tell her where they're from.
Same goes for chicken meat from the grocery store vs. pasture raised broilers from another neighbor.
When it happened the first time it was something of a canary-in-the-coalmine situation for me.
People say that all the time, but professional cooks have run triangle tests on backyard/farm eggs vs. store bought eggs and people can't tell the difference. At this point, I don't believe there's a difference in taste. The psychological effects that would lead people to believe that difference exists --- a kind of culinary placebo effect --- are so strong that I just attribute everything to that.
I wonder how much of this is due to there simply being different types of chickens. I would guess that most commercial egg layers are from a specific or small subset of optimized chicken types. While there is a larger variety in the type of chickens people raise in their back yards. My brother has 3 different types of chickens and each lays visually different eggs.
Quails. Even cuter than chickens and much more easy to keep. Might be one of the easiest to keep animals overall. Not even ant colonies, fish, cats or dogs are as happy with as little as quails.
Housespiders and cacti might be easier.
You need to use quail proof feeders, tho, or you're going to spend a fortune on kitchen scraps or whatever you intend to feed them. They eat just about anything peckable except oats (if you didn't end up with picky ones). Cookef rice, seeds, peas, boiled eggs, sometimes nibbling on each other (-.-), or dirt cheap quail feed. Also mealworms ... its catnip for quails.
> You may have to euthanize a chicken, likely by hand (literally) via cervical dislocation.
I recommend cutting the head off with a pair of high quality, large and well maintained scissors.
Put a bucket in front of you, put the scissors from behind on the neck, just below the head, and cut in a single strong motion.
The lil birdy will not understand what is happening and wont feel uncomfortable during the process. Its head then looses consciousness in sbout 15 seconds, compared to about 30 seconds for the cervical dislocation method. (It'll loose the ability to feel pain MUCH faster than 15s, but I dont think we know how quickly. But probably faster than it'll realize that there's pain in the first place. You've probably cut yourself before and noticed that the pain only kicks in after a moment.)
It is also way easier to not screw up. Just remember to ALWAYS cut the head off completely, as fast as possible. Lil birdie wont die from bloodloss, but sudden loss of spinal fluid, which is WAY faster.
The cervical dislocation method is also very effective, but also much easier to screw up, a bit more uncomfortable for the birdy and could introduce quite some anxiety for the birdy if you hesitate for even but a moment.
On the other hand the cute little critters dont understand how scissors work or what they're for. Even if the method is much less pretty, it's by far the most peaceful method for the birdy.
I've had chickens for probably 15 years now, starting with 3 and ending up with about 20 (mixture of hybrids, pedigrees and rescued battery/farmed hens) and 2 geese. This happens a lot with chickens. Chickens are a gateway drug to more chickens. If you have a few chickens, they take about as much looking after as a rabbit - keep their food and water topped up, and clean them out once a week.
I agree that you won't make money or a profit. The coop money you will probably never earn back, but I can cover the cost of a sack of feed (£12 or so) by selling boxes to colleagues for £1 each.
I think the eggs taste better because a) what the hens eat and b) because they are much fresher.
I've had to kill chickens (and hate doing it), which is sad, but I've never taken one to a vet. It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20.
We've brought chickens inside the house when they're ill (we have tiled floors) but don't do it on a regular basis. If chickens weren't incontinent, though, they would make great indoor pets. Surprisingly smart and pleasant animals. This will also sound weird but if you pick one up, they also smell nice - kind of like a new puppy smell.
> It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20.
This logic is confusing. You are taking a purely transactional view when it comes to the chicken’s health, but you also admitted they don’t turn a profit. In that vein, it makes no sense to get the £20 chicken in the first place.
Your utilitarian view is also the opposite of what the person you’re replying to is describing. Do you believe that if one gets a pet cat or dog for free from the street and they get sick, “it makes no sense to get an £X vet bill on a pet which was free”? And if not, what’s the difference? Neither is making you money.
> It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20.
I guess it depends on how you look at it. By analogy, it makes no sense to have my cat go to the vet either (and pay thousands of dollars for a ~$50 cat lol), but they still go. I guess it's all about personal choice and perspective. It does feel a bit silly in a way though
> but if you pick one up, they also smell nice
Agreed, a clean chicken can smell really good!
> If chickens weren't incontinent, though, they would make great indoor pets
That's the big thing! On Japanese twitter, chicken diapers are a popular item!
I have two geese as well—have you found they help against predators? Anecdotally, we've had no predators steal any chickens since we added them (though a coyote got some goose tail feathers at first), though our neighbors down the street have been decimated by foxes.
Never considered the ROI, but I built a big walk-in coop for maybe $200 in materials. Think that'd pay off with the current price of eggs, if we sold them.
Is the paperwork in the UK (I'm assuming you're UK-based, hence £) particularly onerous? I heard things were getting more complicated if you just wanted a few chickens in your garden.
The taste is definitely different, and the reason for its is the diet. Small scale chickens tend to eat a lot of grass, rather than the cheaper feed given to factory farms.
A upside that was not mention is that chickens are excellent in cutting grass and keeping weed out of bushes, especially roses bushes. They generally don't eat fruits on bushes like raspberries, but our strawberries was not safe so we used a gardening net over those (also keeps other birds out). Smaller plants/seed may also need a net until they grown in size large enough that the chickens are not interested anymore.
A major big upside we also got is that they hunt down slugs and other insects that otherwise can cause major damage to a garden or lawn. Even ant colonies, which can often be a pain to remove and a major annoyance if they invade your home.
On the downside, chicken hierarchy is a very real thing and they can get into quite bloody fights with each other.
> 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 used the believe the same, but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land. Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals.
But then the question should be is it just the "bond" which is holding someone back from killing animals? Why can't we just not kill without relying on bonds?
It's just the circle of life. Live in a remotely rural area with animals around and you're going to see pretty regular death. For instance foxes are beautiful, extremely intelligent, and amazing animals. They'll also systematically and sadistically kill literally every single chicken inside a henhouse, one by one, if they get in. In another instance a dog I loved more than anything as a child to young adult was killed by a wild boar - tusk straight into the lungs.
The same, by the way, applies to vegetarian stuff. The amount of critters being killed to keep them away from the veggies would probably shock you, especially in the rather inhumane way its sometimes done in industrial farms. Shooting, for some baseline, is considered one of the most humane ways of dealing with large pests.
I simply see nothing wrong, at all, with eating meat. It's a natural and normal part of life and also, by far, the easiest way to ensure you hit all your necessary nutrients without going overboard on calories - especially if you live an active life and/or are into things like weight training.
Look up Sepp Holzer on YouTube, or really any permaculturist that eats meat. They treat their animals well, but also eat them. I think it’s healthy to feel a twang when you kill anything. It can contribute to the gratitude you have when sitting down to a meal. The native cultures seem (at least in pop culture caricatures) to have understood this.
I have a farmer friend who occasionally has to kill one of his milk cows. He names them, pets them, cares for them like a pet. It pains him to kill them, and I always know when he’s had to do it— I can see it on his face. I’ve bought some of the meat form his cows, and I was grateful for the meat, and the man who raised the cow with such care.
Past generations of my family used to name animals that they raised for meat after dishes they could end up in. There are practices people can engage in to distance themselves from the animals they interact with.
But also some people who raise animald for meat hire a person to collect them for slaughter in part because of the emotional toll involved.
As to your last question.. I think you might be confused? People don't like to kill in general. Go outside and ask people how they felt getting their first kill on a hunt as a kid, you're going to realize that a unifying element is learning to deal with harming another animal.
Bonus: being vegetarian doesn't exclude you from the necessity of killing in order to live. You're just killing forms of life that you emphasize with less, which is very reasonable and rational but also not materially different.
For a lot of people it's an exchange thing. You give the chicken a place to stay, food and care and in exchange you get to eat it when it gets old. They do bond with them but there's this understanding from day 1.
If you don't get that out of it it'd turn into an omlette so instead of turning into an omlette it gets to enjoy a large percentage of its life.
One needs to decide if an animal is a product or a pet. It's difficult to have them be both.
Having them as a product does not mean you don't care for them, on the contrary, but I would say it's a completely different type of bond.
> But then the question should be is it just the "bond" which is holding someone back from killing animals? Why can't we just not kill without relying on bonds?
I would argue it's about the purpose, not the bond. You don't kill a pet, but you do kill food. And you should never kill for the sole sake of killing.
> but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land
You needed HN to figure that out? I assume this is obvious sarcasm but almost none of the domesticated animals species would exist if almost all humans throughout history weren't willing to do that.
Even eating dogs was perfectly standard in most more "primitive" and/or destitute societies.
Or why should the "bond" cause us to not eat animals? They aren't pets we eat in a panic, but animals we raise with the intention of eating but still bond with them and continue the process through consuming them and letting the animal go on to fulfill a higher purpose of providing sustenance to the humans they bonded with.
> Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals.
I love my chickens and I'm really sad when I lose some to predators.
Yet I have no issue to harvest them for eating. They are not pets, I raise them for eggs and meat.
Maybe it's because I was raised on a farm, but I make a difference between pets and farm animals and that does not mean that I don't have a "bond" with some of the latter.
> I used the believe the same, but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land. Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals
You develop bonds, just different ones and you learn to place limits because you know what the purpose of the animal is.
I still felt it when I was really little, but that was gone by the time I was a teenager and the reality that this was our living set in.
I grew up with backyard chickens. It was great, but youre missing one downside: the smell. Chickens shit a lot. Also, the predator thing is understated. You don’t just need defenses, your defenses are likely to fail. If this happens, you may wake up to the sound of your pet being mauled to death and your yard covered in feathers.
The two-decade war between my Dad and the local foxes cannot be understated. The chickens are fully enclosed, naturally. They currently have a (completely buried) overturned concrete igloo under their feet. There’s a dual perimeter fence, the outer one is regularly coated in all manner of larger mammal’s urine he buys online. Team Fox is currently tunnelling to map out the concrete igloo, convinced there’s an opening. They’ve gone full mole.
With some distance it’s quite amusing, but it’s claimed a large part of his life, being the obstinate bugger he is.
> - 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...
I visited a farm as a kid and we had fresh chicken for dinner one day. They had one of those orange road cones with the top cut off a bit to fit the chicken in upside down so they could easily chop off its head. They then run around for awhile after that because their nervous system is still working for a minute or so. Just something to interesting to learn as a 5th grader, I guess.
My neighbor has chickens and the predators are no joke. Raccoons constantly trying to weaken their coop, weasels always ready to slip into any little hole, hawks and other birds of prey circling overhead. They've lost a lot of chickens despite keeping a close eye on them and trying to keep a very sturdy coop. It's like a signal goes out to all the wild animals "COME GET TASTY CHICKENS HERE!" Of course we are in a pretty rural area. You can get some pretty cute fluffy chickens though.
That was my problem with backyard chickens. The raccoons are too clever. They never got into the coop, but they were persistent about weakening the run, and eventually learned our schedule for putting them in the coop for the night, and got up early to beat us to it. Chickens are a tragic pet just because absolutely everything wants to eat them.
I lived with backyard chickens for a time. It‘s surprisingly hard to keep predators away. These animals are clever and very determined when it comes to a freely presented meal. After all, better enclosures also give chickens no means of escape.
> Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent.
They did tests on chickens, and apparently they understand the concept of showing restraint on a current action, with the view on having a larger reward later.
Something along the lines of: "If you don't eat these grains now, we'll reward you with twice as many grains later".
That's something that dogs can't do, for instance.
> I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it
I didn't notice a significant difference in taste either. Eggs taste like eggs, it is one of the foods where there is the fewest difference between home grown and store bought, and also between different grades of store bought. And if there is any difference, I think that freshness is more significant.
One big difference, though it doesn't matter much when you eat it is the shell. Good quality eggs, including those from backyard chicken tend to have a stronger shell that breaks cleanly.
Maybe if you give your chicken specific food, your eggs can have a specific taste. How you feed them can affect the color of the yolk, which can matter for presentation, but it doesn't tell much else.
I'm not who you're replying to... but: it cost me $2-2.5k to build my coop two years ago which houses 5 hens, and they cost roughly $10-20 per month to feed, change bedding, etc. Realistically my household eats 4 dozen eggs a month. Even with current egg prices I'm not saving any money for a long, long time.
Still absolutely worthwhile for my mentally though and one of my major life goals
Chickens are really smart and curious animals. They can also learn from each other new behaviour, like eating unfamiliar food, or hunting for small animals (the cries of joy from our cock once he finally got a frog!!!) They also have really marked personalities, once you spend some time with them.
It's large compared to the average, but the longer we've had chickens the more we're convinced they thrive better when given appropriate space (anecdata about average age of our chickens vs all other people with chickens we know), leading me to think something like yours is still too small even for 2 chickens.
For us the minimum is now such that there's at least some of the gras/moss left throughout the year instead of the puddle of mud we used to get. Plus I'm not gonne lie: seeing their (and their ancestors) behavior 'in the wild' it feels morally/ethically better as well. Especially the younger ones are keen explorers: easy to see when let ranging free - they'll go in a radius of like 100m around their nest, but not much further than that. Apart from that one mandatory weirdo obviously.
The one I built was definitely too small on all accounts (coop space and run space).
For the second coop, we bought a pre-built shed that's about 8'x12' (much taller and roomier than the first), and even that is starting to feel too small for 13 chickens with all their various items. They have a much larger run now, but even that still feels like it might not be enough for them!
Definitely it's not about the cost and convenience.
And I haven't seen it discussed much, which tells a lot that the HN-ers are city dwellers with little experience in the countryside life. But the biggest, nastiest, deepest problem with anything animal is ... shit.
Animals produce shit and lots of animals produce loads of shit. And chickens don't have the notion of "this area is for eating, this one's for shitting", they will shit all over the place. So if you don't enclose them and can run to your porch, they'll shit it up so gotta be careful where you step or sit on. If you enclose them, better be prepared to wipe shit of your boots coze no way you can avoid it forever. Then the "pleasant" activity of cleaning up loads of shit from the chicken coop and dispose it somewhere.
Overall, having lived on a farm, my childhood memories of interaction with animals resume to "lots and lots of shit everywhere" :)
> But the biggest, nastiest, deepest problem with anything animal is ... shit.
Yes. I volunteered at a Raptor conservancy. Fantastic animals and being trusted to help fly them in a display was one of the best things I've ever done. It made up for all of the poop cleaning. At least owls have the courtesy to cough up pellets containing the little bones of their prey - it reduces the poop volume and the pellets dry into hard nuggets that easy to pick up (and fun to pull apart later). Black Kites were okay-ish - most of their poop ended up on easily cleanable wall sheets behind their (outward facing) perches. But vultures. yeech. They are fascinating from a social perspective and some were very playful - pulling on your bootlaces until they were knotted, for example, but their poop is gross and voluminous. They also can use defensive projectile vomiting if they feel threatened, which is as (un)pleasant as it sounds.
My mom has a dozen backyard chickens and I agree with all of these. I'll tack on two bits from my own experience:
Good: Fresh unwashed eggs don't need to be refrigerated. They are perfectly safe at room temperature on the shelf for days.
Bad: You can't leave them with other pets without supervision. One of the dogs got himself a taste for chicken and already ate at least three. You can't train this out of the dog, unfortunately. I had to put down one poor chicken that was deeply injured but still alive. We constantly stay vigilant to keep the dogs and chickens separate.
> You can't train this out of the dog, unfortunately.
Speaking from experience, I can say "Yes, you absolutely can train this out of a dog." However, it is not easy and it is only marginally more easy if you start at a young age of the dog. Furthermore, there are breeds that have no interest in chickens at all, anyway. LGD may actually even protect them.
Lots of countries don't wash their commercially grown eggs (and have a much lower % from factory farms), which greatly improves shelf life in shops etc.
Looking online on reasons to euthanize chickens, it seems to be about not prolonging their suffering when ill.
I don't really know much on farming practices, and I'm not commenting to say that things should be one way or the other. However, I do note that with a human, euthanasia is not a common practice, specially without consent, and one would typically just numb the pain until they pass on their own, i.e. hospice care.
Maybe that's not possible with animals because chickens can't really communicate on the effectiveness of drugs...
I used to get tipped in eggs by this wonderful human at a bar I worked at and while I'm not sure I could tell them apart in a blind taste test I can say that the variety of pretty colors the egg shells came in and the richness of the yolk combined to make them noticeably more satisfying. I have a lot of experience tasting things though, I could absolutely see someone having a similar experience to mine and chalking it up to a superior taste. Or maybe there is a regional component to basic grocery store eggs and I live in a high quality zone, idk.
> - 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
I eat fresh laid eggs very rarely (though have been thinking of raising my own), but can confirm that every time I've had truly fresh chicken eggs the taste is notably superior.
> 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.
Traditionally it's done by decapitation. Head dies instantly. No need to suffer. Body runs for a while. Don't forget to ask for forgiveness...
Right! The first egg our chickens laid cost $500, the second $250, etc. It would take a lot of laying for the cost to come even close to grocery store prices (back then) but we quit after a couple of years.
- The smell…
Chicken crap is horrible.
Our neighbour has chickens, we have flies. Lots of black flies.
- Bye bye garden…
My dad has two chickens (did I mention the smell?) that free roam and absolutely tear up everything looking for a tasty bite.
- Can’t eat the eggs
This isn’t necessarily a chicken problem but mostly a problem with chemical industry.
We’ve had a lot of PFOA/PFAS contamination and public health advise says to not eat eggs from backyard chickens
> - Can’t eat the eggs This isn’t necessarily a chicken problem but mostly a problem with chemical industry. We’ve had a lot of PFOA/PFAS contamination and public health advise says to not eat eggs from backyard chickens
The research done was mid at best. They just went "oh yeah there was huge variance in the hobby chicken PFAS data so we took the average". Most of the hobby eggs had little to no PFAS in them.
Furthermore, because of privacy laws, they weren't allowed to know where the eggs came from. They say they found no correlation between PFAS contaminations in eggs and known high PFAS areas but that's actual bullshit if you can't look at location data.
It's absolutely attrocious they were allowed to publish like this and that no one called them on their bullshit.
Overall, unless you are in a place where you know you have high PFAS concentrations, it's most likely fine? You could send off a few eggs for testing to make sure, that's a 200 euro test or something. Do that once per year just to make sure and you should be OK.
We used them to manage the garden. It much easier to put down nets/steel wire around problem areas, then it is to clear out weed and insects, and the chicken bring their own fertilizers to the mix. They are also great at managing grass lawns.
There were several lessons that we learned. Chicken will find dry earth to use as a bath. If one do not want that then you need to remove access and solve the underlying need. They will also dig up seeds and eat seedlings, so any fresh worked soil need to be covered/restricted. They also eat some fruits and herbs, but not others.
In term of total work they did save a lot of time and the garden was in much better shape than before.
I also read something saying that roads are one of the biggest sources of microplastics, with tyre wear, and that being next to one (as most suburban houses are) significantly increases the amount in microplastics in foods grown in backyards. I imagine Chickens would be worse as pollutants tend to accumulate as they go up trophic levels.
Though like many discussions about microplastics today, where "higher levels", and what microplastics, cross over into actual health issues is vague.
Great points! I agree with everything you said here with exception to the point about it not being a monetary solution. I've built an "extremely" janky coop for almost no cost in the past. At one point I got absolutely sick of eggs because there were so many than I ended up trading neighbors for other goods. The whole thing ended up making/saving me a ton of money in the end. Let me reiterate how unsafe this coop was however... it was as spacious as it was dangerous (very).
> - 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...
This made me smile very wide, thank you for sharing :-)
Raising animals to eat for meat is a very different endeavor than raising them for milk/eggs. Especially if you eat meat daily (or more than once a day!), do some mental math on how many animals you'd need to sustain yourself.
Can confirm. My dad's cousin is a little bit country and has had meat and egg chickens for years. She comes to visit sometimes, and always brings eggs. Store-bought quite literally pales in comparison, which is to say that the dandelion yellow yolks of store bought eggs have nothing on the rich, flavorful orange-as-a-child's-drawing-of-the-sun yolks from her eggs.
Seems to me another downside is the increased difficulty in traveling. As in, if I want to go away for a few days, I'll have to find someone to feed and water the chickens.
Sounds like a classic case of -not the cheapest option, but definitely the most rewarding-. The ethical aspect is a huge plus: knowing exactly how your eggs are produced and giving the chickens a good life.
My dad used to have around 15 chickens — but then a fox somehow burrowed under the fence - which was buried in the ground around 20 cm - and slaughtered them all.
My sister has been keeping a coop in her backyard for over a decade now. She got the, because “I find the sound soothing.” (It really is quite nice)
One other advantage is that they will absolutely hoover up the ticks out of a yard. I’ve tried to talk my various friends who move upstate into getting some for this reason… but yeah it’s a couple grand up front and a new hobby.
> 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
Whenever someone mentions how unique you can be with language and come up with amazing unique sentences never uttered by anyone before...I shall think of this
You make no mention of feed cost. Do you just depend upon free range "pecking" in the grass, or kitchen scraps... or what? 13 chickens is a lot of daily feed!
I view the feed cost as being the yin to the egg production's yang. I'm not keeping a spreadsheet, but I do believe they produce more value in eggs than they ingest in feed.
In the warmer months, they also supplement their food from the yard when they eat a lot of grasses and fruits
I also own chickens. Before I got them I thought chickens were pretty stupid animals and wasn't particularly fond of them, but I liked the idea of keeping them for eggs and some entertainment.
I've had mine for about 6 months now and they've totally won me over...
They're far more friendly and intelligent than ever I imagined. Mine love hanging out with me in the garden. One of them is very affectionate and will sometimes decide to sit on my shoulder and is happy to be held. They're all totally different and have very unique personalities which I didn't expect. Their personality will depends a lot on the breed of chicken you get too and some are much more tame than others so it's worth thinking about the type of chicken you want.
I've trained mine to come to me when I whistle which can be super useful when I need to get them back in the run. Obviously you can't train them like dogs, but they're surprisingly smart and will learn things.
They've very curious animals. Mine like to fly up onto my window sill to watch us in the kitchen which is quite sweet.
They'll eat pretty much anything so they're very cheap to keep once you have your coop built. I have 3 (getting a 4th soon) and it's costing us about £3 per month for their feed which makes up about half of their diet, and for that they'll give us about 60-90 eggs. I wouldn't get them for the price of eggs though. If you want to give them a good home it's going to cost you. They're also quite a lot of work. I need to clean mine weekly, feed them daily and provide them general care. Buying an automatic coop door is a good way to reduce some of the hassle of having to let them out and shut them in every day.
I don't eat mammal meat, but I do eat chicken and fish and its been hard for me to eat chicken recently. I'm trying to reduce the amount of chicken I eat in favour of eggs.
Thanks - that's amazing that you have reduced your meat consumption, I really do think we need to take more responsibility and care about animals more. This video converted me, may offer some insights for you too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YFz99OT18k
The concept is kind of analogous in many ways on if one should have solar power to hedge against power outages. I.e definitely can be worth it but will take up time and investment with long payback period.
To hedge against increasing electric utility prices, maybe. I installed solar recently and the cost of batteries to cover a decent power outage didn’t make sense to me. I just got a transfer switch and a portable propane generator instead. The battery tech / price is just not there yet IMO. And in case this isn’t well known, when there is a power outage and you don’t have battery backup, the solar generation shuts off — you’re not using solar AS the backup in most cases unless you have a very particular setup.
Thanks for the detail. I never thought about vet needs for chickens. How would you know they are sick? I know with my cat, her mood and activity would shift. Is it apparent when a chicken is sick?
You can kinda tell based on their actions (sometimes). We haven't really needed to bring them to the vet for illness, but once for amputation of an infected + hurt toe. Additionally, if they get parasites (typically mites), they need anti-parasitics. My wife has done a ton of research into identifying chicken issues so she is always on the lookout.
We've had other times where one might appear a bit sluggish, but then the next day are back to normal. Probably ate something bad?
There are several conditions that have visible consequences, such as injuries, malformations, anomalies or a general affectation of their appearance. Plenty of those can be quite disturbing for someone with no experience.
With room, food, and water, we have left chickens on their own for 2wks. The challenge is keeping clean water and food and predators. We had 30 gallon buckets of water with nipples on the exterior, and food towers (home made). They had the entire interior of our barn.
I wouldn't leave them in a small coupe without a run for that long.
My father asked for, and got, a chick for Easter once.
It grew into a rooster that took over the backyard by terrorizing the whole family. Only my grandmother, who had grown up on a farm, was willing to go into the yard.
> 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...
A friend of mine complained to me a few years ago that the people in the apartment next to hers were raising a chicken. The crowing woke her up in the morning. But she consoled herself that soon enough they'd eat it.
I was pretty amused at the whole idea of raising a chicken inside an apartment.
> It grew into a rooster that took over the backyard by terrorizing the whole family.
When I was a kid, we also had chickens and roosters around. At one point we had a smaller, white rooster who would take any chance he could at terrorizing the family as soon as we brought them food.
Unfortunately for the bully, we also had a second, bigger rooster, who would keep an eye on him, and come running to beat his ass and chase him away as soon as he spotted nastiness.
The white bully ended up in the soup. The grey defender died of old age.
Check your local regulations. Keeping roosters (adult male chickens) in many city areas is actually illegal; i.e. against the byelaws. It is considered antisocial because of the noise that they make and the early hours when they make it. i.e. literally "at cockcrow"
Your hypothetical children may tell stories for decades about how they were the ones who had to scoop the poop into the outdoor composting area and that the strong smell of urea lives with them to this day.
uh, speaking hypothetically and not at all of our own family chicken adventure when I was a kid/teen.
Also, if you have to kill a chicken, study how to do it and practice beforehand. Botching it will also live with you - I learned this one the hard way.
All that said, I'm glad I had the experience of (helping) raise chickens. It was an adventure, and the eggs were great. I've pondered it on and off again as an adult but have thus far resisted the temptation.
> - 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...
Isn't the more likely case that they shit everywhere but the family loves them so much they won't let you put it back outside?
I think typically as a solution to serious injury (e.g. result of a predator attack or otherwise) that can't be mended.
In my case, we had too many roosters and their competitive/protective behaviour was causing serious injuries to the hens, so we had to make the tough decision to reduce their numbers. Being in the middle of nowhere, there weren't many options for the rooster in question, so it seemed like the most humane thing to do at the time.
A big upside; with chickens you have the best possible composting system. They will eat almost all food waste. (but, please be careful to avoid the small number of foods which are unhealthy for chickens) And, they turn that waste into compost. Depending on volume, they can also completely handle leaves, grass clippings, and other yard waste. For leaves, they love to scratch through them and will poop on them. They'll break down the leaves in record time.
This one is something I think people maybe don't consider.
My brother has chickens, they have a coop but pretty much have the run of his property in a rural area. He has had to kill a coyote and a bob cat so far. Not a reason not to get them, but something to consider before doing so.
> 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.
Chickens are ruthless and will not hesitate for a moment to kill and then cannibalize their coop mates. The best way to avoid it is to have a single breed as they tend to start by attacking anything different, literally spots or discolorations, on other birds.
Yes, chickens will eat other chickens.
> 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.
All eggs taste the same. Which is great because eggs taste great.
> 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...
Chickens are filthy animals and the thought of having one indoors is disgusting.
You write in absolutes when talking about your own opinion as if it's generally accepted to be a fact, which makes even interesting looking bits look suspicious when you encounter something clearly biased.
how hard would it be to break even with 200 chickens in a typical European town (excluding land costs)? i am just imagining if a small company decides to raise its own chickens-eggs for lunch time...
This feels like an insane proposition to me, I'll explain:
1. Soaring egg prices are due to culling + deaths related to the proliferation of H5N1 (Avian Flu).
2. The reason we have been proactively culling is to minimize spread AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, to minimize the number of exposures H5N1 could have to Humans.
3. The reason we want to minimize exposure between chickens and humans is because each exposure of an infected chicken to a human is an opportunity for the virus to jump host, and adapt to better transmit amongst humans. The mutation (mammalian adaptation of the virus) can happen in the chicken before it jumps to a passing by human, or in the human once infected with the virus.
We are only a few minor adaptations away from this thing being BOTH extremely deadly AND extremely transmissible between humans. Worst case scenario. The latest strands found in Canada and now Nevada are extremely deadly, and just need the Human to Human adaptation. With enough at bats, it will have it.
The idea of dramatically increasing the number of humans exposed to sick flocks by having people start their own backyard chicken coops feels suicidal, for humanity.
The latest hospitalized patient in Georgia was exposed through a backyard flock, by the way.
20 years ago, Thailand almost overnight got rid of backyard chicken farms:
> Perhaps the biggest and most lasting change, Auewarakul says, is that this outbreak abruptly accelerated the transition from backyard chicken farmers to large-scale industrialized poultry farms. He says this was a big cultural transition since chickens had been part of everyday life for many Thai families. [...]
> The shift to these industrialized farms has not fully eliminated avian flu in chickens, but the disease has been largely contained. With ongoing monitoring, cases are often identified early and dealt with before the virus can gain a foothold.
Throughout entire human and chicken collective history we somehow haven’t managed to get wiped out by chicken transmitted decease - and suddenly its practically imminent and only massive mega farms can keeps us safe.
A thought occurs - perhaps it’s the mega farming that is the root of this problem and having some backyard chickens won’t really move the needle any closer to doom?
What has changed is the population density of humans. Disease outbreaks aren't at thing you can understand by summing all the disease vectors.
There is no needle - it only takes one case. While a megafarm may be a bigger vector, it can be quarantined, whereas everyone having backyard farms can not.
Let's say I have a few chickens in my backyard that don't have bird flu, and we (myself or my chickens) never come into contact with any other chickens.
Aren't we safe? If not, what are the possible vectors? Is it from random birds flying in my yard? My visits to grocery stores?
No, you're not safe if your chickens are exposed to wild birds. If they're outside feeding on seed that other wild birds also have access to they're at risk.
Your birds could get sick from other birds. It doesn't just affect chickens. I'd exercise precautions with your birds. Both to keep them quarantined from wild birds and keep yourself and family quarantined.
> The reason we have been proactively culling is to minimize spread AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, to minimize the number of exposures H5N1 could have to Humans.
The reason the US has been culling is because they refuse to vaccinate chickens. Even China began vaccinations in 2004 ... over 2 decades ago.
3,062 CNY/T -> $422/tonne -> $0.287/dozen @ 24 oz / dozen large eggs [1]
while US eggs are still nonsensically priced at $8.03 / dozen. [2] Like worldwide logistics doesn't even exist. Seems like a market discrepancy when there's several 100 to 1000 cargo ships transiting the Pacific currently that might be loaded with 3,062 CNY/T ($0.29/dozen) eggs.
We have a backyard flock where the run and coop are completely enclosed. So in theory they should be more protected given that no birds or critters can get into that space to give my chickens bird flu.
That being said, I have no faith in the Trump government to do the right things required to stop the spread of this and I feel like we are pretty screwed either ways.
Unfortunately, you backyard flock is not protected. It's airborne, is suspected to be infectious up to 5km between farm sites, and also can be contracted via fomite transmission. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your birds will likely get infected at some point in the coming 18 months, or sooner, and can be a real attack vector for something nasty for you and your family. The latest mutation across herds in Nevada/Canada both in birds and cows has a real nasty adaptation (D1.1) which has a suspected mortality rate in humans around 50%. Several hospitalizations in humans related to this specific mutation, acquired by individuals dealing with backyard flocks. The logic that your backyard flock mesh is sufficient to protect the flock and you from this pretty nasty bug isn't supported by the evidence we're seeing pan out across the country/world.
Another worrisome attack vector is cats, but that's a whole other pandoras box we'll leave alone for now.
To get an idea of how transmissible/infectious this thing is, it has jumped from birds in Asia, to dolphins in florida, and has eradicated entire populations of seals in latin america, cows, cats, ferrets, rats globally, to almost all bird populations in Antarctica. There is no species / geographic radius that will likely to unaffected. The death rate in each species may vary considerably (cows in US as an example, don't seem to die in great numbers), but it is highly transmissible even between species.
I'm sorry these aren't the best sources, but I'm in a rush and wanted to help you get an idea of what we're dealign with here in the context of your backyard flock, specifically. If you keep digging in all of the themes above you'll find even better sources:
Certainly not all humans at the same time, but yes the classical scourge diseases that have killed millions throughout history have zoonotic origins due to living closely with animals.
The letter from Farm Action, linked at the top of the article, is pretty compelling in making their case.
A few highlights:
> As a result of the smaller flock, egg production has dropped slightly from 8.1 billion eggs per month in 2021 to 7.75 billion eggs per month in December 2024. Importantly, however, per capita production of eggs in the U.S. has not dipped below per capita consumption of eggs in any year between 2022 and the present. Meanwhile, the total value of egg production has risen significantly, from $8.8 billion in 2021 to $19.4 billion in 2022 and $17.9 billion in 2023.
Note the $17.9B 2023 figure obviously doesn't include the most recent price increases.
> Instead of using the windfall profits they are earning from record egg prices to rebuild or expand their egg-laying flocks, the largest egg producers are using them to buy up smaller rivals and further consolidate market power.
> Almost all shell eggs are marketed through contracts between producer firms and chain buyers where egg prices are based on weekly wholesale quotes published by Urner Barry, an industry consulting and data analytics firm. According to leading industry commentator Simon M. Shane, this convergence "on a single commercial price discovery system constitutes an impediment to a free market," with the benchmark prices released by Urner Barry potentially serving to amplify price swings led by the largest-volume producers and to prevent independent, competitive decision making by others.
Much of the rise in prices has occurred in January and February. Seems likely to me that culling has continued due to bird flu and production has dropped.
I would also guess that demand is fairly constant for eggs, so large changes in price are needed to deter a small number of consumers from buying (low elasticity of demand).
"rebuilding" a laying flock is a fairly quick change, if the infrastructure is already there.
Wow! I wondered about this article - US centric. I wondered because eggs are not expensive here. I just looked [1] [2]. I can get a dozen free range for about US$4 at the current conversion rate. They are a supermarket own brand, but even the "fancy" ones are something like that for 6, but some are actually still close to $4 for 12.
The US chicken market (not necessarily eggs specifically) was in the Morgan Spurlock documentary follow up to "Supersize me", and it looked like the chicken "mafia" controlled the business.[3]
Okay, so update - we went to the local Morrisons (another chain) over lunch and got 18 eggs (they are sold from trays that you box yourself, but we just took half a tray) for £5.40 (so, what? US$6.82) The eggs are sold by the egg too, 0.30 each, so we could have bought any number we wanted really. They are also free-range. Remember too, in Europe eggs don't need to be refrigerated because we don't treat then to remove the outer layer.
The egg story in the US is so strange to me. I just checked my local "premium" (Pacific Northwest) grocery store, and free range eggs are $4/dozen. (https://townandcountrymarkets.com/shop#!/?id=156440568471307...) I guess US food desert type areas are paying much more from the media surrounding this, but even that price comes with a warning on the website that egg supplies are limited, and presumably therefore the price would be lower in times of higher supply.
I have chickens, and the cost including amortization of their real estate puts family eggs at something like $12/dozen.
The town and country near me is $4.99, so maybe it is more expensive here in Ballard. But the weird thing is that the non-organic/free-range eggs at QFC are $6.99/dozen and they have the same $4.99 dozen that Town and Country has.
Spurlock can be a fraud and the food market still be controlled by a cartel — both can be true at the same time.
I’m no US citizen so I don’t really care but what I read about your potato market was wild, so I wouldn’t be surprised if eggs are also controlled by a cartel.
"lied through his teeth" isn't an accurate description. His openness about his history of drunking wasn't ideal and did damage his credibility. However other people have partially reproduced the health effects of what he did and his level of drinking is pretty common in the USA so it's not like he's some crazy outlier.
Yeah, it's really hard for me to understand the thing with eggs. Do people really buy that many eggs? We're a family of 5, cook every day (never buy takeout) and consume, maybe, 6 eggs a month? when we bake cakes? which we do extremely rarely.
We only cook for diner as we don't eat breakfast and everyone's out of the house for lunch, so that may be a reason, but still. It seems a very minor and unimportant ingredient.
Yeah even in the US its somewhat regional and brand-specific. In my region, I just purchased a pack of 18 eggs for $5 USD at a typical well-known chain grocery store.
Some of these egg companies are absolutely using the bird flu as an excuse to raise prices. Right next to that 18 pack I bought was a shelf full of eggs that cost $9/dozen. No one was buying them. Just a weird situation.
I picked up a dozen for $3.99 last night at a major chain grocery store, too. They had plenty of eggs in stock and I was there around 9pm. I've seen the insanity at Costco first hand so I've stopped buying milk and eggs from there until that sorts itself out
The 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 cited as the primary driver of skyrocketing egg prices, its actual impact on production has been minimal,” the group wrote. “Instead, dominant egg producers . . . have leveraged the crisis to raise prices, amass record profits, and consolidate market power.
I wonder if spreading the chickens out to all the backyards would prevent spread due to lower density, or if you'd get spread via wild animals anyhow and now it's just impossible to contain and more people are at direct risk.
It certainly would but still it would have to be a controlled and regulated environment. I honestly would not want to have chicken near me in this particular moment especially considering who is the secretary of health. The USA really are playing with fire.
No, it's not. But that's what the egg companies want you to believe. In truth the number of egg laying hens is only down about 5% total since the beginning of the epidemic.
You don't know the elasticity of the market. I can imagine restaurants, food producers and consumers are very eager to get their weekly box of eggs. So even a 5% drop can cause a price jump that's way more.
California, which dropped battery caging years ago, has been on of the states most hard hit. The real reason is that the US doesn't vaccinate it's chickens, which it mostly doesn't do because if it did, it couldn't export to several countries.
Only France in Europe vaccinate its chicken yet we still have normal prices. This is not the issue but merely the fact that 70% of chicken in the USA are battery caged plus a protectionist market that does not allow imports.
Certainly easy to perpetuate insane conspiracy theories like this when the anti-science administration is no longer collecting stats on infectious diseases.
To save money? Absolutely not. I'm keeping a spreadsheet on our 20 chickens this year. They're young, so input is very high while output is still ramping but I'm guessing it's $7-8 dozen in food costs alone (the highest end organic feed tho), never mind the initial buyin.
It's a recent experiment, we were on the more reasonably priced organic feed until I discovered my local feed store had this stuff over the holidays, so we're trying it out. The quality of the eggs is absolutely miles above what I already considered really good eggs though.
I'll probably get around to making our own someday, but I'm not there just yet.
This makes me wonder - would chickens grow more efficiently if you cook their food for them?
When we invented cooking it gave us a massive advantage because of the nutritional efficiency, yet we feed animals just random raw stuff. Would feeding them porridge instead of grain lead to higher output?
We have 10 (backyard) chickens and spend about $40/mo in feed. We average about five eggs per day when they are laying, so let's say that's 150 eggs per month. That's $0.26/egg or $3.20 a dozen.
But we have to factor in around 4 months of them not laying during the winter. So for laying months, that brings the feed price to around $60/mo or $4.80 a dozen.
So yeah, at current prices, it's worth it for us. I also haven't factored in the value of their compost, which is really quite expensive when you're buying as much as they generate, so it's probably even cheaper than listed.
FWIW, you can get generally better results with different breeds. Golden Comets or ISA Browns will typically get you 1 per day per chicken. In reality if you had 10 you'd likely get 8 or 9 per day. They also seem to lay in the winter better than many. Unfortunately they just don't live long so it's a constant cycling process.
In many cases you can cycle the compost back in to the feed you grow (as fertilizer).
Around here our eggs are averaging about $9 per 12 on the shelves, and you can't buy just 12, the only eggs on the shelf are the 18/24 packs so about $20-22 per pack, almost the same price as choice meat.
Yeah, the daily tasks are pretty small. Just a few minutes a day. Scoop some food, change out the water, gather the eggs.
Every so often, you need to do bigger chores, like go buy fees or fix something in your setup. A couple times a year you need to do a deep clean of the coop (throw out all the straw, scrape any poo that's collected on the floor or wherever, put in clean straw). Sometimes a chicken dies, and that's not fun, but it is something you have dispose of properly.
Ultimately, though, it's a hobby. It should be fun or relaxing most of the time or else it's not worth it. Like gardening or running a home server. If you're trying to just save money, maybe you can save a tiny bit in this particular moment, but there are surely better ways to save a few bucks.
Once you have it set up, I'd say no more than about 2 hours per week. The feeding and watering can be automated, so it's really just whatever cleaning or optional shuffling of their locations you do. Checking for eggs can be done in a few minutes, and you technically don't have to do it every single day. You might actually choose to spend more than the minimum to tame them and treat them as pets.
You're feeding them the wrong stuff. They can live off of cracked corn and whatever stale bread and vegetables you toss them, as well as bugs in their general vicinity. As for the initial buy, they can turn over a new generation in about 3 weeks. You can also eat the old chickens. You're looking at it wrong.
I 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 paid a year ago.
At least in Los Angeles the prices for a dozen eggs are fluctuating between $3, $12, and an empty shelf.
Some restaurants are up charging for egg dishes although it's not widespread.
It's not the most back braking price fluctuations but it's one of the most obvious. I think the shortages are a lot more apparent than the prices themselves. And the fact it's fluctuating means it's on your mind even more as you wait out another sad, eggless week.
Our eggs last year varied between $1-2 dozen. Before that, they frequently dipped below $1/doz. With the price of literally all other groceries skyrocketing, our family made a conscious choice to switch away from higher proteins like beef to eating a lot of eggs because they were the cheapest source of protein readily available.
Now you can't buy a dozen of eggs in the stores around here for less than $6.
We go through a lot of eggs. That is a very big increase when you add it up throughout the year.
In December, I decided to try an egg diet where I would regularly consume a double digit number of eggs per day. This has has made the price of eggs quite noticeable. I am not eating as many these days as I did when I first had the idea.
Interestingly, when my grandparents were really short on money in the 20th century, they resorted to eating only eggs to get by. It remained a healthy diet option for poor people until recently.
TBH I haven't even noticed a price increase here in Brooklyn. I did notice that a lot of the "oh no eggs are running out" hysteria lined right up with some incoming winter storms, which typically drives up demand for basics like eggs, milk, and bread in the days before. Empty shelves for these items is incredibly common before snow. I don't doubt that there are places gouging, especially in Manhattan, but I just don't understand who is being impacted so much if I'm not seeing the same in one of the most HCOL and urban areas in the country
So weird how people freak out over winter storms in NYC. In the decade I've been here I don't think I've seen a single snowstorm had enough of an impact to close grocery stores.
And the eggs haven't been selling out before winter storms -- there haven't been any serious storms that anybody has "prepared" for, just regular snow. There's been absolutely no increase in price for milk or bread or anything else.
This is entirely because of bird flu, it's supply and demand, it's not price gouging.
I don't know why you're trying to convince yourself that the empty shelves at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are due to winter storms, or why you haven't noticed that eggs are $9 at your local bodega. Trader Joe's in Brooklyn even has signs explaining that the empty shelves are because of shortages from suppliers.
OP was talking about a $3-$5 per month increase, not a $3-$5 monthly total spend. This isn't the first comment in the first thread to miss that though so maybe OP could have worded it more clearly.
There was a time in my life where our household of 2 was regularly going through 3 dozen eggs a week just for breakfast. Back then that would total $5 a week. Today that same amount of eggs are just under $20.
It’s not just the eggs, all grocery prices have gone up massively post covid. But eggs prices are easier to spot because they are super inflated thanks to bird flu, and are easy to understand as a necessity.
They're easy to spot too on account of them not being subject to shrinkflation like other products can. A dozen will be a fixed unit forever I imagine.
Egg prices are artificially inflated from the massive culling of chickens by producers due to bird flu. Nevertheless, egg prices are being pushed as a negative economic indicator for political reasons.
Been raising chickens for years. You certainly can get eggs "for free" by selling excess eggs. But, on top of actually protecting and caring for your hens you will also need to cull unproductive hens. Failing to replace and cull unproductive hens older than 2 years will result paying to feed freeloaders without getting anything in return. I feed my chickens everything out of the kitchen. Their run space is filled with wood chips and is my primary source of compost for the garden. Garden waste goes to the chickens. Its is beautiful cycle.
If I maintain my flock of 18 and get decent feed prices ($0.26/lb) my cost per dozen is ~$3.50 in the winter (2-6 eggs a day) and less than a dollar in the summer (8-15 eggs a day). If I free range them feed cost is even lower.
I think everybody that can should have chickens. They need about 1/4 lb of food a day. A family can maintain a small flock on kitchen waste alone.
There are ways to remediate your backyard enough to make it safe, but only if you really want chickens. You can do most (all?) of the labor yourself but the cost of materials will probably dwarf any savings from the eggs - especially since you probably already have better quality eggs available locally than what we Americans are used to, which I think is the real impetus for most people rearing chickens here.
The first step is to dig up a decimeter or two of soil (the more the better) from the area you want to build your chicken run and dispose of it safely which your city government should be able to advise you on. Next you deposit a layer of clay, 4-5 centimeters thick, wet it and compact it so that any weeds or grass growing in the area can’t grow roots down into the contaminated soil, then cover it up with uncontaminated dirt that you truck in (that last bit is usually the expensive part). You can also use cement instead of the clay and you probably want raised borders so the roots can’t grow laterally either.
My city provides mulch for free so I used that as most of the fill, compacted it, then just put cheap dirt over it. The big cost is testing afterwards to make sure it really is PFAS free but my family is paranoid and it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind.
I think in practice in their randomized tests, almost all samples were above the recommended threshold, so you can save the test money and assume it's not going to be good.
If you build a pen out of anything other than otherwise garbage materials and a small roll of the cheapest fence, you are going to be spending even more money.
Also whats with people buying like a dozen chickens? Do you eat an entire dozen eggs every single day? No? Then you don't need a dozen chickens. 2 chickens will often result in people giving away tons of eggs because they have too many. Maybe a few years down the line when they lay a few less eggs you can add another one or two. If you don't eat 90%+ of their eggs, you will once again be losing money.
Also unless they are free roaming over a very large area, you do not want any roosters. Roosters in a small coop and/or yard often get aggressive and they will attack you. Yes you can cow them down if you are quick enough to grab them, sometimes mid-attack, but most people aren't because they don't want to get stabbed with their spurs. Also buying sexed chicks are not a 100% guarantee you won't get a rooster, ive gotten multiple roosters out of sexed chickens and often the only right choice is to kill them because you don't want a bunch of roosters fighting either each other or attacking people.
This would probably create resiliency for egg supply, but given that a source of bird flu is wild birds and transfer to and from humans would increase mutations wouldn't it likely increase probability of more bird flu and more human cases?
Interestingly(to me), for the first time in my life the local backyarders and farmers are selling eggs for less than grocery stores. Much better quality, too.
I've been considering getting a few hens for a while. The cost of setup, feed and the work involved for "free eggs" are quite a bit. However, it's more worth the cost now than it's ever been, especially considering the increased self-reliance.
There are ways to offset the feed costs by growing your own feed or tapping into waste streams like food/produce scraps.
If you get a few hens, don't do it for financial reasons. There are a lot of reasons to do it, but money isn't one. The financial breakeven will take many years to decades.
Build vs buy. You can be me and build an in-house flock, pay $100/mo in feed, $500 for a livestock guard dog, $100/mo for dog food, $500 for a solar electric fence, and then $500 for a few coops, etc. It'll pay off before I'm dead, I think! -- right?
The MBAs know how to value the actual costs. Most people for example, ignore the cost of their own labor and the opportunity costs of the whole affair.
What’s missing from all the calculations so far is the worth of the time you put in. Maintaining chickens isn’t free on a daily you spend around half an hour, sometimes more to tend to your chickens. Even by minimum wage standards, you’re spending quite a bit more just in labor than buying a dozen eggs for $2 more than what it was 2 years ago.
First, you can't put a price on food security. When you can't get these things from the market because the shelves are bare, you will still have a source available. That's a big perk that can't be understated.
Also, the shelves have been bare with eggs for quite awhile. Locally here we largely only see the large packs being sold. Its been 6 months since I've seen a dozen pack on the shelves.
Its far more than $2, where I live a pack of eggs is competing for a pound of pork or choice beef.
Last Saturday iirc it was 23.99 for 24 eggs, and there were only two packs on the shelf (both with broken eggs).
Did you factor in the cameras and 10g Ethernet you ran to the coop for ‘future proofing’? Hehe. It’s ok to have hobby, and if you get eggs out of it, even better.
For starters nobody uses an electric fence for chickens. You have them for cattle because they’re so big building a fence sturdy enough they can’t just push over is expensive.
You can do it a ton cheaper, depending on how pretty you want it to be. Like, you can scrounge up the materials for a coop damn near for free, and you shouldn’t need $100/m in feed if they’ve got an outdoor run with grass and you feed them kitchen scraps, unless you’ve got an absolute shitload of them.
Most folks do get upside-down on it, but it’s because they want a cute instagram-ready coop or substitute money for effort. And they aren’t willing to butcher and eat them after a couple years when they stop laying consistently.
Handle your chickens like country folk and you’ll do ok. Handle them like suburbanites, maybe not so much.
You can do it cheaper, but it's work. I kept a few chickens for years, and it takes time to clean out the coop, to move the run when they've scratched up the grass. You've gotta be there in the morning to let them out, and in the evening to close them in. The eggs you get from them are much yellower, which is nice and probably better for you, but is it worth it? After 15 years I decided "not anymore"
Backyard chicken farming is a great hobby, and surprisingly tech heavy.
My Coop controller, which is hand build by grumpy bearded East Germans, even has modules to integrate into a smart home system and supports remote monitoring via cellular network.
Backyard chickens are great if you have the space, time, and patience, but they're hardly a solution to systemic issues... The real fix is a more diversified, resilient supply chain... And not just pushing food production onto individuals
Well, I agree with your premise of needing more diverse and resilient food production but I fail to see how backyard chickens (and homegrown vegetables) can't be a part of it.
I say this while I'm also - on principle - extremely wary of pushing systemic change on individuals.
You almost never have to handle chickens if you build your coop right. We didn't even have a permanent coop, merely a mobile one, but chickens are really good at coming back home to roost. There are books and plenty of info on the internet on how to do it right.
Forgot that comments like these lose their meaning over text. Answer: No. Do not raise chickens because you think you're going save a few nickels eggs.
Due to living in an HOA, our family is considering raising quail for their eggs instead of chickens. The HOA would likely still consider it a violation, but I don't see how we can get in much trouble other than having to get rid of the birds. I understand that they are nearly as productive as chickens, but don't make the noise that chickens make. The only thing stopping us is the summer heat in in a desert area. I'm not sure that 105 degree weather is humane for even birds to live outside in.
So, how is it possible for the virus to get into a high-tech barn? Simple: the birds still need to breathe, which requires a ventilation system of some kind, which allows an entry point for the virus. Phillip Clauer, a professor emeritus of poultry science at Penn State, explains: “In the Midwest, they are working the fields in the fall, and you’ll see dust coming up from the fields, and the geese will land there to glean the extra corn, and they crap in the field. The dust goes aerosol, and that dust travels a long distance. We had one infected layer house in Pennsylvania, and they could tell you exactly what air vent the virus came in from. And then it spread through the whole flock.”
Why not use HEPA filters in the ventilation system?
> - 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...
We had them, then they found PFAS in many backyard eggs. Now most people I know are getting rid of them (in the Netherlands). It’s a shame but I have to say it’s easier to travel and not have to arrange care for the chickens.
Backyard chickens FTW! I sold my last company iCracked (W12) and have been automating my coop for fun for the last 15 years. I have always wanted to build a company at the intersection of smart home / AI meets backyard agriculture with the end goal of building the world's largest decentralized food production system. So we started Coop with the goal of making backyard chickens approachable to anyone with a backyard. We built camera systems that do crazy cool deep computer vision and have gotten to the point where we can tell our customers, "Hey AJ, there's 2 raccoons detected outside the coop, the automatic door is closed, all 6 of your hens are safe, and you have 5 eggs that can be collected. We've trained our model on 25m videos from customers and are pushing new models every week.
We built this for the family that has always wanted chickens, but doesnt know where to start. We also include 6 chickens with every coop, which I think is hilarious. The plan is to vertically integrate everything from the supply chain (feed, treats, supplements, vet visits, etc) and make it SUPER easy to have a backyard flock. It's been a fascinating and fun company to build - If you want to see some of the stuff we're doing on the tech side feel free to check out www.Coop.Farm - Also one of the things that we track where we think our thesis is playing out is how many people use us that haven't raised chickens before and we're at 71% of our customers are new to backyard ag. Also, we make standalone cameras for existing flocks and other animals and I have been super surprised to see the amount of people using our predator detection and remote health monitoring models for rabbits, goats, pigs, ducks, etc. Super fun company to build.
You should really preface it disclaimer your comment so that the reader knows you are pitching your startup up front.
If you did that, I think your comment would be pretty interesting. As it stands now it leaves the reader feeling deceived and misled when they realize you're doing a sales pitch rather than a friendly conversation.
Prices "soaring" like everything else? I'm sick of these articles that pick one product in isolation and ignore the fact that we're in hyperinflation and it affects products unevenly. (Egg farmers have likely been unable to mitigate bird flu because they artificially kept costs low to avoid shocking the public into abandoning eggs entirely, but now they need to overcompensate because of this random event).
How many eggs do most people even buy? Almost every story is talking about eggs and how much of a burden it is on the public, but what are we talking about here? I can buy 18 fancy Vital Farms pasture raised eggs for $12. How is such a small purchase so important in the financial press?
The whole thing is just completely silly. The focus should be on the true cost drivers like healthcare, insurance, child care, and housing.
A few years ago 18 eggs was just under $2.50. Today that same 18 eggs is $9.36. If your family goes through a lot of eggs, it can have a significant impact on your budget.
For example, a family of 4 might use a dozen eggs a day for breakfast. End of the week that could be 6 dozen eggs. When prices were cheap that’s $15, but now that would be just under $60. Quiet a tough pill to swallow for those on a budget.
I agree. I doubt eggs are a significant outlay for many people. I think it's probably because it's a stereotypical staple, like bread, milk and cheese. It's a kind of representative of food prices in general.
But yeah it doesn't make any sense to care much about it in isolation, unless you run a mousse business or something.
It was not really plausible for Republicans to say they are going to do something about healthcare or insurance (I mean, hopefully that isn’t controversial—it isn’t like they are lying about that, healthcare just isn’t part of their platform). It was a folksy way to complain about the economy under Biden without complaining about capitalism.
Now it is a folksy way for Democrats to complain about the economy, that doesn’t require bringing up the fact that there was some inflation under Biden. And it has some vague healthcare relevance (since bird flu might jump to humans).
The way stuff gets talked about in America now is intense focus on extremely niche stuff. Our legislative branch is not really functional anymore, so we can’t talk seriously about solving big problems. So, let’s put a on our blinders and talk about eggs. The eggs represent our whole system, it is dumb as hell.
This is a reasonable take on the nonsense. “Look at the awful burden of spending $10 more a month on eggs is doing to the average family!” … meanwhile huge landlord conglomerates are colluding on rent prices (via third party apps of course), raising rents, and gobbling up housing in the hottest growth areas.
A portion of dietary cholesterol is directly absorbed and increases your serum LDL-c. Especially an issue if you have the Lp-a mutation that increases this turnover.
Though I think it's more useful to consider what you could replace it with if you did want to do the optimization.
I've been fiber-maxing and ApoB-minimizing for years and my breakfast lately is usually a large bowl oats + mix-ins, a tofu scramble, or a tempeh dish. According to cronometer, they have similar nutrition and calorie profile of six eggs, except they have fiber and other perks.
The downside is that it took quite a bit of motivated behavioral change to end up with new dietary staples having grown up in our egg-heavy culture.
With “it’s better for yourself” I’m not just referring to nutrition. Animal agriculture is devastating for the world, including the environment around you.
Also I think for most (dare I say ‘well informed’) people it would be an ethical relieve to stop consuming eggs and other animal products.
And yes: there are (nutritional) concerns around eggs; for example concerning salmonella, cholesterol and saturated fats. Although I should mention science is not unanimous regarding all of those subjects.
But science is clear about one thing: bird flu is not to take lightly.
Eggs have obvious health benefits. Land encroachment + emissions is modest, and notwithstanding, that's just something to manage, not avoid altogether. Everything we demand for ourselves encroaches on land.
This rhetoric is old. You can thrive on a vegan diet very easily without this careful calibration you speak of. The same could be said for common western diets with poor nutrition.
It’s true that you can’t just go plant based by just ditching the animal based components: you have to substitute them. But that’s an increasingly easy thing to do these days.
From my perspective, your point can be regarded as a myth.
But even if it wasn’t mostly a myth: I rather spend a little more effort on balanced nutrition than contributing to the immensely violent system that animal agriculture is.
My wife and I would love to have some backyard chickens, but ironically we live in a small farm town in Iowa where backyard chickens (both hens and roosters) are banned by town ordinance. A couple years ago a 5th grade student went before our city council to ask for an exception so she could raise chickens to show at the county fair for her 4H project; the council granted the exception, but not without raising concerns about creating a slippery slope!
I recently got fined for having backyard chickens within 100 feet of a neighboring residence. That's the ordinance, and I can't meet it in a low density neighborhood.
Fuck the city. I still have chickens and will continue to have them.
I’d say I can’t do it cause I live in NYC, but theres a very famous “Chicken House” in Bedstuy that disproves that. They got a whole chicken coup in their front yard. I got know idea how they keep away stray cats and rats etc, but somehow they’ve been doing it for at least a decade.
I am going today to buy 6 chicks, as i was told all 4 hatcheries in my area were producing chicks for sale this week. I was told they would be $5-$12 depending on the breed.
I was concerned because of the culling last year (over 130,000,000 fowl culled in 2024, before the election, even! weird!) that it might be hard to get new chicks, but as i was told
> Chickens lay a lot of eggs
in the US farm to table is 60-90 days for eggs, that's why we wash them and refrigerate them. Yard eggs you don't wash, and only keep "cool" like room temp, until you're ready to use them then you wash them with a foodsafe sanitizer (or dawn if you're making boiled eggs) and prepare.
130 million chickens et al killed prior to november of 2024, and 90 days to the home? looks like this will let up around mardi gras.
I wonder who will take credit? because, here's the secret: It's the chickens.
yes; and i did take it into account. I'm unwilling to share my methodology at this time, but the very little mainstream coverage of the cull last year was enough to piece together a timeline, and i'm sure a few people have, maybe even someone who isn't a complete nutterbutter.
In my estimation, the slaughter of chickens for disposal slowed down during the summer. Any reason why would be speculation i am unwilling to back up at this time.
Wash your hands if you handle livestock, people. and if you're around LOTS and cleaning up their poo, wear a respirator and eye protection. It's got what plants crave, but not humans!
wow, 60 to 90 days. I have a chicken and I was occasionally worried when an egg was on the table (inside is max mid 20s C), for a few weeks and thinking of putting them in the fridge. I also find they seem to cook better when in the room and not the fridge.
I enjoy some well-prepared tofu - I just had some last night, actually - but for most people, it is absolutely not an adequate substitute for eggs without seriously compromising on flavor and utility (i.e. baking.)
A good tofu scramble tastes more like eggs than eggs thanks to black salt. And it's more flavorful than your normal egg+butter fry because it has an array of spices.
A friend of mine has kept chickens in his backyard for years (not for egg-cost reasons). He said he did the math recently, and given just the cost of feed (not including the up-front cost of building the coop, or ongoing costs to maintain it), eggs would have to go up to ~$11/dozen for it to break even. While I have seen eggs that high recently (at a small convenience-store type place in a relatively HCoL area), that's certainly still not common.
I live in an urban area and have ten chickens. They are nice to have but it is a hobby and nowhere close to economical. And with bird flu I had to spend another decent chunk of money on a much larger & covered run, since we no longer let them roam our yard during the day. We bought nice Omlet coops so there are certainly ways to do it more cheaply than we did, but even so it will take most people years to break even, and chickens need at least weekly maintenance.
>And with bird flu I had to spend another decent chunk of money on a much larger & covered run, since we no longer let them roam our yard during the day.
Bird flu never stopped our ancestors from keeping chickens outside. In fact if you let them go, they would be feral animals much like stray cats and dogs. They only "need" food and sanitation, due to their feces building up if they are kept in one place.
I recommend listening to Patara's advice on chickens. [1] She mentions some of the things discussed in this thread and more. All practical advice. Just listen in the background.
Texas has a law that you're allowed to have up to 6 hens and 2 beehives in your backyard. Hens are fine because they're not roosters (though usually one hen will take on some of the role of a rooster). I'm not sure about the wisdom of keeping beehives in a suburban backyard though because when your neighbor mows their lawn nearby they can get irritated and attack -- the hives really need to be 20ft or more away from the fence.
My grandmother would tell me stories about how when she was growing up, they had backyard chickens. Unfortunately my state has laws preventing anyone from even having a hen unless you have over an acre of land.
But the culls are smaller, and so the impact lessened. The problem becomes more distributed.
This is the chief reason why Canada's egg prices have remained sane while the US has exploded. It's not like we don't have bird flu here and we haven't had culls. We just have smaller flocks.
> But the culls are smaller, and so the impact lessened. The problem becomes more distributed.
Presumably the risk of spread of bird flu to humans increases though, due to the increased amount of contact. And then the increased risk of mutation leading to human to human transmission.
Bit wild to me that we don't seem to be taking this very seriously other than "o no my eggs" given we just had a pandemic a few years ago.
I think a lot of that is due to eggs being under government supply management. It is very difficult to get a new egg farm going, and it is very difficult to consolidate egg farms. So we have more smaller farms surviving as a result.
Yeah, My concern is more opportunities to pass to people who may not be doing good flock hygiene too. A farm has better resources and training than a backyard flock.
Mostly they can spread it to you and to any other animals around and by the time you’re aware that they’re infected, they’ll be seriously ill. Or shorter; the chances x benefit of them they developing immunity are much lower than the chances x cost of them becoming ill and having the virus mutate in a much worse direction.
Wow, no one is talking about the smell. Have you got any idea how terrible is the smell of a chicken coop? You do know that you have to get in there to clean it, right? This ain’t no fun activity. I prefer to get fewer eggs per month than to clean it myself (sometimes every day, it also depends on the weather too).
Why would it be, when you consider that countries with far less condensed supply chain (e.g. Canada) have not been impacted? If we blame commercial agricultural practices for exacerbating the risk then it makes no sense to frame backyard chickens as doing the same.
My family must be odd, we probably consume about 4 dozen of raw eggs per year. What is everyone else eating that requires so many eggs? Do you cook eggs daily?
Yeah man, eggs are great. My wife and I cook almost all of our meals, and we go through about two dozen a month. Have one for breakfast a few times a week, cook a quiche once or twice a month, stir one or two into fried rice, use them for battering fried foods, many baked goods call for an egg or two.
Your break-even point will be years away, so no, backyard chickens aren’t the answer for high egg prices.
That said, chickens are fun animals, and mine bring me a lot of joy even though I don’t like/eat eggs (the chickens came with my house; I give the eggs away).
My mental model of backyard chickens is that the owners will behave like pet owners. A sobering thought. Granted, most pet owners behave responsibly, and most chicken owners will too.
What always amazed me about Chickens from raising them first hand is how much nutrients they produce from so little. They’re so efficient. I think this is more of a lifestyle choice because raising them is not cost effective even at these prices.
I have a hen and get an egg once every few days. I had two for a while, but I have had this one for years.
I live in an urban area, but I don’t even lock her up. She just wanders about. Sometimes she goes out the front gate, and people knock on my door and ask if I’ve lost a chicken. She always seems to go back to her coop out the back to sleep and lay. Occasionally, she starts laying in some random place. When I notice there are no eggs for a week, I go hunting. When I take the eggs, she seems to go back to laying in the coop.
The biggest issue I have is if I leave the door open and don’t put a little bit of wood that she can’t jump over, she comes into the house. They poop every now and then no matter where they are, so it’s a minor issue but still annoying. She knows the cat food is in the laundry and raids it if she gets in. If I leave the front door open and she can see it from the back, she will rush around the side of the house and run in through the front door.
Kind of off topic, but instead of culling flocks infected with the flu, are there any farmers just seeing which chickens survive and then letting them breed?
A bunch of my neighbors keep various birds (chickens, ducks, even geese!), and some sell their eggs. I haven't checked to see what they are charging these days, but I'm sure it's gone up. It used to be 5 bucks per dozen for the fancy green eggs.
I've been buying local, pasture raised chickens for the last 10 years. I am very fortunate to have had the income to allow me to do so. I also don't eat that many eggs (roughly a dozen a month - so it hasn't been that expensive).
The price of my eggs was always between $8-$12 / dozen (including this weekend when I easily found and bought another 2 dozen). I get that I was buying "already expensive eggs", because apparently other people were buying eggs $2 / dozen.
However, to be frank, I'm not sure how people expect eggs to be so cheap. Taking into account the land, the water, the feed, the labor, the transportation all to create a dozen eggs, it must cost more than $2.
Clearly paying a little more for the eggs has allowed me to support farms which are robust to large shocks like this (both in terms of input costs and in terms of health of chickens). I really hope as a society we can all move away from the unsustainable farms and improve the economics of sustainable farming so that everyone can afford locally grown, healthy eggs for centuries to come.
In the meanwhile, there will be people who have to buy fewer eggs (either because of health regulations - or because reality checks will always exist like with market shocks right now).
Hopefully, after this crisis, through graduated health regulation we can cause a controlled increase to the floor price of unsustainably grown eggs, while also (through technology and economies of scale) reducing the floor price of locally sourced, sustainably grown eggs.
Feed at a large scale operation is a lot cheaper than you’d think. The bulk of the food is soybean meal left over from oil production and distillers dried grains with solubles left over from ethanol production. The feed manufacturers make deals with those producers for their left over product for very cheap. They supplement the feed with some other stuff like oyster shells for calcium. Bone meal from meat producers, bakery meal from stale or expired bread, wheat middles from milling flour, and so on. None of them are expensive primary products but whatever the cheapest local sources are producing as waste in huge quantities. Some places will even give the stuff away because the cost of transporting is less than its worth in compost. Since the input ingredients are variable and the feed manufacturers have to plan for that, they offer the big farms steep discounts on long term contracts that fix their costs.
A chicken lays a few hundred eggs per year so they’re very economically productive and you can house hundreds or thousands of them per coop somewhere the land, water, and labor are cheap.
Although we’ve sacrificed animal welfare, sanitation, and quality to get those prices.
Until the past few years $1 was normal here, often less when they went on sale. Also, most eggs in the supermarket are locally grown. Transporting them is a PITA both due to fragility and spoilability.
> “Instead, dominant egg producers . . . have leveraged the crisis to raise prices, amass record profits, and consolidate market power.”
Who would have thought that not enforcing antitrust regulation will lead to corporations so large that they can just do whatever they want with impunity because there is no meaningful competition any more?
It would be interesting to know the actual economics and legalities of franchising "Farmer McEgg" setups, to rural folks who wanted a side gig. Once someone had (say) 150 chickens set up and going, what would be spread between their weekly operating expenses, and weekly gross sales? How many hours/day would that typically take?
EDIT: Please read the article, especially the Feb. 19th update note at the beginning of it. Bird flu may not be so bad as it's been portrayed. And if the costs for comparatively tiny chicken farms were low enough, then their economics don't need to look good to Wall St. They're may-be-profitable little hobby farms which help local communities, while putting pressure on the greedy Big Egg oligopoly.
Eggs are a cyclical commodity largely controlled by an oligopoly with far lower production costs than any individual could touch. This would be unlikely to succeed at scale. And as the sibling commenter notes, the reason for egg costs is avian influenza, and small producers will be unable to isolate their flocks from wild bird populations. In aggregate it might be more resilient but it would be a tough sell as a franchise.
You're missing the elephant in the room: egg prices are going up due to supply constraints due to flock culling due to the spread of bird flu.
At the scale you're talking about...you have a bird flu susceptible flock. If backyard chickens became really common - like if every second person in a street had them - then bird flu spread would run wild (you'd also vastly increase the number of poultry-human contacts providing a vector for a species jump).
this is a good point. When you have mega flocks at factory farms, you at least have the option to sterilize the farm to stop the spread. If every lot has its own flock, that won't work at all
> dominant egg producers . . . have leveraged the crisis to raise prices, amass record profits, and consolidate market power
Call me ignorsnt, but I'm surprised to see fewer cases of this kind of exploitative capitalism here in the EU. The only similar case that cones to mind is the gas and diesel price hike.
Am I missing something or are Americans just more accepting of agressive capitalism like this? Something similar is Healthcare. Insulin for example is dirt cheap to produce but costs the buyer hundreds (iirc) of dollars.
I don't think Americans are more accepting of aggressive capitalism, they're victims of an exploitative system that has completely captured their government, media, education, and every aspect of life. Sure many of them are willing participants, or victims who aspire to join the all-powerful ruling class - but that's the result of generations of social engineering and brutal suppression of any viable alternatives.
Since the title is a question: no, no it's not. Because the primary driver is bird flu, so the odds have never been higher of you buying birds only to have to cull them the next week. Now is the worst time to get your chickens, and the best time to just go "whatever, it's not like we need eggs, we'll start buying them again when we actually have enough chickens in this country to lower prices again".
Guys please for the love of God. Dont eat so many eggs. We have cut down our egg consumption to 4 per week between the two of us. And I don’t think about the cost. I can afford it. I think about the supply.
Please please reduce your egg consumption. If you have people who are unhealthy and in need of nutrition, get as many eggs for them as you can. And leave it for them only. But if you are healthy, leave it for others.
Quite some people frequenting this community can't even find their own dick in their underpants. And you suggest the raising live animals besides cats? Muhahahahhahahahahahaha! Oh the comedy.
I haven't made an omelet in months and I'm still eating like a king. Why are people so obsessed with eggs? Are they a linchpin to the American diet or something?
Feed costs money. Unless you live in an area where feed is very cheap, or grow your own feed, this isn't going to be economically viable. Having said that, some people enjoy keeping chickens as pets, and in that case economic viability takes a back seat. Plus there's a certain psychological satisfaction akin to tending to your own (also not economically viable) garden, which should not be underestimated. When I had a garden my every morning started with tending to it, and that was basically the most psychologically enjoyable thing I'd done in the last 30 years, especially when there's something to harvest. Plus, when AI neo-feudalism takes over, I won't starve. :-)
"The Trump administration’s efforts to impose its will on the federal workforce through mass firings, funding freezes and communication blackouts is hampering the ability of public health professionals to respond to the growing threat of avian flu.
As egg prices continue to rise and more cases are detected, state and local health officials say there is no clear plan of action from the administration."
I heard Trump was voted in because people were angry about the high price of eggs (among other things) which Trump promised to fix "on day 1".
Trump cultists will find a way to excuse this and blame it on DEI/woke/immigrants/Marxists, but those who voted for him because they thought he would bring prices down are in for a rude awakening when they discover they were misled (though I can't feel sorry for them, there were so many signs).
I spent quite some time on farms and while chickens are adorable, the amount of poop you have to deal with is going to be a killer to most people. So in the spirit of HN, and if this upward trend of eggs' price continues, I have 2 business ideas:
- Uber for eggs. One household in the hood does all the chicken chores and sale eggs very locally to only some small ZIP code. Of course considering cost on a small home scale, eggs would be most likely at 15% price of shelf ones. Also bigger farmer could not just come and order thousands at such low price because the owner would not have capacity.
- diapers for chicks. If you can invent cheap diaper for chickens then 90% of chicks pollution is gone. you still have to deal with food, water, etc, BUT the major turn off will always be amount of excrement they produce.
Considering the price of eggs today, if nothing gets changed and flus will prevail, these are a billion dollar ideas :)
Edit: unless of course someone is doing that already :) I haven't checked.
Lol, now you also get to raise livestock because you can't afford the food. Capitalism really is the "monarchy by money" speed run. Welcome back, peasant.
As a european that until recently owned 20+ chickens I can tell you no, it is not the answer unless you really want your own chickens.
Owning your own chickens has a bunch of downsides:
- They get sick / get parasites and may require expensive medication or massive amounts of work.
- They require warmth if you live in a cold place like me, and heating costs money.
- They eat a lot and unless you buy in large quantities, it is expensive. And if you buy in large quantities, you must protect the grain from mold and mice which can be hard.
- They require a lot of maintenance since they are pretty stupid and dirty animals that poop in their own water supply, food etc.
- You will get a lot more mice on your property and possibly, in your house.
- You are worried about bird flu, so you need to cover the coop with a roof. Building a roof is expensive, I spent ~$1300 for materials. That is a lot of eggs.
That said, you can get colorful nice eggs from animals you know have a good life and are healthy. Where I am from, that is largely possible in regular stores however but in some areas of the world I assume animal care is a lot worse.
I think more people should have their own animals, but they do require time and effort, more than most people can spare I would believe. We sold all of them due to this reason. We did not profit from having them, but rather lost both time and money but it is (mostly) a fun experience at least. And our waste was heavily reduced since you can feed them your food even if that is illegal where I live if you want to sell your eggs (you can buy a carrot, put it in your bed and sleep with it a week but if you lay it on a plate where you eat your food, it becomes illegal to give them it if you intend to sell the eggs).
I couldn't find anything online about it but some old guy in a youtube video talked about them using chickens to heat houses long ago.
They build the chicken coop against the house with a very thin wall between it and the living room.
Chickens have 41-42°C body temperature. (105-107°F) With a bit of help from fermenting poop they sit very close together and heat up the coop until it gets to hot. One chicken will go outside and walk around in the snow.
The otherwise isolated living room acts like a buffer, they gradually heat it up and it helps stabilize the coop.
I've never seen this thing in action but the old man said it worked really well. I also have no idea how many chickens were used. It would require a breed that does well in cold climate. Today people put electric heaters in the chicken coop.
If it really works that well, combined with the eggs, it could make it profitable.
Bird Flu saunters into the chat, infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands via backyard chickens that have zero health oversight
Remember, the case fatality rate of Bird Flu is approximately 52%, and this is with modern medical assistance for those requiring hospitalization. Without modern medical assistance (once it collapses), that rate is a third again higher.
Backyard chickens would increase the rate of cross species infection. Cats, dogs, wild animals, all would have increased access to viral load.
And obviously humans.
Most farms in australia with animals now post biohazard warnings, and instructions on how to be on the property (mostly, don't be on the property)
I love backyard chooks, lived next door to them for a decade, had the benefit of chook-poo fertiliser for the garden. This is a terrible time to keep chickens, distributed into the community at large.
This disease is hitting seal populations hard. This disease poses risks to endangered species in captive breeding programmes. This disease will be risky for immunocompromised people, small kids, pregnant women.
We have raised a few hens at our hobby farm over the years. The eggs are nice and all, but they're actually quite fragile animals, and then you go and get attached to them and they get suddenly sick and slowly die on you in horrible ways. And veterinary care for backyard chickens is seriously problematic and difficult to get and expensive.
My wife fell seriously in love with keeping chickens and it kind of emotionally broke her. Always tried so hard to do things right, and something has always gone wrong.
I wouldn't advise it, personally, to most people.
Ducks are apparently a bit more resilient though. And duck eggs are great.
Ducks are noisy.
And stinky unless you have a medium/large pond.
On the plus side they are indeed resilient and can forage a good portion of their food.
Yes, raising animals requires the mindset of… raising animals. They’re not pets and life happens to them which most people are very disconnected from these days.
It requires a level of detachment not everyone can accomplish. I brought them home, thinking that's how it would be. My wife fell in love with them, and basically stole them from me. And then it's been years of tears.
what are they dying of? I assume it isn't weather. I was shocked when my Wisconsin coworkers said their chickens handle -10F weather no problem in the winter.
there's just a pile of things. usually reproductive -- becoming egg bound, etc. there's parasites, viruses, bacterial infections. and being flock animals, they hide it, too.
yeah some varieties of chicken are remarkably tough around cold which is crazy considering their original tropical origin.
That’s why I almost thought this was satire. Didn’t people just vote for for lower grocery prices and emergency economic improvements ? Rather than doing democracy we’re now going back to farming for our own food during a bird flu pandemic ?
They’re certainly the answer if the question is “how can we all get bird flu.”
We all really need to be avoiding exposure to h5n1. The more chances it gets the more likely it’ll evolve to transmit human to human.
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...
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.
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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As a small child, I used to spend a part of the summer vacations with my grandparents, who had some land cultivated with a variety of crops and trees and they also raised some animals, including chicken which roamed freely through a big garden.
I liked to play with the chicken, and by rewarding them with maize grains I have succeeded to train some of them to respond to a few simple commands, like coming to me when called and sitting down, waiting to be petted, and standing up upon commands. (Because those chicken were used to roam freely, they were shy of human contact. Normally it was difficult to catch any one of them.)
My grandparents and their neighbors were astonished, despite the fact that they have kept chicken for all their lives, because they believed that chicken are too dumb to act like this.
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The kinds of intelligence they display is really interesting.
They can't figure out obstacles very well if they can see where they want to go, but are impeded. They just pace back and forth, frustrated, instead of walking around the obstacle.
They are very social, recognize people, and can be trained in some limited ways (eg. to return to the coop with whistles, if you associate it with treats).
> 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
At 2 years old my son could blind taste test tell the difference between my neighbor's chicken's eggs and store bought eggs.
He refused to eat eggs (still doesn't) until we convinced him to try one of the eggs from our neighbor's chicken's. He liked that egg. Every time we've tried to pass (fancy!) store eggs off to him as our neighbor's eggs he's called us out for lying to him.
He'll reliably eat eggs from the chickens across the street and nowhere else.
So yes, there is a difference in taste!
I think you demonstrated that eggs taste different, but not better.
My 2 year old would only prefer to eat frozen chicken nuggets. That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken.
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My 2 year old daughter never liked eggs. We started buying some from a neighbor who pasture raises his lay hens (and feeds them more chicken-appropriate feed).
She eats her eggs and asks for more. If we run out and I fry up some store bought ones, she refuses to eat them - even when I don't tell her where they're from.
Same goes for chicken meat from the grocery store vs. pasture raised broilers from another neighbor.
When it happened the first time it was something of a canary-in-the-coalmine situation for me.
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People say that all the time, but professional cooks have run triangle tests on backyard/farm eggs vs. store bought eggs and people can't tell the difference. At this point, I don't believe there's a difference in taste. The psychological effects that would lead people to believe that difference exists --- a kind of culinary placebo effect --- are so strong that I just attribute everything to that.
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I wonder how much of this is due to there simply being different types of chickens. I would guess that most commercial egg layers are from a specific or small subset of optimized chicken types. While there is a larger variety in the type of chickens people raise in their back yards. My brother has 3 different types of chickens and each lays visually different eggs.
Quails. Even cuter than chickens and much more easy to keep. Might be one of the easiest to keep animals overall. Not even ant colonies, fish, cats or dogs are as happy with as little as quails.
Housespiders and cacti might be easier.
You need to use quail proof feeders, tho, or you're going to spend a fortune on kitchen scraps or whatever you intend to feed them. They eat just about anything peckable except oats (if you didn't end up with picky ones). Cookef rice, seeds, peas, boiled eggs, sometimes nibbling on each other (-.-), or dirt cheap quail feed. Also mealworms ... its catnip for quails.
> You may have to euthanize a chicken, likely by hand (literally) via cervical dislocation.
I recommend cutting the head off with a pair of high quality, large and well maintained scissors.
Put a bucket in front of you, put the scissors from behind on the neck, just below the head, and cut in a single strong motion.
The lil birdy will not understand what is happening and wont feel uncomfortable during the process. Its head then looses consciousness in sbout 15 seconds, compared to about 30 seconds for the cervical dislocation method. (It'll loose the ability to feel pain MUCH faster than 15s, but I dont think we know how quickly. But probably faster than it'll realize that there's pain in the first place. You've probably cut yourself before and noticed that the pain only kicks in after a moment.)
It is also way easier to not screw up. Just remember to ALWAYS cut the head off completely, as fast as possible. Lil birdie wont die from bloodloss, but sudden loss of spinal fluid, which is WAY faster.
The cervical dislocation method is also very effective, but also much easier to screw up, a bit more uncomfortable for the birdy and could introduce quite some anxiety for the birdy if you hesitate for even but a moment.
On the other hand the cute little critters dont understand how scissors work or what they're for. Even if the method is much less pretty, it's by far the most peaceful method for the birdy.
I've had chickens for probably 15 years now, starting with 3 and ending up with about 20 (mixture of hybrids, pedigrees and rescued battery/farmed hens) and 2 geese. This happens a lot with chickens. Chickens are a gateway drug to more chickens. If you have a few chickens, they take about as much looking after as a rabbit - keep their food and water topped up, and clean them out once a week.
I agree that you won't make money or a profit. The coop money you will probably never earn back, but I can cover the cost of a sack of feed (£12 or so) by selling boxes to colleagues for £1 each.
I think the eggs taste better because a) what the hens eat and b) because they are much fresher.
I've had to kill chickens (and hate doing it), which is sad, but I've never taken one to a vet. It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20.
We've brought chickens inside the house when they're ill (we have tiled floors) but don't do it on a regular basis. If chickens weren't incontinent, though, they would make great indoor pets. Surprisingly smart and pleasant animals. This will also sound weird but if you pick one up, they also smell nice - kind of like a new puppy smell.
Sounds like the true answer is having a colleague you can buy £1 eggs from.
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> It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20.
This logic is confusing. You are taking a purely transactional view when it comes to the chicken’s health, but you also admitted they don’t turn a profit. In that vein, it makes no sense to get the £20 chicken in the first place.
Your utilitarian view is also the opposite of what the person you’re replying to is describing. Do you believe that if one gets a pet cat or dog for free from the street and they get sick, “it makes no sense to get an £X vet bill on a pet which was free”? And if not, what’s the difference? Neither is making you money.
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> It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20.
I guess it depends on how you look at it. By analogy, it makes no sense to have my cat go to the vet either (and pay thousands of dollars for a ~$50 cat lol), but they still go. I guess it's all about personal choice and perspective. It does feel a bit silly in a way though
> but if you pick one up, they also smell nice
Agreed, a clean chicken can smell really good!
> If chickens weren't incontinent, though, they would make great indoor pets
That's the big thing! On Japanese twitter, chicken diapers are a popular item!
I have two geese as well—have you found they help against predators? Anecdotally, we've had no predators steal any chickens since we added them (though a coyote got some goose tail feathers at first), though our neighbors down the street have been decimated by foxes.
Never considered the ROI, but I built a big walk-in coop for maybe $200 in materials. Think that'd pay off with the current price of eggs, if we sold them.
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Is the paperwork in the UK (I'm assuming you're UK-based, hence £) particularly onerous? I heard things were getting more complicated if you just wanted a few chickens in your garden.
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The taste is definitely different, and the reason for its is the diet. Small scale chickens tend to eat a lot of grass, rather than the cheaper feed given to factory farms.
A upside that was not mention is that chickens are excellent in cutting grass and keeping weed out of bushes, especially roses bushes. They generally don't eat fruits on bushes like raspberries, but our strawberries was not safe so we used a gardening net over those (also keeps other birds out). Smaller plants/seed may also need a net until they grown in size large enough that the chickens are not interested anymore.
A major big upside we also got is that they hunt down slugs and other insects that otherwise can cause major damage to a garden or lawn. Even ant colonies, which can often be a pain to remove and a major annoyance if they invade your home.
On the downside, chicken hierarchy is a very real thing and they can get into quite bloody fights with each other.
> 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 used the believe the same, but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land. Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals.
But then the question should be is it just the "bond" which is holding someone back from killing animals? Why can't we just not kill without relying on bonds?
It's just the circle of life. Live in a remotely rural area with animals around and you're going to see pretty regular death. For instance foxes are beautiful, extremely intelligent, and amazing animals. They'll also systematically and sadistically kill literally every single chicken inside a henhouse, one by one, if they get in. In another instance a dog I loved more than anything as a child to young adult was killed by a wild boar - tusk straight into the lungs.
The same, by the way, applies to vegetarian stuff. The amount of critters being killed to keep them away from the veggies would probably shock you, especially in the rather inhumane way its sometimes done in industrial farms. Shooting, for some baseline, is considered one of the most humane ways of dealing with large pests.
I simply see nothing wrong, at all, with eating meat. It's a natural and normal part of life and also, by far, the easiest way to ensure you hit all your necessary nutrients without going overboard on calories - especially if you live an active life and/or are into things like weight training.
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Look up Sepp Holzer on YouTube, or really any permaculturist that eats meat. They treat their animals well, but also eat them. I think it’s healthy to feel a twang when you kill anything. It can contribute to the gratitude you have when sitting down to a meal. The native cultures seem (at least in pop culture caricatures) to have understood this.
I have a farmer friend who occasionally has to kill one of his milk cows. He names them, pets them, cares for them like a pet. It pains him to kill them, and I always know when he’s had to do it— I can see it on his face. I’ve bought some of the meat form his cows, and I was grateful for the meat, and the man who raised the cow with such care.
Past generations of my family used to name animals that they raised for meat after dishes they could end up in. There are practices people can engage in to distance themselves from the animals they interact with.
But also some people who raise animald for meat hire a person to collect them for slaughter in part because of the emotional toll involved.
As to your last question.. I think you might be confused? People don't like to kill in general. Go outside and ask people how they felt getting their first kill on a hunt as a kid, you're going to realize that a unifying element is learning to deal with harming another animal.
Bonus: being vegetarian doesn't exclude you from the necessity of killing in order to live. You're just killing forms of life that you emphasize with less, which is very reasonable and rational but also not materially different.
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It's different perspectives.
For a lot of people it's an exchange thing. You give the chicken a place to stay, food and care and in exchange you get to eat it when it gets old. They do bond with them but there's this understanding from day 1.
If you don't get that out of it it'd turn into an omlette so instead of turning into an omlette it gets to enjoy a large percentage of its life.
One needs to decide if an animal is a product or a pet. It's difficult to have them be both.
Having them as a product does not mean you don't care for them, on the contrary, but I would say it's a completely different type of bond.
> But then the question should be is it just the "bond" which is holding someone back from killing animals? Why can't we just not kill without relying on bonds?
I would argue it's about the purpose, not the bond. You don't kill a pet, but you do kill food. And you should never kill for the sole sake of killing.
> but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land
You needed HN to figure that out? I assume this is obvious sarcasm but almost none of the domesticated animals species would exist if almost all humans throughout history weren't willing to do that.
Even eating dogs was perfectly standard in most more "primitive" and/or destitute societies.
My wifes family was wicked as they would let the children bond with the animals, without letting them know they gonna be dinner.
She tells a story of a wonderful pet goat. Until one day it was "gone to another farm", and they enjoyed goat curry for dinner.
The older siblings knew... and now they dont talk lol.
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Or why should the "bond" cause us to not eat animals? They aren't pets we eat in a panic, but animals we raise with the intention of eating but still bond with them and continue the process through consuming them and letting the animal go on to fulfill a higher purpose of providing sustenance to the humans they bonded with.
> Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals.
I love my chickens and I'm really sad when I lose some to predators. Yet I have no issue to harvest them for eating. They are not pets, I raise them for eggs and meat.
Maybe it's because I was raised on a farm, but I make a difference between pets and farm animals and that does not mean that I don't have a "bond" with some of the latter.
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Why should they "bat an eye" about killing animals raised on their own land? It's how we've lived since the dawn of time. Death is a part of life.
If you think it's wrong to kill animals to eat, I would ask you "By what moral standard?"
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> I used the believe the same, but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land. Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals
You develop bonds, just different ones and you learn to place limits because you know what the purpose of the animal is.
I still felt it when I was really little, but that was gone by the time I was a teenager and the reality that this was our living set in.
I grew up with backyard chickens. It was great, but youre missing one downside: the smell. Chickens shit a lot. Also, the predator thing is understated. You don’t just need defenses, your defenses are likely to fail. If this happens, you may wake up to the sound of your pet being mauled to death and your yard covered in feathers.
The two-decade war between my Dad and the local foxes cannot be understated. The chickens are fully enclosed, naturally. They currently have a (completely buried) overturned concrete igloo under their feet. There’s a dual perimeter fence, the outer one is regularly coated in all manner of larger mammal’s urine he buys online. Team Fox is currently tunnelling to map out the concrete igloo, convinced there’s an opening. They’ve gone full mole.
With some distance it’s quite amusing, but it’s claimed a large part of his life, being the obstinate bugger he is.
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> - 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...
I visited a farm as a kid and we had fresh chicken for dinner one day. They had one of those orange road cones with the top cut off a bit to fit the chicken in upside down so they could easily chop off its head. They then run around for awhile after that because their nervous system is still working for a minute or so. Just something to interesting to learn as a 5th grader, I guess.
My neighbor has chickens and the predators are no joke. Raccoons constantly trying to weaken their coop, weasels always ready to slip into any little hole, hawks and other birds of prey circling overhead. They've lost a lot of chickens despite keeping a close eye on them and trying to keep a very sturdy coop. It's like a signal goes out to all the wild animals "COME GET TASTY CHICKENS HERE!" Of course we are in a pretty rural area. You can get some pretty cute fluffy chickens though.
Tell them to get a farm dog or two. That’s pretty much the only working answer to predators on a farm.
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That was my problem with backyard chickens. The raccoons are too clever. They never got into the coop, but they were persistent about weakening the run, and eventually learned our schedule for putting them in the coop for the night, and got up early to beat us to it. Chickens are a tragic pet just because absolutely everything wants to eat them.
I lived with backyard chickens for a time. It‘s surprisingly hard to keep predators away. These animals are clever and very determined when it comes to a freely presented meal. After all, better enclosures also give chickens no means of escape.
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> Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent.
They did tests on chickens, and apparently they understand the concept of showing restraint on a current action, with the view on having a larger reward later.
Something along the lines of: "If you don't eat these grains now, we'll reward you with twice as many grains later".
That's something that dogs can't do, for instance.
Maybe the dog just values immediate reward higher even though it understands it could get even more later? How would you control for that?
> I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it
I didn't notice a significant difference in taste either. Eggs taste like eggs, it is one of the foods where there is the fewest difference between home grown and store bought, and also between different grades of store bought. And if there is any difference, I think that freshness is more significant.
One big difference, though it doesn't matter much when you eat it is the shell. Good quality eggs, including those from backyard chicken tend to have a stronger shell that breaks cleanly.
Maybe if you give your chicken specific food, your eggs can have a specific taste. How you feed them can affect the color of the yolk, which can matter for presentation, but it doesn't tell much else.
> it's definitely _not_ the _monetary_ solution
Does this also take into account the current price of eggs in the same product category? i.e., organic, free-range eggs?
For current Erewhon prices, 8 eggs a day is $11.30 in free eggs a day, so $339 in eggs a month?
https://erewhon.com/subcategory/33022/eggs - $16.99 a dozen
I'm not who you're replying to... but: it cost me $2-2.5k to build my coop two years ago which houses 5 hens, and they cost roughly $10-20 per month to feed, change bedding, etc. Realistically my household eats 4 dozen eggs a month. Even with current egg prices I'm not saving any money for a long, long time.
Still absolutely worthwhile for my mentally though and one of my major life goals
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Your first egg is $1000. After that, Free Eggs! Except for the feed, and the work.
Free range isn’t that much space still. Pasture raised is better and at my local grocery store I can get a dozen for like $8/dozen.
Erewhon is probably THEE most expensive place lol
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Chickens are really smart and curious animals. They can also learn from each other new behaviour, like eating unfamiliar food, or hunting for small animals (the cries of joy from our cock once he finally got a frog!!!) They also have really marked personalities, once you spend some time with them.
> a large coop
It's large compared to the average, but the longer we've had chickens the more we're convinced they thrive better when given appropriate space (anecdata about average age of our chickens vs all other people with chickens we know), leading me to think something like yours is still too small even for 2 chickens.
For us the minimum is now such that there's at least some of the gras/moss left throughout the year instead of the puddle of mud we used to get. Plus I'm not gonne lie: seeing their (and their ancestors) behavior 'in the wild' it feels morally/ethically better as well. Especially the younger ones are keen explorers: easy to see when let ranging free - they'll go in a radius of like 100m around their nest, but not much further than that. Apart from that one mandatory weirdo obviously.
The one I built was definitely too small on all accounts (coop space and run space).
For the second coop, we bought a pre-built shed that's about 8'x12' (much taller and roomier than the first), and even that is starting to feel too small for 13 chickens with all their various items. They have a much larger run now, but even that still feels like it might not be enough for them!
Definitely it's not about the cost and convenience.
And I haven't seen it discussed much, which tells a lot that the HN-ers are city dwellers with little experience in the countryside life. But the biggest, nastiest, deepest problem with anything animal is ... shit.
Animals produce shit and lots of animals produce loads of shit. And chickens don't have the notion of "this area is for eating, this one's for shitting", they will shit all over the place. So if you don't enclose them and can run to your porch, they'll shit it up so gotta be careful where you step or sit on. If you enclose them, better be prepared to wipe shit of your boots coze no way you can avoid it forever. Then the "pleasant" activity of cleaning up loads of shit from the chicken coop and dispose it somewhere.
Overall, having lived on a farm, my childhood memories of interaction with animals resume to "lots and lots of shit everywhere" :)
At the backyard scale it’s not so bad. My neighbor just mixed it into a big dirt pile that we all use for fertilizing our flowers and shrubs.
> But the biggest, nastiest, deepest problem with anything animal is ... shit.
Yes. I volunteered at a Raptor conservancy. Fantastic animals and being trusted to help fly them in a display was one of the best things I've ever done. It made up for all of the poop cleaning. At least owls have the courtesy to cough up pellets containing the little bones of their prey - it reduces the poop volume and the pellets dry into hard nuggets that easy to pick up (and fun to pull apart later). Black Kites were okay-ish - most of their poop ended up on easily cleanable wall sheets behind their (outward facing) perches. But vultures. yeech. They are fascinating from a social perspective and some were very playful - pulling on your bootlaces until they were knotted, for example, but their poop is gross and voluminous. They also can use defensive projectile vomiting if they feel threatened, which is as (un)pleasant as it sounds.
But overall, great animals to be around.
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My mom has a dozen backyard chickens and I agree with all of these. I'll tack on two bits from my own experience:
Good: Fresh unwashed eggs don't need to be refrigerated. They are perfectly safe at room temperature on the shelf for days.
Bad: You can't leave them with other pets without supervision. One of the dogs got himself a taste for chicken and already ate at least three. You can't train this out of the dog, unfortunately. I had to put down one poor chicken that was deeply injured but still alive. We constantly stay vigilant to keep the dogs and chickens separate.
> You can't train this out of the dog, unfortunately.
Speaking from experience, I can say "Yes, you absolutely can train this out of a dog." However, it is not easy and it is only marginally more easy if you start at a young age of the dog. Furthermore, there are breeds that have no interest in chickens at all, anyway. LGD may actually even protect them.
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Lots of countries don't wash their commercially grown eggs (and have a much lower % from factory farms), which greatly improves shelf life in shops etc.
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> You may have to euthanize a chicken
Looking online on reasons to euthanize chickens, it seems to be about not prolonging their suffering when ill.
I don't really know much on farming practices, and I'm not commenting to say that things should be one way or the other. However, I do note that with a human, euthanasia is not a common practice, specially without consent, and one would typically just numb the pain until they pass on their own, i.e. hospice care.
Maybe that's not possible with animals because chickens can't really communicate on the effectiveness of drugs...
Still much better treatment than factory farming.
The ancestors of chickens used to eat our ancestors for hundreds of millions of years, so I have no issues with eating them as much as I want.
I used to get tipped in eggs by this wonderful human at a bar I worked at and while I'm not sure I could tell them apart in a blind taste test I can say that the variety of pretty colors the egg shells came in and the richness of the yolk combined to make them noticeably more satisfying. I have a lot of experience tasting things though, I could absolutely see someone having a similar experience to mine and chalking it up to a superior taste. Or maybe there is a regional component to basic grocery store eggs and I live in a high quality zone, idk.
> I used to get tipped in eggs by this wonderful human at a bar
As someone who lives in a country where tipping culture doesn't extend to bars, I was imagining something quite different at first
> - 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
I eat fresh laid eggs very rarely (though have been thinking of raising my own), but can confirm that every time I've had truly fresh chicken eggs the taste is notably superior.
For me the biggest downside is that they reliably attract vermin. I tried a bunch of things to deter rats but they were ever present when we had hens
You want a rooster, too. A rooster will also keep predators away.
> 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.
Traditionally it's done by decapitation. Head dies instantly. No need to suffer. Body runs for a while. Don't forget to ask for forgiveness...
If you properly dislocate it (thus severing the nerve) it doesn't even get to twitch. In theory it's slightly cleaner and better even for the chicken.
It does require a bit of technique though, and the consequences of not doing it right at first can be very upsetting.
That's what cervical dislocation is. The cervix is the neck. You're dislocating the head from the body, via the neck.
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> Don't forget to ask for forgiveness
And thank them for their help and for providing you with food.
Right! The first egg our chickens laid cost $500, the second $250, etc. It would take a lot of laying for the cost to come even close to grocery store prices (back then) but we quit after a couple of years.
Some other downsides:
- The smell… Chicken crap is horrible. Our neighbour has chickens, we have flies. Lots of black flies.
- Bye bye garden… My dad has two chickens (did I mention the smell?) that free roam and absolutely tear up everything looking for a tasty bite.
- Can’t eat the eggs This isn’t necessarily a chicken problem but mostly a problem with chemical industry. We’ve had a lot of PFOA/PFAS contamination and public health advise says to not eat eggs from backyard chickens
If there's a smell then the coop isn't being cleaned enough... simple as that. Ours coop is cleaned every day or two and there's zero smell.
It's like a cat's litter box. If it smells, then clean it more often.
> - Can’t eat the eggs This isn’t necessarily a chicken problem but mostly a problem with chemical industry. We’ve had a lot of PFOA/PFAS contamination and public health advise says to not eat eggs from backyard chickens
The research done was mid at best. They just went "oh yeah there was huge variance in the hobby chicken PFAS data so we took the average". Most of the hobby eggs had little to no PFAS in them.
Furthermore, because of privacy laws, they weren't allowed to know where the eggs came from. They say they found no correlation between PFAS contaminations in eggs and known high PFAS areas but that's actual bullshit if you can't look at location data.
It's absolutely attrocious they were allowed to publish like this and that no one called them on their bullshit.
Overall, unless you are in a place where you know you have high PFAS concentrations, it's most likely fine? You could send off a few eggs for testing to make sure, that's a 200 euro test or something. Do that once per year just to make sure and you should be OK.
Where?
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We used them to manage the garden. It much easier to put down nets/steel wire around problem areas, then it is to clear out weed and insects, and the chicken bring their own fertilizers to the mix. They are also great at managing grass lawns.
There were several lessons that we learned. Chicken will find dry earth to use as a bath. If one do not want that then you need to remove access and solve the underlying need. They will also dig up seeds and eat seedlings, so any fresh worked soil need to be covered/restricted. They also eat some fruits and herbs, but not others.
In term of total work they did save a lot of time and the garden was in much better shape than before.
I also read something saying that roads are one of the biggest sources of microplastics, with tyre wear, and that being next to one (as most suburban houses are) significantly increases the amount in microplastics in foods grown in backyards. I imagine Chickens would be worse as pollutants tend to accumulate as they go up trophic levels.
Though like many discussions about microplastics today, where "higher levels", and what microplastics, cross over into actual health issues is vague.
Great points! I agree with everything you said here with exception to the point about it not being a monetary solution. I've built an "extremely" janky coop for almost no cost in the past. At one point I got absolutely sick of eggs because there were so many than I ended up trading neighbors for other goods. The whole thing ended up making/saving me a ton of money in the end. Let me reiterate how unsafe this coop was however... it was as spacious as it was dangerous (very).
> - 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...
This made me smile very wide, thank you for sharing :-)
"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."
Or you might find them delicious and need to raise more of them.
Raising animals to eat for meat is a very different endeavor than raising them for milk/eggs. Especially if you eat meat daily (or more than once a day!), do some mental math on how many animals you'd need to sustain yourself.
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Do you know anyone where this has been the case?
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>I'm told the eggs taste way better
Can confirm. My dad's cousin is a little bit country and has had meat and egg chickens for years. She comes to visit sometimes, and always brings eggs. Store-bought quite literally pales in comparison, which is to say that the dandelion yellow yolks of store bought eggs have nothing on the rich, flavorful orange-as-a-child's-drawing-of-the-sun yolks from her eggs.
Seems to me another downside is the increased difficulty in traveling. As in, if I want to go away for a few days, I'll have to find someone to feed and water the chickens.
Sounds like a classic case of -not the cheapest option, but definitely the most rewarding-. The ethical aspect is a huge plus: knowing exactly how your eggs are produced and giving the chickens a good life.
> not the cheapest option, but definitely the most rewarding
It's not that much more expensive if you were to compare with store-bought eggs that actually match the quality.
My dad used to have around 15 chickens — but then a fox somehow burrowed under the fence - which was buried in the ground around 20 cm - and slaughtered them all.
My sister has been keeping a coop in her backyard for over a decade now. She got the, because “I find the sound soothing.” (It really is quite nice)
One other advantage is that they will absolutely hoover up the ticks out of a yard. I’ve tried to talk my various friends who move upstate into getting some for this reason… but yeah it’s a couple grand up front and a new hobby.
> 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
Whenever someone mentions how unique you can be with language and come up with amazing unique sentences never uttered by anyone before...I shall think of this
You make no mention of feed cost. Do you just depend upon free range "pecking" in the grass, or kitchen scraps... or what? 13 chickens is a lot of daily feed!
I view the feed cost as being the yin to the egg production's yang. I'm not keeping a spreadsheet, but I do believe they produce more value in eggs than they ingest in feed.
In the warmer months, they also supplement their food from the yard when they eat a lot of grasses and fruits
I also own chickens. Before I got them I thought chickens were pretty stupid animals and wasn't particularly fond of them, but I liked the idea of keeping them for eggs and some entertainment.
I've had mine for about 6 months now and they've totally won me over...
They're far more friendly and intelligent than ever I imagined. Mine love hanging out with me in the garden. One of them is very affectionate and will sometimes decide to sit on my shoulder and is happy to be held. They're all totally different and have very unique personalities which I didn't expect. Their personality will depends a lot on the breed of chicken you get too and some are much more tame than others so it's worth thinking about the type of chicken you want.
I've trained mine to come to me when I whistle which can be super useful when I need to get them back in the run. Obviously you can't train them like dogs, but they're surprisingly smart and will learn things.
They've very curious animals. Mine like to fly up onto my window sill to watch us in the kitchen which is quite sweet.
They'll eat pretty much anything so they're very cheap to keep once you have your coop built. I have 3 (getting a 4th soon) and it's costing us about £3 per month for their feed which makes up about half of their diet, and for that they'll give us about 60-90 eggs. I wouldn't get them for the price of eggs though. If you want to give them a good home it's going to cost you. They're also quite a lot of work. I need to clean mine weekly, feed them daily and provide them general care. Buying an automatic coop door is a good way to reduce some of the hassle of having to let them out and shut them in every day.
I don't eat mammal meat, but I do eat chicken and fish and its been hard for me to eat chicken recently. I'm trying to reduce the amount of chicken I eat in favour of eggs.
Thanks - that's amazing that you have reduced your meat consumption, I really do think we need to take more responsibility and care about animals more. This video converted me, may offer some insights for you too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YFz99OT18k
The eggs do taste better but that depends on what you are feeding them.
You don't have to eat your chickens, it’s up to you.
predators and rats and avian flu are the tough problems.
The concept is kind of analogous in many ways on if one should have solar power to hedge against power outages. I.e definitely can be worth it but will take up time and investment with long payback period.
To hedge against increasing electric utility prices, maybe. I installed solar recently and the cost of batteries to cover a decent power outage didn’t make sense to me. I just got a transfer switch and a portable propane generator instead. The battery tech / price is just not there yet IMO. And in case this isn’t well known, when there is a power outage and you don’t have battery backup, the solar generation shuts off — you’re not using solar AS the backup in most cases unless you have a very particular setup.
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Thanks for the detail. I never thought about vet needs for chickens. How would you know they are sick? I know with my cat, her mood and activity would shift. Is it apparent when a chicken is sick?
You can kinda tell based on their actions (sometimes). We haven't really needed to bring them to the vet for illness, but once for amputation of an infected + hurt toe. Additionally, if they get parasites (typically mites), they need anti-parasitics. My wife has done a ton of research into identifying chicken issues so she is always on the lookout.
We've had other times where one might appear a bit sluggish, but then the next day are back to normal. Probably ate something bad?
There are several conditions that have visible consequences, such as injuries, malformations, anomalies or a general affectation of their appearance. Plenty of those can be quite disturbing for someone with no experience.
Storey's Guides are a good starting point: tohttps://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/storeys-guide-to-raising-ch...
How does one travel/vacation if they have chickens? Are they self-managing enough to be left alone for 1-2 weeks a couple times a year?
With room, food, and water, we have left chickens on their own for 2wks. The challenge is keeping clean water and food and predators. We had 30 gallon buckets of water with nipples on the exterior, and food towers (home made). They had the entire interior of our barn.
I wouldn't leave them in a small coupe without a run for that long.
> Chickens are very sweet animals
My father asked for, and got, a chick for Easter once.
It grew into a rooster that took over the backyard by terrorizing the whole family. Only my grandmother, who had grown up on a farm, was willing to go into the yard.
> 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...
A friend of mine complained to me a few years ago that the people in the apartment next to hers were raising a chicken. The crowing woke her up in the morning. But she consoled herself that soon enough they'd eat it.
I was pretty amused at the whole idea of raising a chicken inside an apartment.
> It grew into a rooster that took over the backyard by terrorizing the whole family.
When I was a kid, we also had chickens and roosters around. At one point we had a smaller, white rooster who would take any chance he could at terrorizing the family as soon as we brought them food.
Unfortunately for the bully, we also had a second, bigger rooster, who would keep an eye on him, and come running to beat his ass and chase him away as soon as he spotted nastiness.
The white bully ended up in the soup. The grey defender died of old age.
Check your local regulations. Keeping roosters (adult male chickens) in many city areas is actually illegal; i.e. against the byelaws. It is considered antisocial because of the noise that they make and the early hours when they make it. i.e. literally "at cockcrow"
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My friend had a racist rooster who abused the brown chickens and got along with the white ones.
He traded it in for a more "woke" one.
Your hypothetical children may tell stories for decades about how they were the ones who had to scoop the poop into the outdoor composting area and that the strong smell of urea lives with them to this day.
uh, speaking hypothetically and not at all of our own family chicken adventure when I was a kid/teen.
Also, if you have to kill a chicken, study how to do it and practice beforehand. Botching it will also live with you - I learned this one the hard way.
All that said, I'm glad I had the experience of (helping) raise chickens. It was an adventure, and the eggs were great. I've pondered it on and off again as an adult but have thus far resisted the temptation.
> - 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...
Isn't the more likely case that they shit everywhere but the family loves them so much they won't let you put it back outside?
Ignorant question: why might one need to euthanize a chicken?
I think typically as a solution to serious injury (e.g. result of a predator attack or otherwise) that can't be mended.
In my case, we had too many roosters and their competitive/protective behaviour was causing serious injuries to the hens, so we had to make the tough decision to reduce their numbers. Being in the middle of nowhere, there weren't many options for the rooster in question, so it seemed like the most humane thing to do at the time.
A big upside; with chickens you have the best possible composting system. They will eat almost all food waste. (but, please be careful to avoid the small number of foods which are unhealthy for chickens) And, they turn that waste into compost. Depending on volume, they can also completely handle leaves, grass clippings, and other yard waste. For leaves, they love to scratch through them and will poop on them. They'll break down the leaves in record time.
"Predators, foxes and hawks, you need defenses"
This one is something I think people maybe don't consider. My brother has chickens, they have a coop but pretty much have the run of his property in a rural area. He has had to kill a coyote and a bob cat so far. Not a reason not to get them, but something to consider before doing so.
> 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.
Chickens are ruthless and will not hesitate for a moment to kill and then cannibalize their coop mates. The best way to avoid it is to have a single breed as they tend to start by attacking anything different, literally spots or discolorations, on other birds.
Yes, chickens will eat other chickens.
> 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.
All eggs taste the same. Which is great because eggs taste great.
> 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...
Chickens are filthy animals and the thought of having one indoors is disgusting.
You write in absolutes when talking about your own opinion as if it's generally accepted to be a fact, which makes even interesting looking bits look suspicious when you encounter something clearly biased.
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good luck with this
how hard would it be to break even with 200 chickens in a typical European town (excluding land costs)? i am just imagining if a small company decides to raise its own chickens-eggs for lunch time...
Inside the house? How? They shit wherever they happen to be ...
"We can't build a bigger coop - Joey's going into soup."
I’ve hear another downside is the sheer amount of poop to clean up.
you mean free fertilizer to gather and use.
> - Chickens are very sweet animals
Personally, I find them rather savory. Although deep fried with a bit of honey is good too.
Did you find out about hacker news from Reddit?
> Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent.
I hated chickens, the only animal I may have disliked more were sheep and that’s only because sheep are so unbelievably annoying.
Chickens to me were nothing more than noisy garbage disposals.
This feels like an insane proposition to me, I'll explain:
1. Soaring egg prices are due to culling + deaths related to the proliferation of H5N1 (Avian Flu).
2. The reason we have been proactively culling is to minimize spread AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, to minimize the number of exposures H5N1 could have to Humans.
3. The reason we want to minimize exposure between chickens and humans is because each exposure of an infected chicken to a human is an opportunity for the virus to jump host, and adapt to better transmit amongst humans. The mutation (mammalian adaptation of the virus) can happen in the chicken before it jumps to a passing by human, or in the human once infected with the virus.
We are only a few minor adaptations away from this thing being BOTH extremely deadly AND extremely transmissible between humans. Worst case scenario. The latest strands found in Canada and now Nevada are extremely deadly, and just need the Human to Human adaptation. With enough at bats, it will have it.
The idea of dramatically increasing the number of humans exposed to sick flocks by having people start their own backyard chicken coops feels suicidal, for humanity.
The latest hospitalized patient in Georgia was exposed through a backyard flock, by the way.
20 years ago, Thailand almost overnight got rid of backyard chicken farms:
> Perhaps the biggest and most lasting change, Auewarakul says, is that this outbreak abruptly accelerated the transition from backyard chicken farmers to large-scale industrialized poultry farms. He says this was a big cultural transition since chickens had been part of everyday life for many Thai families. [...]
> The shift to these industrialized farms has not fully eliminated avian flu in chickens, but the disease has been largely contained. With ongoing monitoring, cases are often identified early and dealt with before the virus can gain a foothold.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/06/12/g-s1-...
Throughout entire human and chicken collective history we somehow haven’t managed to get wiped out by chicken transmitted decease - and suddenly its practically imminent and only massive mega farms can keeps us safe.
A thought occurs - perhaps it’s the mega farming that is the root of this problem and having some backyard chickens won’t really move the needle any closer to doom?
What has changed is the population density of humans. Disease outbreaks aren't at thing you can understand by summing all the disease vectors.
There is no needle - it only takes one case. While a megafarm may be a bigger vector, it can be quarantined, whereas everyone having backyard farms can not.
Major diseases have been a part of human history throughout. There is no evidence that mega farming is making it worse.
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The biosecurity protocols are nonexistent with most backyard coops.
Let's say I have a few chickens in my backyard that don't have bird flu, and we (myself or my chickens) never come into contact with any other chickens.
Aren't we safe? If not, what are the possible vectors? Is it from random birds flying in my yard? My visits to grocery stores?
No, you're not safe if your chickens are exposed to wild birds. If they're outside feeding on seed that other wild birds also have access to they're at risk.
Other comments mentioned wild birds, but lots of animals can spread bird flu. House cats, for example.
Edit: link (gift NYT link) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/health/cdc-bird-flu-cats-...
The chickens can get sick from bird droppings, from birds that fly over your chicken run and never even come into direct contact with the flock.
Your birds could get sick from other birds. It doesn't just affect chickens. I'd exercise precautions with your birds. Both to keep them quarantined from wild birds and keep yourself and family quarantined.
> The reason we have been proactively culling is to minimize spread AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, to minimize the number of exposures H5N1 could have to Humans.
The reason the US has been culling is because they refuse to vaccinate chickens. Even China began vaccinations in 2004 ... over 2 decades ago.
Perhaps that's why Chinese chicken eggs cost:
3,062 CNY/T -> $422/tonne -> $0.287/dozen @ 24 oz / dozen large eggs [1]
while US eggs are still nonsensically priced at $8.03 / dozen. [2] Like worldwide logistics doesn't even exist. Seems like a market discrepancy when there's several 100 to 1000 cargo ships transiting the Pacific currently that might be loaded with 3,062 CNY/T ($0.29/dozen) eggs.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-ch
[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us
Here's a rabbit hole to go down:
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/caring/index.html
What is a "150-day fallow"?
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I mean, it'd be absolutely awful if we started having to deal w/ autistic chickens. I can't imagine how the Chinese do it.
Sarcasm aside, if the US isn't vaccinating our birds, what are the drivers for that? Cost concerns?
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> With enough at bats, it will have it.
viral pun
hahah totally!
We have a backyard flock where the run and coop are completely enclosed. So in theory they should be more protected given that no birds or critters can get into that space to give my chickens bird flu.
That being said, I have no faith in the Trump government to do the right things required to stop the spread of this and I feel like we are pretty screwed either ways.
Unfortunately, you backyard flock is not protected. It's airborne, is suspected to be infectious up to 5km between farm sites, and also can be contracted via fomite transmission. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your birds will likely get infected at some point in the coming 18 months, or sooner, and can be a real attack vector for something nasty for you and your family. The latest mutation across herds in Nevada/Canada both in birds and cows has a real nasty adaptation (D1.1) which has a suspected mortality rate in humans around 50%. Several hospitalizations in humans related to this specific mutation, acquired by individuals dealing with backyard flocks. The logic that your backyard flock mesh is sufficient to protect the flock and you from this pretty nasty bug isn't supported by the evidence we're seeing pan out across the country/world.
Another worrisome attack vector is cats, but that's a whole other pandoras box we'll leave alone for now.
To get an idea of how transmissible/infectious this thing is, it has jumped from birds in Asia, to dolphins in florida, and has eradicated entire populations of seals in latin america, cows, cats, ferrets, rats globally, to almost all bird populations in Antarctica. There is no species / geographic radius that will likely to unaffected. The death rate in each species may vary considerably (cows in US as an example, don't seem to die in great numbers), but it is highly transmissible even between species.
I'm sorry these aren't the best sources, but I'm in a rush and wanted to help you get an idea of what we're dealign with here in the context of your backyard flock, specifically. If you keep digging in all of the themes above you'll find even better sources:
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-02-20/...
https://scar.org/library-data/avian-flu
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/m1218-h5n1-flu.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-06173-x
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-06173-x
https://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/news/catastrophic-mortality-e...
Your sample size of one isn't that relevant to the previous comment.
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yeah... people keeping chickens would be humanity committing suicide.. seems legit :) the last few thousand years of prior art might beg to differ
Certainly not all humans at the same time, but yes the classical scourge diseases that have killed millions throughout history have zoonotic origins due to living closely with animals.
The letter from Farm Action, linked at the top of the article, is pretty compelling in making their case.
A few highlights:
> As a result of the smaller flock, egg production has dropped slightly from 8.1 billion eggs per month in 2021 to 7.75 billion eggs per month in December 2024. Importantly, however, per capita production of eggs in the U.S. has not dipped below per capita consumption of eggs in any year between 2022 and the present. Meanwhile, the total value of egg production has risen significantly, from $8.8 billion in 2021 to $19.4 billion in 2022 and $17.9 billion in 2023.
Note the $17.9B 2023 figure obviously doesn't include the most recent price increases.
> Instead of using the windfall profits they are earning from record egg prices to rebuild or expand their egg-laying flocks, the largest egg producers are using them to buy up smaller rivals and further consolidate market power.
> Almost all shell eggs are marketed through contracts between producer firms and chain buyers where egg prices are based on weekly wholesale quotes published by Urner Barry, an industry consulting and data analytics firm. According to leading industry commentator Simon M. Shane, this convergence "on a single commercial price discovery system constitutes an impediment to a free market," with the benchmark prices released by Urner Barry potentially serving to amplify price swings led by the largest-volume producers and to prevent independent, competitive decision making by others.
Much of the rise in prices has occurred in January and February. Seems likely to me that culling has continued due to bird flu and production has dropped.
I would also guess that demand is fairly constant for eggs, so large changes in price are needed to deter a small number of consumers from buying (low elasticity of demand).
"rebuilding" a laying flock is a fairly quick change, if the infrastructure is already there.
> per capita production of eggs in the U.S. has not dipped below per capita consumption of eggs in any year between 2022 and the present
Because people can't buy eggs that don't exist.
Imports?
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Sounds like collusion through a third party. Similar to the landlords all signing up to the same pricing service.
Same play as the meat industry leveraging "data analytics" to fix and sort at https://www.agristats.com/.
[1]https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/four-states-join-jus...
[2]https://farmaction.us/2023/10/12/food-price-fixing-is-still-...
Corporate greed back at it again!
Wow! I wondered about this article - US centric. I wondered because eggs are not expensive here. I just looked [1] [2]. I can get a dozen free range for about US$4 at the current conversion rate. They are a supermarket own brand, but even the "fancy" ones are something like that for 6, but some are actually still close to $4 for 12.
The US chicken market (not necessarily eggs specifically) was in the Morgan Spurlock documentary follow up to "Supersize me", and it looked like the chicken "mafia" controlled the business.[3]
[1] https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/search?query=eggs&inpu... [2] https://groceries.asda.com/search/eggs [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me_2:_Holy_Chicken!
Some data points from Lexington, KY, USA:
18 eggs today (February 20th, 2024): $8.19 [0]
18 eggs ~1 year ago (March 2nd, 2024): $3.34 [1]
18 eggs a tiny bit over a year ago (February 2nd, 2024): $2.74 [2]
18 eggs, oldest order I can find (April 9th, 2023): $2.33 [3]
A 2.5x increase in a years time. Just insane
[0] https://cs.joshstrange.com/05JYvxsf
[1] https://cs.joshstrange.com/lVlCFcRs
[2] https://cs.joshstrange.com/w5zQcZ2l
[3] https://cs.joshstrange.com/kZ8VjPxP
That is expensive.
Typically at Costco, 5 dozen eggs is under $12, sometimes as low as $8. Currently it is closer to $20, which is about your price.
Canada Costco sells 24 eggs for $6.79 CAD.
$3.50 for 12 off-brand is available in grocers
Google says today $6.79 CAD is $4.78 USD or ~0.20/egg USD
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Okay, so update - we went to the local Morrisons (another chain) over lunch and got 18 eggs (they are sold from trays that you box yourself, but we just took half a tray) for £5.40 (so, what? US$6.82) The eggs are sold by the egg too, 0.30 each, so we could have bought any number we wanted really. They are also free-range. Remember too, in Europe eggs don't need to be refrigerated because we don't treat then to remove the outer layer.
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I don’t think it’s fair to compare Costco prices with local grocery store prices. Not apples to apples
Yeah but I don't think those are even near being free-range.
The US has some awful widespread practices for their livestock.
The egg story in the US is so strange to me. I just checked my local "premium" (Pacific Northwest) grocery store, and free range eggs are $4/dozen. (https://townandcountrymarkets.com/shop#!/?id=156440568471307...) I guess US food desert type areas are paying much more from the media surrounding this, but even that price comes with a warning on the website that egg supplies are limited, and presumably therefore the price would be lower in times of higher supply.
I have chickens, and the cost including amortization of their real estate puts family eggs at something like $12/dozen.
The town and country near me is $4.99, so maybe it is more expensive here in Ballard. But the weird thing is that the non-organic/free-range eggs at QFC are $6.99/dozen and they have the same $4.99 dozen that Town and Country has.
Hmm. After Spurlock lied through his teeth in his first film, why would anyone trust him ever again?
Spurlock can be a fraud and the food market still be controlled by a cartel — both can be true at the same time. I’m no US citizen so I don’t really care but what I read about your potato market was wild, so I wouldn’t be surprised if eggs are also controlled by a cartel.
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"lied through his teeth" isn't an accurate description. His openness about his history of drunking wasn't ideal and did damage his credibility. However other people have partially reproduced the health effects of what he did and his level of drinking is pretty common in the USA so it's not like he's some crazy outlier.
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Well he’s dead now so I guess they never will.
Yeah, it's really hard for me to understand the thing with eggs. Do people really buy that many eggs? We're a family of 5, cook every day (never buy takeout) and consume, maybe, 6 eggs a month? when we bake cakes? which we do extremely rarely.
We only cook for diner as we don't eat breakfast and everyone's out of the house for lunch, so that may be a reason, but still. It seems a very minor and unimportant ingredient.
> we don't eat breakfast
Eggs are a traditional breakfast/brunch food. Quite a few people have an egg (or two) every single day.
Yeah even in the US its somewhat regional and brand-specific. In my region, I just purchased a pack of 18 eggs for $5 USD at a typical well-known chain grocery store.
Some of these egg companies are absolutely using the bird flu as an excuse to raise prices. Right next to that 18 pack I bought was a shelf full of eggs that cost $9/dozen. No one was buying them. Just a weird situation.
I picked up a dozen for $3.99 last night at a major chain grocery store, too. They had plenty of eggs in stock and I was there around 9pm. I've seen the insanity at Costco first hand so I've stopped buying milk and eggs from there until that sorts itself out
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The 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 cited as the primary driver of skyrocketing egg prices, its actual impact on production has been minimal,” the group wrote. “Instead, dominant egg producers . . . have leveraged the crisis to raise prices, amass record profits, and consolidate market power.
I wonder if spreading the chickens out to all the backyards would prevent spread due to lower density, or if you'd get spread via wild animals anyhow and now it's just impossible to contain and more people are at direct risk.
It certainly would but still it would have to be a controlled and regulated environment. I honestly would not want to have chicken near me in this particular moment especially considering who is the secretary of health. The USA really are playing with fire.
> The egg price is due to the H5N1 epidemic
No, it's not. But that's what the egg companies want you to believe. In truth the number of egg laying hens is only down about 5% total since the beginning of the epidemic.
You don't know the elasticity of the market. I can imagine restaurants, food producers and consumers are very eager to get their weekly box of eggs. So even a 5% drop can cause a price jump that's way more.
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Oh FFS the conspiracy of the egg companies it's a new low.
160M chickens were found affected so far. More culled.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/data-map-comm...
Most chicken in the USA are raised for meat. There are only 300 millions that are raised for eggs laying so those numbers are staggering.
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California, which dropped battery caging years ago, has been on of the states most hard hit. The real reason is that the US doesn't vaccinate it's chickens, which it mostly doesn't do because if it did, it couldn't export to several countries.
Only France in Europe vaccinate its chicken yet we still have normal prices. This is not the issue but merely the fact that 70% of chicken in the USA are battery caged plus a protectionist market that does not allow imports.
https://images.app.goo.gl/7B83ooqdAcKRdqoj6
Can you tell more ? Why does vaccination prevents export ?
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Same epidemic in Japan, egg shortages have been. A thing but the prices have hardly changed ?
You do realize that a lot of people don't buy the H5N1 epidemic thing, right?
Certainly easy to perpetuate insane conspiracy theories like this when the anti-science administration is no longer collecting stats on infectious diseases.
To save money? Absolutely not. I'm keeping a spreadsheet on our 20 chickens this year. They're young, so input is very high while output is still ramping but I'm guessing it's $7-8 dozen in food costs alone (the highest end organic feed tho), never mind the initial buyin.
> the highest end organic feed tho
Maybe feed them your food scraps? Or bulk buy and prepare your own grains/pulses?
It's a recent experiment, we were on the more reasonably priced organic feed until I discovered my local feed store had this stuff over the holidays, so we're trying it out. The quality of the eggs is absolutely miles above what I already considered really good eggs though.
I'll probably get around to making our own someday, but I'm not there just yet.
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This makes me wonder - would chickens grow more efficiently if you cook their food for them?
When we invented cooking it gave us a massive advantage because of the nutritional efficiency, yet we feed animals just random raw stuff. Would feeding them porridge instead of grain lead to higher output?
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We have 10 (backyard) chickens and spend about $40/mo in feed. We average about five eggs per day when they are laying, so let's say that's 150 eggs per month. That's $0.26/egg or $3.20 a dozen.
But we have to factor in around 4 months of them not laying during the winter. So for laying months, that brings the feed price to around $60/mo or $4.80 a dozen.
So yeah, at current prices, it's worth it for us. I also haven't factored in the value of their compost, which is really quite expensive when you're buying as much as they generate, so it's probably even cheaper than listed.
FWIW, you can get generally better results with different breeds. Golden Comets or ISA Browns will typically get you 1 per day per chicken. In reality if you had 10 you'd likely get 8 or 9 per day. They also seem to lay in the winter better than many. Unfortunately they just don't live long so it's a constant cycling process.
Out of curiosity why not grow your own feed?
In many cases you can cycle the compost back in to the feed you grow (as fertilizer).
Around here our eggs are averaging about $9 per 12 on the shelves, and you can't buy just 12, the only eggs on the shelf are the 18/24 packs so about $20-22 per pack, almost the same price as choice meat.
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What is the amount of time required for all the different chicken activities? (estimated weekly average)
Yeah, the daily tasks are pretty small. Just a few minutes a day. Scoop some food, change out the water, gather the eggs.
Every so often, you need to do bigger chores, like go buy fees or fix something in your setup. A couple times a year you need to do a deep clean of the coop (throw out all the straw, scrape any poo that's collected on the floor or wherever, put in clean straw). Sometimes a chicken dies, and that's not fun, but it is something you have dispose of properly.
Ultimately, though, it's a hobby. It should be fun or relaxing most of the time or else it's not worth it. Like gardening or running a home server. If you're trying to just save money, maybe you can save a tiny bit in this particular moment, but there are surely better ways to save a few bucks.
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Once you have it set up, I'd say no more than about 2 hours per week. The feeding and watering can be automated, so it's really just whatever cleaning or optional shuffling of their locations you do. Checking for eggs can be done in a few minutes, and you technically don't have to do it every single day. You might actually choose to spend more than the minimum to tame them and treat them as pets.
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Yeah, definitely not a money-saver, especially with high-quality feed
You're feeding them the wrong stuff. They can live off of cracked corn and whatever stale bread and vegetables you toss them, as well as bugs in their general vicinity. As for the initial buy, they can turn over a new generation in about 3 weeks. You can also eat the old chickens. You're looking at it wrong.
Because I'm not looking at it the way you look at it? Been at it for ten years and am perfectly happy with how it's been going.
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I 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 paid a year ago.
At least in Los Angeles the prices for a dozen eggs are fluctuating between $3, $12, and an empty shelf.
Some restaurants are up charging for egg dishes although it's not widespread.
It's not the most back braking price fluctuations but it's one of the most obvious. I think the shortages are a lot more apparent than the prices themselves. And the fact it's fluctuating means it's on your mind even more as you wait out another sad, eggless week.
Our eggs last year varied between $1-2 dozen. Before that, they frequently dipped below $1/doz. With the price of literally all other groceries skyrocketing, our family made a conscious choice to switch away from higher proteins like beef to eating a lot of eggs because they were the cheapest source of protein readily available.
Now you can't buy a dozen of eggs in the stores around here for less than $6.
We go through a lot of eggs. That is a very big increase when you add it up throughout the year.
In December, I decided to try an egg diet where I would regularly consume a double digit number of eggs per day. This has has made the price of eggs quite noticeable. I am not eating as many these days as I did when I first had the idea.
Interestingly, when my grandparents were really short on money in the 20th century, they resorted to eating only eggs to get by. It remained a healthy diet option for poor people until recently.
Our family buys a dozen eggs a week. This is costing more like $15-20/month. At hundreds of dollars per year, that's actually money to me.
> Who out there is paying more than a total of $3-$5/month more in eggs?
You don't think a family of 4 can get through a dozen eggs in a single meal?
> I can get a dozen eggs from Walmart right now for $5.46.
This is literally your least expensive option and it's over the arbitrary $3-5 range you yourself defined.
TBH I haven't even noticed a price increase here in Brooklyn. I did notice that a lot of the "oh no eggs are running out" hysteria lined right up with some incoming winter storms, which typically drives up demand for basics like eggs, milk, and bread in the days before. Empty shelves for these items is incredibly common before snow. I don't doubt that there are places gouging, especially in Manhattan, but I just don't understand who is being impacted so much if I'm not seeing the same in one of the most HCOL and urban areas in the country
So weird how people freak out over winter storms in NYC. In the decade I've been here I don't think I've seen a single snowstorm had enough of an impact to close grocery stores.
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The price increases in Brooklyn have been huge.
And the eggs haven't been selling out before winter storms -- there haven't been any serious storms that anybody has "prepared" for, just regular snow. There's been absolutely no increase in price for milk or bread or anything else.
This is entirely because of bird flu, it's supply and demand, it's not price gouging.
I don't know why you're trying to convince yourself that the empty shelves at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are due to winter storms, or why you haven't noticed that eggs are $9 at your local bodega. Trader Joe's in Brooklyn even has signs explaining that the empty shelves are because of shortages from suppliers.
Again -- it's bird flu, pure and simple.
When I was a growing teenager I would easily eat 6-12 eggs in a day.
That's a crazy diet.
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Are you Gaston?
People who work out a lot eat way way more than $5 in eggs per month; maybe $5 per day is more accurate (it's not only the rich who want to work out).
OP was talking about a $3-$5 per month increase, not a $3-$5 monthly total spend. This isn't the first comment in the first thread to miss that though so maybe OP could have worded it more clearly.
I work out every day, sometimes multiple times per day, and never eat eggs.
You must not cook for yourself much and have no children.
You can blow through a dozen eggs in a single day or even in one or two recipes.
>Who out there is paying more than a total of $3-$5/month more in eggs?
Seriously? I pay $12/dozen for organic pasture-raised (cheapest industrial eggs are ~$8) and eat 3-4 dozen a month.
There was a time in my life where our household of 2 was regularly going through 3 dozen eggs a week just for breakfast. Back then that would total $5 a week. Today that same amount of eggs are just under $20.
It’s not just the eggs, all grocery prices have gone up massively post covid. But eggs prices are easier to spot because they are super inflated thanks to bird flu, and are easy to understand as a necessity.
I'd keep an eye on your lipids if you are consuming 3 eggs every day for months on end. If all turns out great, perfect.
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They're easy to spot too on account of them not being subject to shrinkflation like other products can. A dozen will be a fixed unit forever I imagine.
+1. I think eggs prices are easy to spot since:
- they're sold everywhere
- they're bought by everyone
- they happen to be exceptionally high at the moment
It makes them an easy poster-child for inflation.
Egg prices are artificially inflated from the massive culling of chickens by producers due to bird flu. Nevertheless, egg prices are being pushed as a negative economic indicator for political reasons.
I don't think 'artificial' is the right word there... more like 'temporarily' or 'from supply shock', but it isn't an artificial increase
Is that artificial?
Been raising chickens for years. You certainly can get eggs "for free" by selling excess eggs. But, on top of actually protecting and caring for your hens you will also need to cull unproductive hens. Failing to replace and cull unproductive hens older than 2 years will result paying to feed freeloaders without getting anything in return. I feed my chickens everything out of the kitchen. Their run space is filled with wood chips and is my primary source of compost for the garden. Garden waste goes to the chickens. Its is beautiful cycle.
If I maintain my flock of 18 and get decent feed prices ($0.26/lb) my cost per dozen is ~$3.50 in the winter (2-6 eggs a day) and less than a dollar in the summer (8-15 eggs a day). If I free range them feed cost is even lower.
I think everybody that can should have chickens. They need about 1/4 lb of food a day. A family can maintain a small flock on kitchen waste alone.
Sadly, because the soil are too polluted by PFAS, it is adviced against to eat your own eggs (by medical authorities) where I live (larger paris aera)
https://www.iledefrance.ars.sante.fr/polluants-organiques-pe...
There are ways to remediate your backyard enough to make it safe, but only if you really want chickens. You can do most (all?) of the labor yourself but the cost of materials will probably dwarf any savings from the eggs - especially since you probably already have better quality eggs available locally than what we Americans are used to, which I think is the real impetus for most people rearing chickens here.
The first step is to dig up a decimeter or two of soil (the more the better) from the area you want to build your chicken run and dispose of it safely which your city government should be able to advise you on. Next you deposit a layer of clay, 4-5 centimeters thick, wet it and compact it so that any weeds or grass growing in the area can’t grow roots down into the contaminated soil, then cover it up with uncontaminated dirt that you truck in (that last bit is usually the expensive part). You can also use cement instead of the clay and you probably want raised borders so the roots can’t grow laterally either.
My city provides mulch for free so I used that as most of the fill, compacted it, then just put cheap dirt over it. The big cost is testing afterwards to make sure it really is PFAS free but my family is paranoid and it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind.
This adds costly pollution tests to the equation, if you want to eat eggs safely. Backyard chickens doesn't sound like a great solution.
I think in practice in their randomized tests, almost all samples were above the recommended threshold, so you can save the test money and assume it's not going to be good.
A major floodplain in Michigan has a similar problem with dioxin contamination.
https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/mdhhs/Fold...
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If you build a pen out of anything other than otherwise garbage materials and a small roll of the cheapest fence, you are going to be spending even more money.
Also whats with people buying like a dozen chickens? Do you eat an entire dozen eggs every single day? No? Then you don't need a dozen chickens. 2 chickens will often result in people giving away tons of eggs because they have too many. Maybe a few years down the line when they lay a few less eggs you can add another one or two. If you don't eat 90%+ of their eggs, you will once again be losing money.
Also unless they are free roaming over a very large area, you do not want any roosters. Roosters in a small coop and/or yard often get aggressive and they will attack you. Yes you can cow them down if you are quick enough to grab them, sometimes mid-attack, but most people aren't because they don't want to get stabbed with their spurs. Also buying sexed chicks are not a 100% guarantee you won't get a rooster, ive gotten multiple roosters out of sexed chickens and often the only right choice is to kill them because you don't want a bunch of roosters fighting either each other or attacking people.
Chickens are social animals and require a pack. A dozen seems excessive though.
> Family-sized egg operations create resiliency
This would probably create resiliency for egg supply, but given that a source of bird flu is wild birds and transfer to and from humans would increase mutations wouldn't it likely increase probability of more bird flu and more human cases?
It would likely much increase salmonella infections. Which currently appears as a far nastier problem.
How's that? I know American eggs get cleaned and bleached, but that doesn't happen in Europe yet salmonella is not a huge issue.
(cleaning eggs also removes some of its natural barriers, making it mandatory to refrigerate them to keep them edible)
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Interestingly(to me), for the first time in my life the local backyarders and farmers are selling eggs for less than grocery stores. Much better quality, too.
I've been considering getting a few hens for a while. The cost of setup, feed and the work involved for "free eggs" are quite a bit. However, it's more worth the cost now than it's ever been, especially considering the increased self-reliance.
There are ways to offset the feed costs by growing your own feed or tapping into waste streams like food/produce scraps.
If you get a few hens, don't do it for financial reasons. There are a lot of reasons to do it, but money isn't one. The financial breakeven will take many years to decades.
Build vs buy. You can be me and build an in-house flock, pay $100/mo in feed, $500 for a livestock guard dog, $100/mo for dog food, $500 for a solar electric fence, and then $500 for a few coops, etc. It'll pay off before I'm dead, I think! -- right?
Right?!
As usual when the MBAs get involved the build price magically becomes 10x what the actual cost is.
That's why you don't send your chickens to business school
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The MBAs know how to value the actual costs. Most people for example, ignore the cost of their own labor and the opportunity costs of the whole affair.
What’s missing from all the calculations so far is the worth of the time you put in. Maintaining chickens isn’t free on a daily you spend around half an hour, sometimes more to tend to your chickens. Even by minimum wage standards, you’re spending quite a bit more just in labor than buying a dozen eggs for $2 more than what it was 2 years ago.
First, you can't put a price on food security. When you can't get these things from the market because the shelves are bare, you will still have a source available. That's a big perk that can't be understated.
Also, the shelves have been bare with eggs for quite awhile. Locally here we largely only see the large packs being sold. Its been 6 months since I've seen a dozen pack on the shelves.
Its far more than $2, where I live a pack of eggs is competing for a pound of pork or choice beef.
Last Saturday iirc it was 23.99 for 24 eggs, and there were only two packs on the shelf (both with broken eggs).
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Did you factor in the cameras and 10g Ethernet you ran to the coop for ‘future proofing’? Hehe. It’s ok to have hobby, and if you get eggs out of it, even better.
500/month for a dog? 500 for solar?
Do you need a consultant?
Need one? He must be one.
For starters nobody uses an electric fence for chickens. You have them for cattle because they’re so big building a fence sturdy enough they can’t just push over is expensive.
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Livestock guard dogs are expensive, especially trained ones.
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Let's say you have 40 chickens that lay 1 egg per day. Egg prices are $5 a dozen. You tell me.
It depends. Is your name Gaston?
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And you aren't even factoring in a keeper/guardian, that's a full-time wage.
That's what daughters and sheepdogs are for:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNO3VgE8rnI
Electric fence? Chickens can fly, my man...
Ummmm.... that is why you clip their wings.
(Though clipping one wing is more fun, that way they flap about in circles).
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You can do it a ton cheaper, depending on how pretty you want it to be. Like, you can scrounge up the materials for a coop damn near for free, and you shouldn’t need $100/m in feed if they’ve got an outdoor run with grass and you feed them kitchen scraps, unless you’ve got an absolute shitload of them.
Most folks do get upside-down on it, but it’s because they want a cute instagram-ready coop or substitute money for effort. And they aren’t willing to butcher and eat them after a couple years when they stop laying consistently.
Handle your chickens like country folk and you’ll do ok. Handle them like suburbanites, maybe not so much.
You can do it cheaper, but it's work. I kept a few chickens for years, and it takes time to clean out the coop, to move the run when they've scratched up the grass. You've gotta be there in the morning to let them out, and in the evening to close them in. The eggs you get from them are much yellower, which is nice and probably better for you, but is it worth it? After 15 years I decided "not anymore"
My Dad says "a hen always dies in debt"
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For the HN crowd: treat them as cattle, not pets ;)
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Backyard chicken farming is a great hobby, and surprisingly tech heavy.
My Coop controller, which is hand build by grumpy bearded East Germans, even has modules to integrate into a smart home system and supports remote monitoring via cellular network.
https://jost-technik.de/PHB2.0-Klappensteller%20+%20Steuerun...
It's only tech heavy if you decide it should be though.
I tried the low tech version first, and one night forgot to close the coop and brother fox killed all the chicken.
Also chicken are not particularly smart, so switching on light to lure them in when it’s getting dark is very useful.
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Wild birds will bring bird flu to your backyard flock too.
It takes a lot of eggs to pay for even a $200 coop + bedding and buying the actual birds.
I don't regret it 4 years in, but don't do it for the economics.
Unless you see it as hobby and have fun doing it, you also would have to factor in your work effort.
Backyard chickens are great if you have the space, time, and patience, but they're hardly a solution to systemic issues... The real fix is a more diversified, resilient supply chain... And not just pushing food production onto individuals
Well, I agree with your premise of needing more diverse and resilient food production but I fail to see how backyard chickens (and homegrown vegetables) can't be a part of it.
I say this while I'm also - on principle - extremely wary of pushing systemic change on individuals.
I am reminded of https://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/great-leap-forwar...
Should I cohabitate with and routinely handle disease vectors that I have no prior experience caring for?
Do you have children?
You almost never have to handle chickens if you build your coop right. We didn't even have a permanent coop, merely a mobile one, but chickens are really good at coming back home to roost. There are books and plenty of info on the internet on how to do it right.
Forgot that comments like these lose their meaning over text. Answer: No. Do not raise chickens because you think you're going save a few nickels eggs.
::shakes magic 8 ball::
Signs point to yes!
This is true of all animal husbandry but unless you're buying chicks from huge sellers you'll be fine.
Due to living in an HOA, our family is considering raising quail for their eggs instead of chickens. The HOA would likely still consider it a violation, but I don't see how we can get in much trouble other than having to get rid of the birds. I understand that they are nearly as productive as chickens, but don't make the noise that chickens make. The only thing stopping us is the summer heat in in a desert area. I'm not sure that 105 degree weather is humane for even birds to live outside in.
In Texas the HOA can fuck off because you have a statutory right to have up to six hens in your backyard.
That's great. Which statue is it?
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Farm Action letter Figure 2 description:
> Biologically, it takes between 3 and 5 months to grow replacement lawyers, from their hatching to their productive stages.
Impressive growth rate for lawyers. Editors take much longer to grow unfortunately
Having grown up with chickens, they are also a great way to get rid of food scraps. Chickens especially love watermelon rinds.
Why not use HEPA filters in the ventilation system?
My backyard chickens drastically lower my grocery bill, barely require feed, and their eggs sell to friends for $6/dozen.
They also replenish their numbers when I eat them. Get chickens.
> - 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...
Please, PLEASE tell us this story!!
We had them, then they found PFAS in many backyard eggs. Now most people I know are getting rid of them (in the Netherlands). It’s a shame but I have to say it’s easier to travel and not have to arrange care for the chickens.
Backyard chickens FTW! I sold my last company iCracked (W12) and have been automating my coop for fun for the last 15 years. I have always wanted to build a company at the intersection of smart home / AI meets backyard agriculture with the end goal of building the world's largest decentralized food production system. So we started Coop with the goal of making backyard chickens approachable to anyone with a backyard. We built camera systems that do crazy cool deep computer vision and have gotten to the point where we can tell our customers, "Hey AJ, there's 2 raccoons detected outside the coop, the automatic door is closed, all 6 of your hens are safe, and you have 5 eggs that can be collected. We've trained our model on 25m videos from customers and are pushing new models every week.
We built this for the family that has always wanted chickens, but doesnt know where to start. We also include 6 chickens with every coop, which I think is hilarious. The plan is to vertically integrate everything from the supply chain (feed, treats, supplements, vet visits, etc) and make it SUPER easy to have a backyard flock. It's been a fascinating and fun company to build - If you want to see some of the stuff we're doing on the tech side feel free to check out www.Coop.Farm - Also one of the things that we track where we think our thesis is playing out is how many people use us that haven't raised chickens before and we're at 71% of our customers are new to backyard ag. Also, we make standalone cameras for existing flocks and other animals and I have been super surprised to see the amount of people using our predator detection and remote health monitoring models for rabbits, goats, pigs, ducks, etc. Super fun company to build.
You should really preface it disclaimer your comment so that the reader knows you are pitching your startup up front.
If you did that, I think your comment would be pretty interesting. As it stands now it leaves the reader feeling deceived and misled when they realize you're doing a sales pitch rather than a friendly conversation.
Cool idea and tech! The idea of "plug and play" for chicken ownership is pretty novel. Bet my parents would love the smart cameras.
For EggsteinAI, did y'all build with CV tools like Roboflow? Or completely custom process? Would probably make for a fun read.
Long winded advertisement here. No thanks, I'll check out my hens in the morning.
Prices "soaring" like everything else? I'm sick of these articles that pick one product in isolation and ignore the fact that we're in hyperinflation and it affects products unevenly. (Egg farmers have likely been unable to mitigate bird flu because they artificially kept costs low to avoid shocking the public into abandoning eggs entirely, but now they need to overcompensate because of this random event).
Hyperinflation is defined as a monthly inflation rate exceeding 50%. In the U.S., the latest CPI numbers from January indicate a monthly rate of 0.5%.
Probably not a good idea to rely on CPI, and engineered synthetic number intended to hide inflation.
Where is the evidence that we're in hyperinflation?
How many eggs do most people even buy? Almost every story is talking about eggs and how much of a burden it is on the public, but what are we talking about here? I can buy 18 fancy Vital Farms pasture raised eggs for $12. How is such a small purchase so important in the financial press?
The whole thing is just completely silly. The focus should be on the true cost drivers like healthcare, insurance, child care, and housing.
A few years ago 18 eggs was just under $2.50. Today that same 18 eggs is $9.36. If your family goes through a lot of eggs, it can have a significant impact on your budget.
For example, a family of 4 might use a dozen eggs a day for breakfast. End of the week that could be 6 dozen eggs. When prices were cheap that’s $15, but now that would be just under $60. Quiet a tough pill to swallow for those on a budget.
I agree. I doubt eggs are a significant outlay for many people. I think it's probably because it's a stereotypical staple, like bread, milk and cheese. It's a kind of representative of food prices in general.
But yeah it doesn't make any sense to care much about it in isolation, unless you run a mousse business or something.
It was an election thing, right?
It was not really plausible for Republicans to say they are going to do something about healthcare or insurance (I mean, hopefully that isn’t controversial—it isn’t like they are lying about that, healthcare just isn’t part of their platform). It was a folksy way to complain about the economy under Biden without complaining about capitalism.
Now it is a folksy way for Democrats to complain about the economy, that doesn’t require bringing up the fact that there was some inflation under Biden. And it has some vague healthcare relevance (since bird flu might jump to humans).
The way stuff gets talked about in America now is intense focus on extremely niche stuff. Our legislative branch is not really functional anymore, so we can’t talk seriously about solving big problems. So, let’s put a on our blinders and talk about eggs. The eggs represent our whole system, it is dumb as hell.
This is a reasonable take on the nonsense. “Look at the awful burden of spending $10 more a month on eggs is doing to the average family!” … meanwhile huge landlord conglomerates are colluding on rent prices (via third party apps of course), raising rents, and gobbling up housing in the hottest growth areas.
No. The answer is to stop consuming eggs. Better for yourself, the animals and the planet.
What is nutritionally wrong with eggs?
A portion of dietary cholesterol is directly absorbed and increases your serum LDL-c. Especially an issue if you have the Lp-a mutation that increases this turnover.
Though I think it's more useful to consider what you could replace it with if you did want to do the optimization.
I've been fiber-maxing and ApoB-minimizing for years and my breakfast lately is usually a large bowl oats + mix-ins, a tofu scramble, or a tempeh dish. According to cronometer, they have similar nutrition and calorie profile of six eggs, except they have fiber and other perks.
The downside is that it took quite a bit of motivated behavioral change to end up with new dietary staples having grown up in our egg-heavy culture.
With “it’s better for yourself” I’m not just referring to nutrition. Animal agriculture is devastating for the world, including the environment around you.
Also I think for most (dare I say ‘well informed’) people it would be an ethical relieve to stop consuming eggs and other animal products.
And yes: there are (nutritional) concerns around eggs; for example concerning salmonella, cholesterol and saturated fats. Although I should mention science is not unanimous regarding all of those subjects.
But science is clear about one thing: bird flu is not to take lightly.
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Eggs have obvious health benefits. Land encroachment + emissions is modest, and notwithstanding, that's just something to manage, not avoid altogether. Everything we demand for ourselves encroaches on land.
It doesn't take much of a search to find many strong contra arguments to your reply. https://www.peta.org/features/egg-industry-cruelty/
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Vegan diets are only OK if very, very well calibrated for macro and micro nutrients.
This rhetoric is old. You can thrive on a vegan diet very easily without this careful calibration you speak of. The same could be said for common western diets with poor nutrition.
It’s true that you can’t just go plant based by just ditching the animal based components: you have to substitute them. But that’s an increasingly easy thing to do these days.
From my perspective, your point can be regarded as a myth.
But even if it wasn’t mostly a myth: I rather spend a little more effort on balanced nutrition than contributing to the immensely violent system that animal agriculture is.
My wife and I would love to have some backyard chickens, but ironically we live in a small farm town in Iowa where backyard chickens (both hens and roosters) are banned by town ordinance. A couple years ago a 5th grade student went before our city council to ask for an exception so she could raise chickens to show at the county fair for her 4H project; the council granted the exception, but not without raising concerns about creating a slippery slope!
https://www.nwestiowa.com/news/sibley-makes-chicken-exceptio...
I recently got fined for having backyard chickens within 100 feet of a neighboring residence. That's the ordinance, and I can't meet it in a low density neighborhood.
Fuck the city. I still have chickens and will continue to have them.
Soon on HN: Aluminium prices are soaring. Are backyard smelters the answer?
I’d say I can’t do it cause I live in NYC, but theres a very famous “Chicken House” in Bedstuy that disproves that. They got a whole chicken coup in their front yard. I got know idea how they keep away stray cats and rats etc, but somehow they’ve been doing it for at least a decade.
So maybe I could
I am going today to buy 6 chicks, as i was told all 4 hatcheries in my area were producing chicks for sale this week. I was told they would be $5-$12 depending on the breed.
I was concerned because of the culling last year (over 130,000,000 fowl culled in 2024, before the election, even! weird!) that it might be hard to get new chicks, but as i was told
> Chickens lay a lot of eggs
in the US farm to table is 60-90 days for eggs, that's why we wash them and refrigerate them. Yard eggs you don't wash, and only keep "cool" like room temp, until you're ready to use them then you wash them with a foodsafe sanitizer (or dawn if you're making boiled eggs) and prepare.
130 million chickens et al killed prior to november of 2024, and 90 days to the home? looks like this will let up around mardi gras.
I wonder who will take credit? because, here's the secret: It's the chickens.
Don't you also need to add to that the time it takes for chickens to get to egg-laying age? Which seems to be 4-5 months.
yes; and i did take it into account. I'm unwilling to share my methodology at this time, but the very little mainstream coverage of the cull last year was enough to piece together a timeline, and i'm sure a few people have, maybe even someone who isn't a complete nutterbutter.
In my estimation, the slaughter of chickens for disposal slowed down during the summer. Any reason why would be speculation i am unwilling to back up at this time.
Wash your hands if you handle livestock, people. and if you're around LOTS and cleaning up their poo, wear a respirator and eye protection. It's got what plants crave, but not humans!
wow, 60 to 90 days. I have a chicken and I was occasionally worried when an egg was on the table (inside is max mid 20s C), for a few weeks and thinking of putting them in the fridge. I also find they seem to cook better when in the room and not the fridge.
note: i bought six americauna female chicks for $33 with tax, 2 hours ago with no issue. Some person in front of me bought like 60 birds.
Tofu is cheap and high in protein and is great scrambled with some mushrooms and spices. You don't Need eggs!
I enjoy some well-prepared tofu - I just had some last night, actually - but for most people, it is absolutely not an adequate substitute for eggs without seriously compromising on flavor and utility (i.e. baking.)
A good tofu scramble tastes more like eggs than eggs thanks to black salt. And it's more flavorful than your normal egg+butter fry because it has an array of spices.
Recipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc5pZ-PY-H8
The compromise is mainly having to introduce a new food to your diet and change your habits.
Soy has estrogen emulators. Not good for males.
> Last week, the average price of a dozen eggs hit $4.95 per dozen
That sounds.. pretty cheap?
Here (Switzerland), 10 eggs (instead of 12), cost at least 4.20 CHF (almost 5 USD): https://www.coop.ch/de/lebensmittel/milchprodukte-eier/eier/...
These are the lowest quality eggs available.
Regular eggs are around $1 each and it's been like this for at least a decade now.
Prior to the price spikes, it was relatively easy to find a dozen eggs for around or below $2.
In what conditions are these eggs being produced?
Are these also codes 0 - 3, similar to the European ones, with different classes of the chickens living conditions?
$2 per dozen eggs is cheaper than in the poorest countries in Europe.
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A friend of mine has kept chickens in his backyard for years (not for egg-cost reasons). He said he did the math recently, and given just the cost of feed (not including the up-front cost of building the coop, or ongoing costs to maintain it), eggs would have to go up to ~$11/dozen for it to break even. While I have seen eggs that high recently (at a small convenience-store type place in a relatively HCoL area), that's certainly still not common.
I live in an urban area and have ten chickens. They are nice to have but it is a hobby and nowhere close to economical. And with bird flu I had to spend another decent chunk of money on a much larger & covered run, since we no longer let them roam our yard during the day. We bought nice Omlet coops so there are certainly ways to do it more cheaply than we did, but even so it will take most people years to break even, and chickens need at least weekly maintenance.
>And with bird flu I had to spend another decent chunk of money on a much larger & covered run, since we no longer let them roam our yard during the day.
Bird flu never stopped our ancestors from keeping chickens outside. In fact if you let them go, they would be feral animals much like stray cats and dogs. They only "need" food and sanitation, due to their feces building up if they are kept in one place.
Yes I suppose letting your chickens be wild animals is the cheapest option. I hadn't considered this. Thanks for your useful comment.
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I recommend listening to Patara's advice on chickens. [1] She mentions some of the things discussed in this thread and more. All practical advice. Just listen in the background.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbIGEK2q_VA [video][22 mins]
The first egg from my flock cost me well over $1000. Now that was a golden egg!
Texas has a law that you're allowed to have up to 6 hens and 2 beehives in your backyard. Hens are fine because they're not roosters (though usually one hen will take on some of the role of a rooster). I'm not sure about the wisdom of keeping beehives in a suburban backyard though because when your neighbor mows their lawn nearby they can get irritated and attack -- the hives really need to be 20ft or more away from the fence.
My grandmother would tell me stories about how when she was growing up, they had backyard chickens. Unfortunately my state has laws preventing anyone from even having a hen unless you have over an acre of land.
no, bird flu can still infect your backyard flock
But the culls are smaller, and so the impact lessened. The problem becomes more distributed.
This is the chief reason why Canada's egg prices have remained sane while the US has exploded. It's not like we don't have bird flu here and we haven't had culls. We just have smaller flocks.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/egg-prices-avian-flu-canada-u...
Still, backyard chickens are a hobby, for if you like chickens. It will always cost more than an egg farm.
> But the culls are smaller, and so the impact lessened. The problem becomes more distributed.
Presumably the risk of spread of bird flu to humans increases though, due to the increased amount of contact. And then the increased risk of mutation leading to human to human transmission.
Bit wild to me that we don't seem to be taking this very seriously other than "o no my eggs" given we just had a pandemic a few years ago.
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BC grocery stores shelves are getting bare of eggs, and the pricing is significantly higher that typical.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/egg-shortages-bc-grocery-bir...
I think a lot of that is due to eggs being under government supply management. It is very difficult to get a new egg farm going, and it is very difficult to consolidate egg farms. So we have more smaller farms surviving as a result.
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I'd rather not risk having a bunch of sick animals to deal with to save a couple dollars personally
Yeah, My concern is more opportunities to pass to people who may not be doing good flock hygiene too. A farm has better resources and training than a backyard flock.
Nope, can still catch the flu. Stay home.
Is there any reason I shouldn’t let my half-dozen birds get it and die or survive, see if any develop immunity and work from there?
Mostly they can spread it to you and to any other animals around and by the time you’re aware that they’re infected, they’ll be seriously ill. Or shorter; the chances x benefit of them they developing immunity are much lower than the chances x cost of them becoming ill and having the virus mutate in a much worse direction.
Ethical reasons should prevent you from intentionally infecting them.
Watching your chickens die sucks, my friend. They don't just drop dead overnight. It's often many days of watching them slowly suffer.
Then imagine spreading that misery to all the wild birds you love in your neighbourhood.
Wow, no one is talking about the smell. Have you got any idea how terrible is the smell of a chicken coop? You do know that you have to get in there to clean it, right? This ain’t no fun activity. I prefer to get fewer eggs per month than to clean it myself (sometimes every day, it also depends on the weather too).
I just let my chicken run about on the whole estate. She only goes back to the coop at dark. It hardly smells any different to the rest of the yard
I imagine this scales with size.
By comparison, if you own a dog, you have to clean that too. And pick up it's excrement every day.
With the bird flu epidemic, that probably is the worst idea I have ever heard.
Why would it be, when you consider that countries with far less condensed supply chain (e.g. Canada) have not been impacted? If we blame commercial agricultural practices for exacerbating the risk then it makes no sense to frame backyard chickens as doing the same.
My family must be odd, we probably consume about 4 dozen of raw eggs per year. What is everyone else eating that requires so many eggs? Do you cook eggs daily?
Eggs are also an ingredient in lots of things, especially baked goods.
>Do you cook eggs daily?
Yes. This is very common. Most days breakfast is sunny side eggs. Egg drop soup, ramens, and steamed egg dishes also consume a lot.
weekly shopping list is a dozen eggs and 2 roast chickens.
Yeah man, eggs are great. My wife and I cook almost all of our meals, and we go through about two dozen a month. Have one for breakfast a few times a week, cook a quiche once or twice a month, stir one or two into fried rice, use them for battering fried foods, many baked goods call for an egg or two.
Yep. 5 eggs a day between my wife and I. Then there are uses for food prep.
1 a day
Your break-even point will be years away, so no, backyard chickens aren’t the answer for high egg prices.
That said, chickens are fun animals, and mine bring me a lot of joy even though I don’t like/eat eggs (the chickens came with my house; I give the eggs away).
My mental model of backyard chickens is that the owners will behave like pet owners. A sobering thought. Granted, most pet owners behave responsibly, and most chicken owners will too.
$7.99
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us
Who is getting really rich from this?
Where can I buy call options on eggs?
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This all reminds me this "The Mitchell and Webb Situation - Farming" sketch :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE
What always amazed me about Chickens from raising them first hand is how much nutrients they produce from so little. They’re so efficient. I think this is more of a lifestyle choice because raising them is not cost effective even at these prices.
So glad I got a good rapport with the Hutterites (they are like Canadian version of Amish but this is, admittedly, an over-simplistic a definition).
Been a loyal customer. I get a good deal on their eggs, honey and pies.
I have a hen and get an egg once every few days. I had two for a while, but I have had this one for years.
I live in an urban area, but I don’t even lock her up. She just wanders about. Sometimes she goes out the front gate, and people knock on my door and ask if I’ve lost a chicken. She always seems to go back to her coop out the back to sleep and lay. Occasionally, she starts laying in some random place. When I notice there are no eggs for a week, I go hunting. When I take the eggs, she seems to go back to laying in the coop.
The biggest issue I have is if I leave the door open and don’t put a little bit of wood that she can’t jump over, she comes into the house. They poop every now and then no matter where they are, so it’s a minor issue but still annoying. She knows the cat food is in the laundry and raids it if she gets in. If I leave the front door open and she can see it from the back, she will rush around the side of the house and run in through the front door.
Kind of off topic, but instead of culling flocks infected with the flu, are there any farmers just seeing which chickens survive and then letting them breed?
I spoke with a chicken farmer last week.
The government comes in and takes over. You don’t get to decide, they kill all your chickens and cut you a check.
My guess is that that would increase the risk of a pandemic in humans.
I suspect most small/backyard flocks will be taking this approach, if only because of lack of testing.
I think if I raised chickens I’d also raise insects to feed them. Wouldn’t that make the eggs way tastier and healthier? And you’d save on feed?
Or do they tend to find lots of insects in their own?
You set them free and they’ll find the bugs. You can also give them a huge variety of food waste. This mostly only supplements their feed though
Bugs are all over your average yard.
I loved having our 6 chickens, but they do take some work to take care of.
Alternatively, we could ensure that government policy doesn't do this in the first place.
A bunch of my neighbors keep various birds (chickens, ducks, even geese!), and some sell their eggs. I haven't checked to see what they are charging these days, but I'm sure it's gone up. It used to be 5 bucks per dozen for the fancy green eggs.
The difference between Wall Street's numbers and the real daily life of citizens of the United Stats is astonishing.
Egg prices are normal in Arizona in the US. (I wonder how transient the perturbation in prices was elsewhere.)
Ok, so maybe a controversial opinion:
I've been buying local, pasture raised chickens for the last 10 years. I am very fortunate to have had the income to allow me to do so. I also don't eat that many eggs (roughly a dozen a month - so it hasn't been that expensive).
The price of my eggs was always between $8-$12 / dozen (including this weekend when I easily found and bought another 2 dozen). I get that I was buying "already expensive eggs", because apparently other people were buying eggs $2 / dozen.
However, to be frank, I'm not sure how people expect eggs to be so cheap. Taking into account the land, the water, the feed, the labor, the transportation all to create a dozen eggs, it must cost more than $2.
Clearly paying a little more for the eggs has allowed me to support farms which are robust to large shocks like this (both in terms of input costs and in terms of health of chickens). I really hope as a society we can all move away from the unsustainable farms and improve the economics of sustainable farming so that everyone can afford locally grown, healthy eggs for centuries to come.
In the meanwhile, there will be people who have to buy fewer eggs (either because of health regulations - or because reality checks will always exist like with market shocks right now).
Hopefully, after this crisis, through graduated health regulation we can cause a controlled increase to the floor price of unsustainably grown eggs, while also (through technology and economies of scale) reducing the floor price of locally sourced, sustainably grown eggs.
Feed at a large scale operation is a lot cheaper than you’d think. The bulk of the food is soybean meal left over from oil production and distillers dried grains with solubles left over from ethanol production. The feed manufacturers make deals with those producers for their left over product for very cheap. They supplement the feed with some other stuff like oyster shells for calcium. Bone meal from meat producers, bakery meal from stale or expired bread, wheat middles from milling flour, and so on. None of them are expensive primary products but whatever the cheapest local sources are producing as waste in huge quantities. Some places will even give the stuff away because the cost of transporting is less than its worth in compost. Since the input ingredients are variable and the feed manufacturers have to plan for that, they offer the big farms steep discounts on long term contracts that fix their costs.
A chicken lays a few hundred eggs per year so they’re very economically productive and you can house hundreds or thousands of them per coop somewhere the land, water, and labor are cheap.
Although we’ve sacrificed animal welfare, sanitation, and quality to get those prices.
Until the past few years $1 was normal here, often less when they went on sale. Also, most eggs in the supermarket are locally grown. Transporting them is a PITA both due to fragility and spoilability.
The store is happy to lose a dollar on the eggs to get you to stop there, it's not just about the production.
> “Instead, dominant egg producers . . . have leveraged the crisis to raise prices, amass record profits, and consolidate market power.”
Who would have thought that not enforcing antitrust regulation will lead to corporations so large that they can just do whatever they want with impunity because there is no meaningful competition any more?
Eat fewer eggs, watch prices drop.
Anyone with enough critical thinking should be eating on a plant-based diet.
I won’t explain all the points as they’re widely explained around the web and just a search away.
1)Ethics
2)Health
3)Environment
4)Politics
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
i didn't realize keeping backyard chickens for food security would be so controversial when i posted this
It would be interesting to know the actual economics and legalities of franchising "Farmer McEgg" setups, to rural folks who wanted a side gig. Once someone had (say) 150 chickens set up and going, what would be spread between their weekly operating expenses, and weekly gross sales? How many hours/day would that typically take?
EDIT: Please read the article, especially the Feb. 19th update note at the beginning of it. Bird flu may not be so bad as it's been portrayed. And if the costs for comparatively tiny chicken farms were low enough, then their economics don't need to look good to Wall St. They're may-be-profitable little hobby farms which help local communities, while putting pressure on the greedy Big Egg oligopoly.
Eggs are a cyclical commodity largely controlled by an oligopoly with far lower production costs than any individual could touch. This would be unlikely to succeed at scale. And as the sibling commenter notes, the reason for egg costs is avian influenza, and small producers will be unable to isolate their flocks from wild bird populations. In aggregate it might be more resilient but it would be a tough sell as a franchise.
You're missing the elephant in the room: egg prices are going up due to supply constraints due to flock culling due to the spread of bird flu.
At the scale you're talking about...you have a bird flu susceptible flock. If backyard chickens became really common - like if every second person in a street had them - then bird flu spread would run wild (you'd also vastly increase the number of poultry-human contacts providing a vector for a species jump).
this is a good point. When you have mega flocks at factory farms, you at least have the option to sterilize the farm to stop the spread. If every lot has its own flock, that won't work at all
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Are egg prices soaring? Where?
> dominant egg producers . . . have leveraged the crisis to raise prices, amass record profits, and consolidate market power
Call me ignorsnt, but I'm surprised to see fewer cases of this kind of exploitative capitalism here in the EU. The only similar case that cones to mind is the gas and diesel price hike. Am I missing something or are Americans just more accepting of agressive capitalism like this? Something similar is Healthcare. Insulin for example is dirt cheap to produce but costs the buyer hundreds (iirc) of dollars.
I don't think Americans are more accepting of aggressive capitalism, they're victims of an exploitative system that has completely captured their government, media, education, and every aspect of life. Sure many of them are willing participants, or victims who aspire to join the all-powerful ruling class - but that's the result of generations of social engineering and brutal suppression of any viable alternatives.
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Since the title is a question: no, no it's not. Because the primary driver is bird flu, so the odds have never been higher of you buying birds only to have to cull them the next week. Now is the worst time to get your chickens, and the best time to just go "whatever, it's not like we need eggs, we'll start buying them again when we actually have enough chickens in this country to lower prices again".
Guys please for the love of God. Dont eat so many eggs. We have cut down our egg consumption to 4 per week between the two of us. And I don’t think about the cost. I can afford it. I think about the supply.
Please please reduce your egg consumption. If you have people who are unhealthy and in need of nutrition, get as many eggs for them as you can. And leave it for them only. But if you are healthy, leave it for others.
Quite some people frequenting this community can't even find their own dick in their underpants. And you suggest the raising live animals besides cats? Muhahahahhahahahahahaha! Oh the comedy.
Not if your HOA strictly forbids livestock or you live in an apartment, lol.
just dont eat eggs
I read heading and thought jumped: How are they gonna test eggs for phentanyl?
"Are" soaring? Avian flu has been going on since 2022.
One of the reasons we are where we are is because many think this started last fall.
I haven't made an omelet in months and I'm still eating like a king. Why are people so obsessed with eggs? Are they a linchpin to the American diet or something?
Feed costs money. Unless you live in an area where feed is very cheap, or grow your own feed, this isn't going to be economically viable. Having said that, some people enjoy keeping chickens as pets, and in that case economic viability takes a back seat. Plus there's a certain psychological satisfaction akin to tending to your own (also not economically viable) garden, which should not be underestimated. When I had a garden my every morning started with tending to it, and that was basically the most psychologically enjoyable thing I'd done in the last 30 years, especially when there's something to harvest. Plus, when AI neo-feudalism takes over, I won't starve. :-)
"The Trump administration’s efforts to impose its will on the federal workforce through mass firings, funding freezes and communication blackouts is hampering the ability of public health professionals to respond to the growing threat of avian flu.
As egg prices continue to rise and more cases are detected, state and local health officials say there is no clear plan of action from the administration."
https://thehill.com/homenews/5154415-trump-moves-hamper-bird...
Plus our new HHS secretary is an anti-vaxxer! I'm sure nothing will go wrong.
I heard Trump was voted in because people were angry about the high price of eggs (among other things) which Trump promised to fix "on day 1".
Trump cultists will find a way to excuse this and blame it on DEI/woke/immigrants/Marxists, but those who voted for him because they thought he would bring prices down are in for a rude awakening when they discover they were misled (though I can't feel sorry for them, there were so many signs).
my mother in law brings us two dozen eggs every week. I laugh at her for raising chickens and giving them names. Who's laughing now?
no.
I spent quite some time on farms and while chickens are adorable, the amount of poop you have to deal with is going to be a killer to most people. So in the spirit of HN, and if this upward trend of eggs' price continues, I have 2 business ideas:
- Uber for eggs. One household in the hood does all the chicken chores and sale eggs very locally to only some small ZIP code. Of course considering cost on a small home scale, eggs would be most likely at 15% price of shelf ones. Also bigger farmer could not just come and order thousands at such low price because the owner would not have capacity.
- diapers for chicks. If you can invent cheap diaper for chickens then 90% of chicks pollution is gone. you still have to deal with food, water, etc, BUT the major turn off will always be amount of excrement they produce.
Considering the price of eggs today, if nothing gets changed and flus will prevail, these are a billion dollar ideas :)
Edit: unless of course someone is doing that already :) I haven't checked.
Lol, now you also get to raise livestock because you can't afford the food. Capitalism really is the "monarchy by money" speed run. Welcome back, peasant.
Hint: the answer to the headline is "no", which means it should not have been the headline, but that's clickbait for you.
Growing your own food costs time and resources. People are attached to the (copious) amount of leisure time they have today.
As a european that until recently owned 20+ chickens I can tell you no, it is not the answer unless you really want your own chickens.
Owning your own chickens has a bunch of downsides:
- They get sick / get parasites and may require expensive medication or massive amounts of work.
- They require warmth if you live in a cold place like me, and heating costs money.
- They eat a lot and unless you buy in large quantities, it is expensive. And if you buy in large quantities, you must protect the grain from mold and mice which can be hard.
- They require a lot of maintenance since they are pretty stupid and dirty animals that poop in their own water supply, food etc.
- You will get a lot more mice on your property and possibly, in your house.
- You are worried about bird flu, so you need to cover the coop with a roof. Building a roof is expensive, I spent ~$1300 for materials. That is a lot of eggs.
That said, you can get colorful nice eggs from animals you know have a good life and are healthy. Where I am from, that is largely possible in regular stores however but in some areas of the world I assume animal care is a lot worse.
I think more people should have their own animals, but they do require time and effort, more than most people can spare I would believe. We sold all of them due to this reason. We did not profit from having them, but rather lost both time and money but it is (mostly) a fun experience at least. And our waste was heavily reduced since you can feed them your food even if that is illegal where I live if you want to sell your eggs (you can buy a carrot, put it in your bed and sleep with it a week but if you lay it on a plate where you eat your food, it becomes illegal to give them it if you intend to sell the eggs).
I couldn't find anything online about it but some old guy in a youtube video talked about them using chickens to heat houses long ago.
They build the chicken coop against the house with a very thin wall between it and the living room.
Chickens have 41-42°C body temperature. (105-107°F) With a bit of help from fermenting poop they sit very close together and heat up the coop until it gets to hot. One chicken will go outside and walk around in the snow.
The otherwise isolated living room acts like a buffer, they gradually heat it up and it helps stabilize the coop.
I've never seen this thing in action but the old man said it worked really well. I also have no idea how many chickens were used. It would require a breed that does well in cold climate. Today people put electric heaters in the chicken coop.
If it really works that well, combined with the eggs, it could make it profitable.
Sounds like Bill Mollison's chicken greenhouse idea.
Bird Flu saunters into the chat, infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands via backyard chickens that have zero health oversight
Remember, the case fatality rate of Bird Flu is approximately 52%, and this is with modern medical assistance for those requiring hospitalization. Without modern medical assistance (once it collapses), that rate is a third again higher.
Backyard chickens would increase the rate of cross species infection. Cats, dogs, wild animals, all would have increased access to viral load.
And obviously humans.
Most farms in australia with animals now post biohazard warnings, and instructions on how to be on the property (mostly, don't be on the property)
I love backyard chooks, lived next door to them for a decade, had the benefit of chook-poo fertiliser for the garden. This is a terrible time to keep chickens, distributed into the community at large.
This disease is hitting seal populations hard. This disease poses risks to endangered species in captive breeding programmes. This disease will be risky for immunocompromised people, small kids, pregnant women.
We have raised a few hens at our hobby farm over the years. The eggs are nice and all, but they're actually quite fragile animals, and then you go and get attached to them and they get suddenly sick and slowly die on you in horrible ways. And veterinary care for backyard chickens is seriously problematic and difficult to get and expensive.
My wife fell seriously in love with keeping chickens and it kind of emotionally broke her. Always tried so hard to do things right, and something has always gone wrong.
I wouldn't advise it, personally, to most people.
Ducks are apparently a bit more resilient though. And duck eggs are great.
Ducks are noisy. And stinky unless you have a medium/large pond. On the plus side they are indeed resilient and can forage a good portion of their food.
Yes, raising animals requires the mindset of… raising animals. They’re not pets and life happens to them which most people are very disconnected from these days.
It requires a level of detachment not everyone can accomplish. I brought them home, thinking that's how it would be. My wife fell in love with them, and basically stole them from me. And then it's been years of tears.
what are they dying of? I assume it isn't weather. I was shocked when my Wisconsin coworkers said their chickens handle -10F weather no problem in the winter.
there's just a pile of things. usually reproductive -- becoming egg bound, etc. there's parasites, viruses, bacterial infections. and being flock animals, they hide it, too.
yeah some varieties of chicken are remarkably tough around cold which is crazy considering their original tropical origin.
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> Are backyard chickens the answer?
No. Trump is the answer (and DOGE!). Once we get rid of all the DEI/woke/Marxists in government, egg prices will fall. Have faith. Praise Trump!
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That’s why I almost thought this was satire. Didn’t people just vote for for lower grocery prices and emergency economic improvements ? Rather than doing democracy we’re now going back to farming for our own food during a bird flu pandemic ?
“Weird”.
Trumperor and Darth Musk
Old:
Let them eat cake
Newly voted in:
...stock up on luxury ice cream.
...indulge in caviar.
I am out of ideas, so is Copilot.
The answer is get the fuck over eggs.
They’re certainly the answer if the question is “how can we all get bird flu.” We all really need to be avoiding exposure to h5n1. The more chances it gets the more likely it’ll evolve to transmit human to human.
Illegal in the UK now.
No? You just fill in a form. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/register-as-a-keeper-of-less-tha...
And without the form…?
I'm guessing you actually mean "basically 'illegal' because of some regulations"?
Not true.
Jeez, it is scary how many people raise their own chickens here. Are all of these people some sort of startup exit move into the woods people?