23 ms·

Why I Would Raise Chickens

347 points by kuusisto 10y ago

walrus01 10y ago
"Watch the video to get +100 Pts" What is this, some sort of gamification to get people to read and watch more content on the gates website?
- prawn 10y ago
  Might be a strategy to get the public to become more active on social issues. I know I'd use gamification as one method if it were up to me.
bencollier49 10y ago
If six times as many people raise chickens, won't the sale price of chickens go down and negate (part of) the effect of providing all the chickens in the first place? Shouldn't the number of people raising chickens have already reached a market equilibrium?
- aurelienb 10y ago
  Yes, more chicken mean cheaper eggs/chicken...
- mattnewton 10y ago
  Probably not because: 1) Farming chickens requires capital investment that might not be available to poorer families. Equilibrium can only be reached if the would-be-chicken-farmers have easy access to credit. 2) Chickens have inherent value; you can consume the eggs yourself as a substitute for other goods you were going to buy, and the meat as well.
- shoover 10y ago
  Perhaps. That is a good question that Bill should address in the analysis. If the price goes down then the farmers eat more eggs (and chickens, if they want), which is still a good outcome.
- kuusisto 10y ago
  That was a concern of mine too. It seems hard to guess how that might play out in practice though without a lot more information. For example, I wonder how localized the market effects might be. That is, how much do local populations sell chickens to one another, and how much does that affect market equilibrium.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  Only in the universe with perfectly rational actors where markets always clear. As there is stiction in mechanical systems, markets may not converge on perfect equilibria.
- zhte415 10y ago
  Yes and no. Owning the chickens means owning capital, not being a waged consumer. Chickens also have inherent value, being able to lay eggs and have more chickens. Also many suggestions in the article about empowering women, which compounds the impact of capital ownership. Mainly marxist interpretation. Owning chickens means a surplus of chickens, and therefore there will be no more grain. Malthus. Price of grain/feed will change, but assuming chickens eat grain + anything, it might not change that much. Added benefits of immunized chickens. Unknown effect of price of chickens, perhaps deflationary pressure on price of other goods. Ricardo, perhaps. The network effects will be interesting. Every house with a couple of chickens is very worthy selfsustainment. A form of basic income.
bko 10y ago
> If you read this article, watch the video above, and answer one question below, I will donate—on your behalf via Heifer—a flock of chickens to a family in poverty. Giving a flock of chickens to desperately poor families sounds like a great idea that will pay dividends for many years. However, I can't help but be reminded of the many charitable programs that sound great but end up having very unusual unintended consequences that often defeat the purpose or make it worse. Anyone care to speculate as to some unintended consequences this project may have?
- Etarip 10y ago
  Notice in the video how they're not feeding the chickens by letting them forage. They're always feeding them grain.
  - crpatino 10y ago
    Grain in bulk is still cheaper than poultry. However, you have a point. If poor urban families do not have access to fairly priced chicken feed, they will face the choice of feeding them pet food (at a net economic loss) or cutting their losses and eating all the chickens right away.
    - giarc 10y ago
      Please read the article written by Bill. One of the first lines is that chickens are easy to feed because they can make do with stuff they naturally find on the ground. Given grain will help them grow faster, but it's not imperative.
      - crpatino 10y ago
        Yes, as I mentioned in my edit to GP, I have now read the article. It still sounds strange to me. I mean, how is it that 3rd country rural people cannot not know about chickens? I assumed this would be about giving flocks to urban poor, where there is precious little area not covered by concrete and the chickens would likely forrage on half poisoned cockroaches or something like that.
lumberjack 10y ago
It is not specified what they mean by "chicken" (age and breed and sex) but $5 seems like really expensive. I know that you can buy baby chicks from an incubator for egg laying purposes for like 3 euro or less in rural western Europe. Breeds meant to be harvested for their meat cost even less.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  I get the impression that's for a fully grown chicken sold for meat. I have no idea how big those chickens are. In North America live chickens sell for between 30 and 50 cents a pound. The chickens in the video look like small roasters, definitely under 10 pounds.
  - newjersey 10y ago
    I see decreasing price of chicken/eggs as a good thing. If a fully grown chicken costs upwards of $5, why is it not a good idea to use better facilities? Wouldn't it be cheaper to keep the birds caged up? I guess it depends on our goal here. Is the idea to give a sense of "ownership" so the program partners feel empowered and can make decisions individually on whether to keep, raise, sell, or eat chicken and eggs? If it is not that, then I think we should explore industrial farming and some central planning. Five dollars for a small live chicken sounds like a problem which this project can help solve but I think we should welcome bringing down the cost (and keeping it stable at the lower sticker price) of nutrition be it animal-based or plant-based should be welcome. tl;dr I don't mean to say don't do this but rather we need to do more.
  - pitt1980 10y ago
    how am I able to buy a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store for $5? seems like I've getting pretty much everything that's economically viable from the chicken, plus a fair amount of labor put into the chicken
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
      Well, the rotisserie chicken is very likely grown on a massively capital-intensive assembly line, and quite possibly delivered frozen. Those options are likely not available to the people this is trying to help. Also: fresh, free-range, "organic" chicken costs more like $3.00-$5.00 per pound in most areas.
spydum 10y ago
maybe I'm missing something, what will the chickens eat? "whatever they find on the ground" is not exactly a strategy for growth, especially if everybody is raising chickens, you can pretty much expect the availability of edible stuff to reach zero in villages. not saying this doesnt work, but it's still an energy in/out problem right, where is the new source of energy?
- CuriouslyC 10y ago
  Chickens can eat bugs, plants and food waste that people wouldn't touch. This would work fine assuming at least a temperate climate (ideally tropical) and small villages with a fairly low density.
  - Grue3 10y ago
    If chicken can freely walk around, there immediately occurs the problem of people stealing others' chicken. I grew up in a Soviet village and it happened a lot, so I'd imagine it would be even worse in poorer countries.
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      Don't worry, the next charity can donate guns to protect your chickens. /s So Charity is really hard to do right. Bill Gates seems to try to do it right. Hopefully he has thought of this already?
    - CuriouslyC 10y ago
      In a larger, more populated village, this is definitely a potential concern. In the smaller, less dense villages where this program is likely targeted, everyone knows everyone, and chickens usually have sufficiently distinct markings that if you have a small flock you could probably identify your stolen bird without too much trouble. Just for reference, I've seen roaming chickens in small villages in the Philippines/Caribbean, it is very common. I even saw it in some decently sized towns, though it was less common. In cities everyone kept their chickens in pens, so I never saw them (though they woke me up every damned day, so I know there were plenty of them).
roel_v 10y ago
Reading the comments on that post make me weep for the future of mankind. It's like Youtube but worse - because at least on Youtube everybody knows they're being idiots.
clumsysmurf 10y ago
If you want to raise backyard chicks, double check your local chicken ordinances! Unfortunately, even when they are allowed, it can be the source of tension between neighbors: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/27/nation/la-na-nn-backyard-chicken-farmers-arizona-20121127 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/27/nation/la-na-nn-back...
- benmanns 10y ago
  But once you do check them, I recommend trying it. Raising chickens can be rewarding.
- hijinks 10y ago
  We have 6 in our backyard and you hardly notice them. They are generally very quiet. The only times ours makes noise is if one chases another. The birds in the tree make a lot more noise.
  - jly 10y ago
    I find the same thing. My neighbors and I have chickens on ~5000 sq ft fenced lots and you barely notice them, especially when compared with the local bird and insect population. My neighbor has a rooster and even that isn't a large bother.
  - conorh 10y ago
    Ours only make noise when they are laying eggs. We have 4 in our pretty small yard and ours make quite a lot of noise when they are laying, but that only lasts a few minutes usually.
- rwmj 10y ago
  In the UK, the 1950 Allotments Act trumps all other covenants and local ordinances, provided you're only keeping hens and they are not a nuisance (and despite the name, the Act in this instance applies to keeping hens anywhere). http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/14/31 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/14/31
  - 10y ago
ensignavenger 10y ago
I know a older couple that have spent the last year or so traveling around Africa doing 'chicken projects' where they help build chicken coops and teach poor families how to raise chickens (pretty simple to do, actually, but there are little strategies one can use to increase profits- hardest part is keeping predators from eating them!) Cool stuff, glad to see Bill Gates onboard!
- mooreds 10y ago
  Sounds cool! Do they have a webpage/fb page where they are sharing their journey?
  - ensignavenger 10y ago
    The wife posts on her personal facebook page periodically, but nothing generally public :(
fiatmoney 10y ago
I don't get it. As mentioned in the article, chickens are incredibly easy to bootstrap (ie, it's not like they require a huge capital outlay to get started, and they literally pay dividends in further chickens), and have been present in the area for centuries. What has been the obstacle that has kept them from already being common enough to drive the expected benefit of further investment to ~0? And how is that obstacle going to be overcome?
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  They're giving away vaccinated chicks. I suspect that the vaccines are the main problem they're addressing. It's certainly possible that it's easier and cheaper to give away vaccinated chicks than it is to give away vaccinations.
  - bko 10y ago
    The author mentioned the low cost of vaccines (the one that prevents the deadly Newcastle disease costs less than 20 cents). I suspect the reason that this is not already being done by the locals is that there are some other costs or factors that are specific to the local market that outsiders have no way of assessing.
    - lukeschlather 10y ago
      It sounds like in order to get money you need to be raising and selling on the order of 100-300 chickens per year. So we're talking $20-40 year. To put that in perspective for a contract software developer making $100k+/year, that's like spending $20k/year on software licenses.
      - allannienhuis 10y ago
        $.20 cost of vaccination per $5.00 chicken is 4 percent cost. You're quoting 20 percent cost comparison. Am I missing something?
swehner 10y ago
If they're so great, why do they need to be promoted?
- tacos 10y ago
  Same reason condoms and vaccines do. It's hard to change behaviors.
- sailfast 10y ago
  Because the families in greatest need cannot afford the chickens in the first place.
BadassFractal 10y ago
Any threat that by increasing the # of chickens around humans' living quarters in the third world we might be increasing the chances of developing avian diseases that jump onto surrounding humans, creating new epidemics?
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ktRolster 10y ago
This isn't the first program of this type, so he's not going into it blind. See this for one example: http://www.cityfarmer.info/2013/11/15/gaza-urban-rabbit-raising-intervention/ http://www.cityfarmer.info/2013/11/15/gaza-urban-rabbit-rais... I also remember reading about a rabbit raising program in the Philippines several years back, but I can't find a reference to it.
psadri 10y ago
I wish a local person could give us their perspective on this initiative.
0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
When he says stuff like this does it affect the commodities market? Edit: just more unintended consequences if so, and it is things like this that make me aspire to be a good neighbor instead of a Manager.
grishas 10y ago
Pretty much all research has shown that the best way to improve poverty is to give people money, and not some sort of good that you've decided is better (goats, chickens, cows, whatever). Unfortunately, giving away money just doesn't sell. :(
- wrsh07 10y ago
  I'm not sure that it's as cut and dried as you describe. If I understand correctly, GiveDirectly is uncertain about the effectiveness of their programs outside of their current "pilot" countries. [there are lots of factors: the poor in Kenya & Uganda are very poor - and the marginal dollar to them is very effective, replacing thatched roofs, etc; Kenya has good support for transferring money] Besides, it's a good thing to experiment to see how effective different methods are. It seems naive to settle on one method and decide all other methods are "stupid," especially when contributing to one doesn't necessarily detract from the other [the Gates foundation has enough money to saturate any one charity]. It's always so surprising to me to see people unhappy about the good work others are doing.
whiddershins 10y ago
Re: many people wondering why this hasn't happened organically, it is easy to underestimate how much cultural attitudes can affect common practice. As an anecdote, when I visited rural China a couple of years back I asked my friends who grew up there why, if most people had one chicken, they didn't simply grow a few more? The response was "you don't know what it was like back then. In the Mao attitude people would say ... 'who are you to have two chickens when everyone else only has one' " ... which was enough social pressure to keep everyone to one chicken, no matter how much that contributed to malnourishment. I'm not proposing the same social attitudes are at play in these regions, but there may be other non-obvious contexts discouraging people from getting started with a flock. For some scenarios I could imagine an initiative like this helping to break through inertia and change norms.
- tonmoy 10y ago
  This seems very accurate. When I was younger it was a social taboo for middle class families in rural area to raise animals in out country. Then the government started blasting propaganda about how farming fish and raising chickens/goats was a noble "entrepreneur" like thing, and now it does not seem like that much of a taboo any more.
  - mapt 10y ago
    There is a campaign in West Africa right now to grow 'grasscutter', aka greater cane rat, as an entrepreneurial alternative to bush meat and as a noble poverty reduction measure. The biggest argument for micro livestock in extreme poverty areas is the barrier to entry. You can run a large chicken, rabbit, cuy, or grasscutter farm for less than it costs to own a single pair of cattle, and nobody in the area has high amounts of saved wealth. http://www.nap.edu/read/1831/chapter/1#xv http://www.nap.edu/read/1831/chapter/1#xv is an attempt to explore the options for getting the world's subsistence farmers (mostly growing crops that have already been heavily automated) into livestock production (which still require lots of human care).
paganel 10y ago
My parents live in a village in Eastern Europe with less than $2 a day (I also chip in to financially help them), and they do indeed raise chickens, they've being doing that for the last 15 years or so, since they moved out to the countryside. Bill Gates is correct in his assessment, it's way more profitable to raise chickens than, say, cows. You need to have a bigger barn for cows, you need to do all the hay thing, which is very time consuming and demands a lot of extra work just for feeding said cows, you need to pay someone to take care of the cows when they go out to eat in the summer on the communal field. It's easier to just barter your chickens' eggs for some milk or cheese, that's at least what my mom does. It's also quite profitable to grow beans and cabbage. They preserve well over winter well into spring and you can also use them for bartering.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  > it's way more profitable to raise chickens than, say, cows. You need to have a bigger barn for cows, you need to do all the hay thing, which is very time consuming and demands a lot of extra work just for feeding said cows, you need to pay someone to take care of the cows when they go out to eat in the summer on the communal field. This is surprising to me. Of course a cow should be more work to raise than a chicken. But it has so many times more meat on it than a chicken, and is more energy efficient per calorie consumed too. Similarly with beans and cabbage. They might be easier to grow, but in terms of calories they seem much less efficient than, say, potatoes. If this was addressed in the article, sorry. It's just a blank page on my browser.
  - thevardanian 10y ago
    I highly doubt that Beef is a more efficient if source of meat than Chicken. I think Chicken meat is a lot more efficient. A little quick googling and I found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio
    - Houshalter 10y ago
      Why would you think that? Larger animals are usually much more energy efficient for various reasons - less surface area to radiate heat, and economies of scale with larger organs.
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fish55 10y ago
"Relative surplus value is produced through the reduction of the value of labor power (variable capital) by means of improvements in the production of goods (effectively the appropriation of productivity gains by the capitalist class)." -Marxist definition In other words, they will no longer need a wage that also represents the value of eggs, so: -the wage will ultimately be reduced -the portion of their unwaged labor (raising chickens) will increase People who raise their own chickens can work for less than those who don't. tldr: A service they could once afford will become unaffordable.
gearhart 10y ago
Anybody else surprised by how much a chicken costs in Africa? $5 is £3.45[1] and I can buy a (dead, plucked, gutted, packaged, delivered to my door) chicken in the UK for £2.95[2]. I realise the local supply's much lower because my Sainsbury's chicken is grown in a cage in a factory somewhere, but nonetheless, I didn't expect that. [1] I presume USD is the currency in the video, since 5 of the local currency is £0.006 [2] http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/chicken/sainsburys-british-whole-chicken--small-135kg-%28serves-2---3%29 http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/chicken/sainsb... edit: looks like I left the page open for longer than I thought - this discussion happened elsewhere hours ago. Apologies.
- gricardo99 10y ago
  There's also the famously cheap Costco $4.99 Rotisserie Chicken. But it seems it's a bit of a loss-leader for them[1]. [1] - http://time.com/money/3901655/costco-rotisserie-chickens-hot-dogs/ http://time.com/money/3901655/costco-rotisserie-chickens-hot...
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Chickens weren't sold that way until pretty recently in history in rich countries. Like cows, chickens provide ongoing sustenance. That $5 chicken may yield $50 in eggs. When the bird gets old, you make some soup.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    $5 seems to be the price for a carcass. In the video, dead chickens are tied together and draped over a bike for transport to wherever they are being sold.
    - kuusisto 10y ago
      I'm pretty sure the chickens tied together on the bike are alive. I imagine it's just a lot easier to transport a bunch of them with a bike when they're tied together like that. https://youtu.be/MwZxBPYqiLg?t=17s https://youtu.be/MwZxBPYqiLg?t=17s
tbrock 10y ago
What is the ratio of female hens to male roosters? Quick googling tells me 10 to 1 but I'm not sure if that is correct. Is there any other species that has a similar extremely lopsided number of one sex?
- olooney 10y ago
  The natural sex ratio of chickens is 50/50. Chicks are sexed when a few days old and excess males are disposed of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_sexing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_sexing There is strong evolutionary pressure that keep sex ratios at close to 50/50 in the vast majority of species. Some species (e.g. clown fish) have environments and traits which push this equilibrium away from 50/50. Fisher's explanation for this phenomenon is widely accepted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle
  - cneumuel 10y ago
    Right, and just in case anyone is in doubt, the ratio for cattle is also 50/50. There is no sexing that I am aware of, but if someone is a vegetarian and drinks milk, they are still supporting the schnitzel industry.
  - tbrock 10y ago
    Obviously the natural ratio is 50/50. I was wondering more if it s bad that we skew it so much unnaturally to one side.
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  That's not the natural ratio at birth, that may be what some people like to keep their flock at by eating the males.
LionessLover 10y ago
> A farmer who sells 250 chickens a year can bring in $1,250, versus the extreme-poverty line of about $700 a year. (That's the comment when you answer the quiz correctly.) What a simplification. I'm all for the chickens, but the quiz and this quiz-answer-comment make it seem a little too easy. If you want to sell 250 chickens a year you a) need quite a few more than that, b) you need SPACE - and it should provide plenty of free food for hundreds of chickens (so, LOTS of space), and c) the more chickens the higher the risk of disease, and several hundred chickens is <i>a lot</i> of chickens for a poor guy, d) if you don't have LOTS of space you will need to get food from somewhere (and pay for it?).
- ensignavenger 10y ago
  250 chickens a year wouldn't be that hard. 8-12 weeks from birth to butchering weight would mean you need a substantially smaller flock than 250 birds. If they scrounging for most of their diet, it may take a bit longer to get to butcher weight. Also, if they are scrounging you need more space- and your success will depend on keeping predators out. But you won't need 'several hundred' chickens at any one time to reach that goal.
jds375 10y ago
I find it a bit odd that he doesn't mention actually eating the chicken itself at any point. He mentions selling the chickens for more nutritious food than just eggs... But isn't chicken meat alone pretty nutritious?
shireboy 10y ago
I am not poor, but did recently raise chickens for about a year, and did the math on how they fared as an investment. I would disagree they are "easy and inexpensive", though in a 3rd world setting with some luck it may vary. Here's a rough summary from my experience: -1 x Coop (self-made from scavenged wood, home store bought wood, wire, and hinges) ~$400 -5 x laying chickens ~$100 (Chicks are cheaper, but you pay to feed them for N months before they lay, and they need special care. Even then, some died or got sick and quit laying) So let's call it a $500 initial investment. Mine laid roughly 12 eggs a week. Near me, we pay $5 for a dozen farm-fresh eggs. So it would take ~100 weeks to pay off my investment, not taking into account the ~20/mo for feed, bedding(hay), wormer, and time spent fooling with them. Time-wise, in addition to building the coop, etc. I had to let them in/out daily and feed and water them. They were fun. I like fresh eggs and I'll probably do it again sometime. But a good investment they were not.
- deleted 10y ago
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- return0 10y ago
  so most of your cost was the coop. You could just put any old fence in a corner of your garden and you'd be fine. And you can feed them all the leftovers of the day.
  - shireboy 10y ago
    Then the raccoons and cats would get them and I'd never make my money back.
- mod 10y ago
  I think this is way out of line. (I also keep chickens, though not with the tractor I'm about to list): Here's a $300 chicken tractor, complete package: https://www.aosom.com/pawhut-96-wooden-backyard-hen-house-chicken-coop.html https://www.aosom.com/pawhut-96-wooden-backyard-hen-house-ch... Depending on your situation, you might not need much of a coop. I would expect you could get away with $100 in supplies, in the US--not using scavenged wood--if you didn't need an enclosure etc, and just a small coop with nesting boxes. Chicks are $2 and less, so it seems absurd to pay $20 for a laying hen. In my area I think hens are worth about $6-$8. Your 12 eggs/week (for 5 hens) was a bit low, but of course that can vary greatly by variety. Many hens can lay for 4-5 years, though, and slow down as they go. I'd expect near the end you'd get 12/week. FWIW I had 9 chickens and was getting 3doz+/week. If it was winter, you might have needed a light in the coop to extend 'daylight' hours. They lay more slowly in the winter. My feed runs about $12/month in the winter, $3/month right now. I seriously can't see how you could feed 5 chickens $20/month worth of feed. Around here 50lb bags of layer pellets go for $10-$12. Plus I throw them scraps from the table, which would be waste anyway. I bought one thing of straw that is going to last about 2 years for $12 at TSC. I don't count my time--and actually, these days my six year old does nearly all of the work to take care of the chickens (releasing, feeding, locking up at night). The straw need not be purchased, though--plenty of substitutes could be had for free or cheap. Shredded newspaper would probably work. For your $500 + $20/month I think you should have been able to handle about 15-20 hens and therefore triple your production, or make your money back in about 30 weeks. Even at 100 weeks, it's not a bad investment, IMO, given that it just generates money forever after that.
cmurf 10y ago
Impractical to raise chickens in cities where it's illegal to butcher them. The egg laying tapers off at 3 years, but they'll live to ~10 years. That's a pet, or a freeloading chicken you have to feed but don't get eggs from. So...? Yeah, not terribly practical unfortunately.
- y04nn 10y ago
  You can eat it after 3 years.
  - 50CNT 10y ago
    Not if you are unable to butcher them.
    - 4ad 10y ago
      Of the many problems 3rd world countries have, this is not one of them.
- pc86 10y ago
  The inability to butcher the animal is definitely a problem. I'm not well versed in this area, is it typical to butcher a chicken after the egg laying tapers off, or does it typically happen before/much after? If you're doing this for convenience, it may be worth making a trip out of the city to have someone butcher them when the time is right. If you're doing this to save money, it's likely you don't have an easy means of transportation for something like that.
  - cmurf 10y ago
    If it's a male, typically butchered young, 40-50ish days. You only need so many roosters, and they're loud once they get old enough to crow. In most U.S. cities, crowing roosters are illegal, but mainly that's because it pisses off the neighbors. Butchering elsewhere might work. Seems like a pain. And seems like there could be a limit on how many you can butcher rather than making it illegal. E.g. Denver, I think you can only have eight chickens at a time anyway. Age wise, eating chickens are always young, less than 50 days. Some people might butcher the egg laying chicken at first molt when it'll stop laying eggs for 1-3 months. Others do it at 2-3 years when it tapers off. These are tougher meat chickens but they stew fine.
jakeogh 10y ago
I started raising chickens 2 years ago. A few things I have learned: If you have a yard that they can run free in, they don't need a coop. Chickens will happily roost in the trees. I live in southern Arizona, so the winters are mild, but I know of people that do the same thing in much colder climates. Chickens are tough. An added benefit is they are actually safer, if they are locked in a coop, and a predator gets in, it's going to kill them all. Outside, they can hide (good luck finding a scared chicken, they are really good at bolting to a hideaway) or fight. Chickens make all kinds of commotion if there's a predator around. They will make their nests in secluded shady spots and unlike a coop, they do not poop in their nests so the eggs are very clean. I supplement their foraging with chicken feed, but it's not necessary, there's enough critters and plants, they often just ignore the feed. What they really want is your compost, no need to separate out what they eat and don't eat, they do that. The rest attracts their favourite food of all: bugs. Going coop-less also removes the chore of cleaning the coop. In AZ their poop dries up very quickly and if they are free range it's not really noticeable since it's so spread out. They need lots of water and shade, so make a continuous drip somewhere in the shade. Domestic cats don't mess with full grown chickens, and in my experience they leave the chicks alone too if they are fully feathered and about pigeon size. The cats eat pigons on a regular basis, but they let the chicks run around and seem to enjoy them. In the daytime it's common to see the cats and chickens laying around in the shade within a foot of each other. Racoons like chicken, and they are good climbers, but the chickens just make lots of noise and fly off if one gets too close. By then I have my paintball gun out and the Racoons learn quickly to get dinner elsewhere. I'm constantly surprised about how smart they are, if they know they are not allowed in a spot they will wait for you to go away and then rush over. If you catch them in the act, they freak out and run off back to their allotted area. I find small firecrackers a good way to tell them "stay away". They learn quickly. Most of my chickens are good flyers, they can easily jump up to a perch 5ft above the ground and then into a tree from there. They could also easily fly over my fence and exit the yard, but they _never_ do. I wish I had started years ago, the eggs are fantastic.
- ischnura 10y ago
  I have seen a similar setting in Brazil with small Bantam chickens. Some breeds are more self-sufficient l than others. What chicken breed do you raise?
Animats 10y ago
Some idiot in my neighborhood tried raising chickens, and they got loose. Some days I've had 16 chickens in my front yard. There are at least two roosters, so the flock is self-sustaining. They hide in the creek gully where they're hard to catch. This has been going on for two years now.
- wtbob 10y ago
  > Some idiot in my neighborhood tried raising chickens, and they got loose. Sounds like some philanthropist has kindly provided you with all the chicken you can eat — if you catch it.
ddon 10y ago
According to this table, raising ducks is more interesting than growing chickens: https://www.tyrantfarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/duck-vs-chicken.png https://www.tyrantfarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/duck-...
- huac 10y ago
  if you have a lake in your backyard?
- jakeogh 10y ago
  My neighbour keeps suggesting I add some ducks, seems like a good excuse to make one of these natural pools. Also, in town where I am, you cant have a rooster (thank god), but male ducks are aok.
SixSigma 10y ago
I would raise iguanas https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/ar/magazine-articles/iguana-farming https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/ar/magazine-articles...
gfo 10y ago
This sounds like a fantastic idea. However, if he really gives a flock of chickens to a bunch of families in need, won't that reduce their monetary value over time? If every family has chickens, the monetary incentive isn't there for others to purchase them, or the higher supply will squash demand and drive the price down. There's still the health benefit and it's obviously a great initiative.
trial1234 10y ago
I used to spend majority of my Summer each year (when I was a pre-teen) in a very poor South Indian village where my extended family lived. Our family owned a large flock of chicken. I enjoyed feeding the chicken, feed like rice, maize, wheat, etc., though for the most part, the chicken did not expect to be fed anything. They would just graze on whatever they found. Now that I look back, interestingly, every family (even the poorest) in that village owned a flock of chicken. It was as though the flock of chicken was one common thread that ran through every household in the village. At the time though I didn't have the sagacity to realize the economic incentives of owning a flock of chicken.
dingleberry 10y ago
Raising chicken is a recession-proof investment which made robust by 'cloning' <- you put initial capital, got divident of its type; type can be money, chicken, plant, whatever; multiply base by cloning. I plant kangkong. Initial capital is 1usd, about 300 stems. harvesting biweekly, i get 2600% roi. That's divident part. I can clone the kangkong by cutting and replant cut stems. It's multiplying the capital part. Similarly with chicken, one can eat dividend (eggs) and multiplying base (breeding/'cloning') with cash only, i cannot get good dividend (say, by buying bond); much less luck with cloning cash legally. Extrapolating to basic income, observe that poverty is lifted fast if the cash is invested in high roi activities (like entrepreneurship) that grow and scale fast. It's the type of activity that matters more than the cash.
tkyjonathan 10y ago
This makes no financial sense. You would be better to eat the chicken feed yourself (corn/grains) and get x50 more caloric value for your money.
spoofball 10y ago
The way chickens are raised today, you'd be insane to raise chickens. Chickens of the old, roamed the grass, picking little shits that no one could find or eat, growing slowly but steadily, surviving and mating. Today, they gorge on soybean-B12 juice that was raised on ex-rainforest area. It's highly unsustainable and ridiculously bad investment. Bill Gates has previously written about meat and its sustainability and has shown serious lack of understanding of how it all works on a global scale. Yes, chickens being raised on a field filled with little nutrients only chickens can see is exactly the same as cows being raised in an environment where grass grows around them and climate is pretty stable. That's not the way Africa or India will get its dosage of meat, and it cannot be done in any way other than massive soybean way (the best source of protein and growth for all living animals). When we get Africans or Indians on the luxurious flesh, we'll never get them off the bandwagon and the unsustainability of the process will ruin more rainforests, more oceans, more living species and more life. Absolutely disappointed with Bill. I guess he's totally oblivious to the dead oceans zones that are caused primarily by animal agriculture. Or that 90% of the rainforest is being cut primarily for soybean, that is primarily given to the animals in the animal agriculture. Can't believe a guy was solving a problem this huge and he seems to still be on the meat bandwagon.
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  I'm not sure you followed the article. He's arguing for small scale, not large scale investment. Raising chickens primarily for their eggs, and secondarily for their meat. Indeed, he appears to be advocating "chickens of old" as you call them, rather than industrial operations to increase self-sufficiency. Because they continually produce food, are largely self-sufficient, living off calories otherwise rejected and because they are small and inexpensive, chicken's are an excellent investment on a small scale.
  - spoofball 10y ago
    But that is a hundred year old story. I can't see what is so insightful about that. (small scale is efficient for local needs) What he's not mentioning at all is that the Africans and Indians will get conditioned by meat. Their cultures will grow on meat. I saw it happen to my native country. When meat was just a once in a month occasion, after just 50 years, everything else is considered food for the poor and flesh is in every meal. Why would we want to repeat the same mistake? Condition new 2+ billion people on meat, increase their desire for luxury and let the capitalism meet the demand? It's absolutely impossible that small scale chicken farms meet the demand of 2 billion people and we all know that Brazil will start cutting more of the Amazon (it's already doing that) to raise more soybean to get that newly discovered stream of money. One can do the calculation for cattle, and you'll see that grass-fed cattle barely meets 10% of the current demand. I'm quite baffled by the lack of mention of the long-term consequences in the article. Not only will they get richer, but shifting their culture from mainly plant-based to meat-based will have a huge impact on the world. Just look at China and what happened in the last 60 years. From a country that had only 4kg of meat per person per year, they now have 50kg - just recently their government organization urged their people to eat less meat. (Chinese ocean floor is practically dead) Not to mention this: http://globalfarmernetwork.org/2016/06/open-letter-to-the-eu-parliament-from-a-kenyan-farmer-leave-africa-alone/ http://globalfarmernetwork.org/2016/06/open-letter-to-the-eu... Why wouldn't Europe give GMO to Africa? Why wouldn't everyone lobby for more plants in Africa? Because we want to sell that unsustainable dairy, eggs and meat.
josu 10y ago
A touch of humor, a clip from Harmony Korine's brilliant Mister Lonely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2B4q1yWk2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2B4q1yWk2U
neves 10y ago
What about the chicken feces? Wouldn't it be terrible for your health to live in a small house full of feces?
Dowwie 10y ago
Please note Bill's address to the community about his charitable donations contingent upon our participation. I like how he is engaging the community to spread a good idea.
carapace 10y ago
(Useless blank page without JS enabled. Whine. Complain.)
srymrgates 10y ago
I don't know why would you raise chicken, but I do know why your mother raises cocks
nunb 10y ago
Joel Salatin of Polyface farms might be an interesting read. He also has a lot of videos on youtube. Here is one [1] but I recall seeing an interesting video where he runs larger ruminants (cows) and then chickens (coop on wheels) and then plants the area (the chickens aerate the soil). He also wrote an article "Everything I want to do is illegal" and has several books on the mess of agricultural bureaucracy. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQ5y5_0dRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQ5y5_0dRc
cplease 10y ago
> They empower women. Because chickens are small and typically stay close to home, many cultures regard them as a woman’s animal, in contrast to larger livestock like goats or cows. Women who sell chickens are likely to reinvest the profits in their families. Uh... this is empowering??? EDIT: > If you read this article, watch the video above, and answer one question below, I will donate—on your behalf via Heifer—a flock of chickens to a family in poverty. OMG, it's finally happened for real. Anyone remember this? "Hello everybody, My name is Bill Gates. I have just written up an e-mail tracing program that traces everyone to whom this message is forwarded to. I am experimenting with this and I need your help. Forward this to everyone you know and if it reaches 1000 people everyone on the list will receive $1000 at my expense. Enjoy. Your friend, Bill Gates"
- mackal 10y ago
  In cultures where it is "considered woman's animal" the chickens provided by Heifer will most likely be raised by them. These woman will help bring in money for their families. That is what is empowering.
  - cplease 10y ago
    I get what the words say. What I am remarking on is that engaging in domestic, socially-acceptable and conventionally female work around the household for the economic benefit of ones family (as opposed to oneself) is a highly strained interpretation of "empowering." Yes, if the alternative is wallowing in penury and being completely economically dependent, it is certainly better. But empowering?
    - creshal 10y ago
      Why is it not empowering to give women more economic independence, in way that's sustainable in their societies? Suffragettes in Europe had to fight for more economic rights for fifty years after getting the right to vote, and it was messy, protracted battle. (Until the 1970s, German husbands could dictate whether their wife were allowed to work or not, and kept control over their earnings for even longer.)
shirro 10y ago
Lots of people keep backyard chickens even in developed countries. Most of the local schools have chicken coops.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
raintrees 10y ago
Meta: Almost 10,000 lines of code for that web page (I have NoScript on by default, I check source to see what I am missing when I get blank pages). But back to the main point: When my wife and I moved up to this very rural area of coastal Northern California, we took over dad's chickens. He had been keeping them penned, but we let them out, and the eggs became drastically better tasting. More protein, I assume. It has also taught me that chicken-based epithets carry some weight, they are not the brightest of creatures. We are considering adding a few more this year, we have avoided roosters, so we do not have the risk of fertilized eggs. The trade off is we pay for the odd hen or two, once every couple of years or so. We now enjoy more traditional recipes that use uncooked eggs or lightly cooked - I hadn't realized what I had been missing. I have definitely learned quite a bit, but so much more to go.
known 10y ago
Bill Gates should live in a 3rd world village for 6 months to really understand the nuances of poverty; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untouchability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untouchability and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
- ramblerman 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
known 10y ago
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.

347 points by kuusisto 10y ago

"Watch the video to get +100 Pts" What is this, some sort of gamification to get people to read and watch more content on the gates website?

prawn 10y ago
Might be a strategy to get the public to become more active on social issues. I know I'd use gamification as one method if it were up to me.

bencollier49 10y ago

If six times as many people raise chickens, won't the sale price of chickens go down and negate (part of) the effect of providing all the chickens in the first place? Shouldn't the number of people raising chickens have already reached a market equilibrium?

aurelienb 10y ago
Yes, more chicken mean cheaper eggs/chicken...
mattnewton 10y ago
Probably not because: 1) Farming chickens requires capital investment that might not be available to poorer families. Equilibrium can only be reached if the would-be-chicken-farmers have easy access to credit. 2) Chickens have inherent value; you can consume the eggs yourself as a substitute for other goods you were going to buy, and the meat as well.
shoover 10y ago
Perhaps. That is a good question that Bill should address in the analysis. If the price goes down then the farmers eat more eggs (and chickens, if they want), which is still a good outcome.
kuusisto 10y ago
That was a concern of mine too. It seems hard to guess how that might play out in practice though without a lot more information. For example, I wonder how localized the market effects might be. That is, how much do local populations sell chickens to one another, and how much does that affect market equilibrium.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
Only in the universe with perfectly rational actors where markets always clear. As there is stiction in mechanical systems, markets may not converge on perfect equilibria.
zhte415 10y ago
Yes and no. Owning the chickens means owning capital, not being a waged consumer. Chickens also have inherent value, being able to lay eggs and have more chickens. Also many suggestions in the article about empowering women, which compounds the impact of capital ownership. Mainly marxist interpretation. Owning chickens means a surplus of chickens, and therefore there will be no more grain. Malthus. Price of grain/feed will change, but assuming chickens eat grain + anything, it might not change that much. Added benefits of immunized chickens. Unknown effect of price of chickens, perhaps deflationary pressure on price of other goods. Ricardo, perhaps. The network effects will be interesting. Every house with a couple of chickens is very worthy selfsustainment. A form of basic income.

bko 10y ago

> If you read this article, watch the video above, and answer one question below, I will donate—on your behalf via Heifer—a flock of chickens to a family in poverty. Giving a flock of chickens to desperately poor families sounds like a great idea that will pay dividends for many years. However, I can't help but be reminded of the many charitable programs that sound great but end up having very unusual unintended consequences that often defeat the purpose or make it worse. Anyone care to speculate as to some unintended consequences this project may have?

Etarip 10y ago
Notice in the video how they're not feeding the chickens by letting them forage. They're always feeding them grain.
- crpatino 10y ago
  Grain in bulk is still cheaper than poultry. However, you have a point. If poor urban families do not have access to fairly priced chicken feed, they will face the choice of feeding them pet food (at a net economic loss) or cutting their losses and eating all the chickens right away.
  - giarc 10y ago
    Please read the article written by Bill. One of the first lines is that chickens are easy to feed because they can make do with stuff they naturally find on the ground. Given grain will help them grow faster, but it's not imperative.
    - crpatino 10y ago
      Yes, as I mentioned in my edit to GP, I have now read the article. It still sounds strange to me. I mean, how is it that 3rd country rural people cannot not know about chickens? I assumed this would be about giving flocks to urban poor, where there is precious little area not covered by concrete and the chickens would likely forrage on half poisoned cockroaches or something like that.

lumberjack 10y ago

It is not specified what they mean by "chicken" (age and breed and sex) but $5 seems like really expensive. I know that you can buy baby chicks from an incubator for egg laying purposes for like 3 euro or less in rural western Europe. Breeds meant to be harvested for their meat cost even less.

bryanlarsen 10y ago
I get the impression that's for a fully grown chicken sold for meat. I have no idea how big those chickens are. In North America live chickens sell for between 30 and 50 cents a pound. The chickens in the video look like small roasters, definitely under 10 pounds.
- newjersey 10y ago
  I see decreasing price of chicken/eggs as a good thing. If a fully grown chicken costs upwards of $5, why is it not a good idea to use better facilities? Wouldn't it be cheaper to keep the birds caged up? I guess it depends on our goal here. Is the idea to give a sense of "ownership" so the program partners feel empowered and can make decisions individually on whether to keep, raise, sell, or eat chicken and eggs? If it is not that, then I think we should explore industrial farming and some central planning. Five dollars for a small live chicken sounds like a problem which this project can help solve but I think we should welcome bringing down the cost (and keeping it stable at the lower sticker price) of nutrition be it animal-based or plant-based should be welcome. tl;dr I don't mean to say don't do this but rather we need to do more.
- pitt1980 10y ago
  how am I able to buy a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store for $5? seems like I've getting pretty much everything that's economically viable from the chicken, plus a fair amount of labor put into the chicken
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    Well, the rotisserie chicken is very likely grown on a massively capital-intensive assembly line, and quite possibly delivered frozen. Those options are likely not available to the people this is trying to help. Also: fresh, free-range, "organic" chicken costs more like $3.00-$5.00 per pound in most areas.

spydum 10y ago

maybe I'm missing something, what will the chickens eat? "whatever they find on the ground" is not exactly a strategy for growth, especially if everybody is raising chickens, you can pretty much expect the availability of edible stuff to reach zero in villages. not saying this doesnt work, but it's still an energy in/out problem right, where is the new source of energy?

CuriouslyC 10y ago
Chickens can eat bugs, plants and food waste that people wouldn't touch. This would work fine assuming at least a temperate climate (ideally tropical) and small villages with a fairly low density.
- Grue3 10y ago
  If chicken can freely walk around, there immediately occurs the problem of people stealing others' chicken. I grew up in a Soviet village and it happened a lot, so I'd imagine it would be even worse in poorer countries.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Don't worry, the next charity can donate guns to protect your chickens. /s So Charity is really hard to do right. Bill Gates seems to try to do it right. Hopefully he has thought of this already?
  - CuriouslyC 10y ago
    In a larger, more populated village, this is definitely a potential concern. In the smaller, less dense villages where this program is likely targeted, everyone knows everyone, and chickens usually have sufficiently distinct markings that if you have a small flock you could probably identify your stolen bird without too much trouble. Just for reference, I've seen roaming chickens in small villages in the Philippines/Caribbean, it is very common. I even saw it in some decently sized towns, though it was less common. In cities everyone kept their chickens in pens, so I never saw them (though they woke me up every damned day, so I know there were plenty of them).

roel_v 10y ago

Reading the comments on that post make me weep for the future of mankind. It's like Youtube but worse - because at least on Youtube everybody knows they're being idiots.

clumsysmurf 10y ago

If you want to raise backyard chicks, double check your local chicken ordinances! Unfortunately, even when they are allowed, it can be the source of tension between neighbors: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/27/nation/la-na-nn-backyard-chicken-farmers-arizona-20121127 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/27/nation/la-na-nn-back...

benmanns 10y ago
But once you do check them, I recommend trying it. Raising chickens can be rewarding.
hijinks 10y ago
We have 6 in our backyard and you hardly notice them. They are generally very quiet. The only times ours makes noise is if one chases another. The birds in the tree make a lot more noise.
- jly 10y ago
  I find the same thing. My neighbors and I have chickens on ~5000 sq ft fenced lots and you barely notice them, especially when compared with the local bird and insect population. My neighbor has a rooster and even that isn't a large bother.
- conorh 10y ago
  Ours only make noise when they are laying eggs. We have 4 in our pretty small yard and ours make quite a lot of noise when they are laying, but that only lasts a few minutes usually.
rwmj 10y ago
In the UK, the 1950 Allotments Act trumps all other covenants and local ordinances, provided you're only keeping hens and they are not a nuisance (and despite the name, the Act in this instance applies to keeping hens anywhere). http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/14/31 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/14/31
- 10y ago

ensignavenger 10y ago

I know a older couple that have spent the last year or so traveling around Africa doing 'chicken projects' where they help build chicken coops and teach poor families how to raise chickens (pretty simple to do, actually, but there are little strategies one can use to increase profits- hardest part is keeping predators from eating them!) Cool stuff, glad to see Bill Gates onboard!

mooreds 10y ago
Sounds cool! Do they have a webpage/fb page where they are sharing their journey?
- ensignavenger 10y ago
  The wife posts on her personal facebook page periodically, but nothing generally public :(

fiatmoney 10y ago

I don't get it. As mentioned in the article, chickens are incredibly easy to bootstrap (ie, it's not like they require a huge capital outlay to get started, and they literally pay dividends in further chickens), and have been present in the area for centuries. What has been the obstacle that has kept them from already being common enough to drive the expected benefit of further investment to ~0? And how is that obstacle going to be overcome?

bryanlarsen 10y ago
They're giving away vaccinated chicks. I suspect that the vaccines are the main problem they're addressing. It's certainly possible that it's easier and cheaper to give away vaccinated chicks than it is to give away vaccinations.
- bko 10y ago
  The author mentioned the low cost of vaccines (the one that prevents the deadly Newcastle disease costs less than 20 cents). I suspect the reason that this is not already being done by the locals is that there are some other costs or factors that are specific to the local market that outsiders have no way of assessing.
  - lukeschlather 10y ago
    It sounds like in order to get money you need to be raising and selling on the order of 100-300 chickens per year. So we're talking $20-40 year. To put that in perspective for a contract software developer making $100k+/year, that's like spending $20k/year on software licenses.
    - allannienhuis 10y ago
      $.20 cost of vaccination per $5.00 chicken is 4 percent cost. You're quoting 20 percent cost comparison. Am I missing something?

swehner 10y ago

If they're so great, why do they need to be promoted?

tacos 10y ago
Same reason condoms and vaccines do. It's hard to change behaviors.
sailfast 10y ago
Because the families in greatest need cannot afford the chickens in the first place.

BadassFractal 10y ago

Any threat that by increasing the # of chickens around humans' living quarters in the third world we might be increasing the chances of developing avian diseases that jump onto surrounding humans, creating new epidemics?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ktRolster 10y ago

This isn't the first program of this type, so he's not going into it blind. See this for one example: http://www.cityfarmer.info/2013/11/15/gaza-urban-rabbit-raising-intervention/ http://www.cityfarmer.info/2013/11/15/gaza-urban-rabbit-rais... I also remember reading about a rabbit raising program in the Philippines several years back, but I can't find a reference to it.

psadri 10y ago

I wish a local person could give us their perspective on this initiative.

0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago

When he says stuff like this does it affect the commodities market? Edit: just more unintended consequences if so, and it is things like this that make me aspire to be a good neighbor instead of a Manager.

grishas 10y ago

Pretty much all research has shown that the best way to improve poverty is to give people money, and not some sort of good that you've decided is better (goats, chickens, cows, whatever). Unfortunately, giving away money just doesn't sell. :(

wrsh07 10y ago
I'm not sure that it's as cut and dried as you describe. If I understand correctly, GiveDirectly is uncertain about the effectiveness of their programs outside of their current "pilot" countries. [there are lots of factors: the poor in Kenya & Uganda are very poor - and the marginal dollar to them is very effective, replacing thatched roofs, etc; Kenya has good support for transferring money] Besides, it's a good thing to experiment to see how effective different methods are. It seems naive to settle on one method and decide all other methods are "stupid," especially when contributing to one doesn't necessarily detract from the other [the Gates foundation has enough money to saturate any one charity]. It's always so surprising to me to see people unhappy about the good work others are doing.

whiddershins 10y ago

Re: many people wondering why this hasn't happened organically, it is easy to underestimate how much cultural attitudes can affect common practice. As an anecdote, when I visited rural China a couple of years back I asked my friends who grew up there why, if most people had one chicken, they didn't simply grow a few more? The response was "you don't know what it was like back then. In the Mao attitude people would say ... 'who are you to have two chickens when everyone else only has one' " ... which was enough social pressure to keep everyone to one chicken, no matter how much that contributed to malnourishment. I'm not proposing the same social attitudes are at play in these regions, but there may be other non-obvious contexts discouraging people from getting started with a flock. For some scenarios I could imagine an initiative like this helping to break through inertia and change norms.

tonmoy 10y ago
This seems very accurate. When I was younger it was a social taboo for middle class families in rural area to raise animals in out country. Then the government started blasting propaganda about how farming fish and raising chickens/goats was a noble "entrepreneur" like thing, and now it does not seem like that much of a taboo any more.
- mapt 10y ago
  There is a campaign in West Africa right now to grow 'grasscutter', aka greater cane rat, as an entrepreneurial alternative to bush meat and as a noble poverty reduction measure. The biggest argument for micro livestock in extreme poverty areas is the barrier to entry. You can run a large chicken, rabbit, cuy, or grasscutter farm for less than it costs to own a single pair of cattle, and nobody in the area has high amounts of saved wealth. http://www.nap.edu/read/1831/chapter/1#xv http://www.nap.edu/read/1831/chapter/1#xv is an attempt to explore the options for getting the world's subsistence farmers (mostly growing crops that have already been heavily automated) into livestock production (which still require lots of human care).

paganel 10y ago

My parents live in a village in Eastern Europe with less than $2 a day (I also chip in to financially help them), and they do indeed raise chickens, they've being doing that for the last 15 years or so, since they moved out to the countryside. Bill Gates is correct in his assessment, it's way more profitable to raise chickens than, say, cows. You need to have a bigger barn for cows, you need to do all the hay thing, which is very time consuming and demands a lot of extra work just for feeding said cows, you need to pay someone to take care of the cows when they go out to eat in the summer on the communal field. It's easier to just barter your chickens' eggs for some milk or cheese, that's at least what my mom does. It's also quite profitable to grow beans and cabbage. They preserve well over winter well into spring and you can also use them for bartering.

Houshalter 10y ago
> it's way more profitable to raise chickens than, say, cows. You need to have a bigger barn for cows, you need to do all the hay thing, which is very time consuming and demands a lot of extra work just for feeding said cows, you need to pay someone to take care of the cows when they go out to eat in the summer on the communal field. This is surprising to me. Of course a cow should be more work to raise than a chicken. But it has so many times more meat on it than a chicken, and is more energy efficient per calorie consumed too. Similarly with beans and cabbage. They might be easier to grow, but in terms of calories they seem much less efficient than, say, potatoes. If this was addressed in the article, sorry. It's just a blank page on my browser.
- thevardanian 10y ago
  I highly doubt that Beef is a more efficient if source of meat than Chicken. I think Chicken meat is a lot more efficient. A little quick googling and I found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    Why would you think that? Larger animals are usually much more energy efficient for various reasons - less surface area to radiate heat, and economies of scale with larger organs.

deleted 10y ago

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fish55 10y ago

"Relative surplus value is produced through the reduction of the value of labor power (variable capital) by means of improvements in the production of goods (effectively the appropriation of productivity gains by the capitalist class)." -Marxist definition In other words, they will no longer need a wage that also represents the value of eggs, so: -the wage will ultimately be reduced -the portion of their unwaged labor (raising chickens) will increase People who raise their own chickens can work for less than those who don't. tldr: A service they could once afford will become unaffordable.

gearhart 10y ago

Anybody else surprised by how much a chicken costs in Africa? $5 is £3.45[1] and I can buy a (dead, plucked, gutted, packaged, delivered to my door) chicken in the UK for £2.95[2]. I realise the local supply's much lower because my Sainsbury's chicken is grown in a cage in a factory somewhere, but nonetheless, I didn't expect that. [1] I presume USD is the currency in the video, since 5 of the local currency is £0.006 [2] http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/chicken/sainsburys-british-whole-chicken--small-135kg-%28serves-2---3%29 http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/chicken/sainsb... edit: looks like I left the page open for longer than I thought - this discussion happened elsewhere hours ago. Apologies.

gricardo99 10y ago
There's also the famously cheap Costco $4.99 Rotisserie Chicken. But it seems it's a bit of a loss-leader for them[1]. [1] - http://time.com/money/3901655/costco-rotisserie-chickens-hot-dogs/ http://time.com/money/3901655/costco-rotisserie-chickens-hot...
Spooky23 10y ago
Chickens weren't sold that way until pretty recently in history in rich countries. Like cows, chickens provide ongoing sustenance. That $5 chicken may yield $50 in eggs. When the bird gets old, you make some soup.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  $5 seems to be the price for a carcass. In the video, dead chickens are tied together and draped over a bike for transport to wherever they are being sold.
  - kuusisto 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure the chickens tied together on the bike are alive. I imagine it's just a lot easier to transport a bunch of them with a bike when they're tied together like that. https://youtu.be/MwZxBPYqiLg?t=17s https://youtu.be/MwZxBPYqiLg?t=17s

tbrock 10y ago

What is the ratio of female hens to male roosters? Quick googling tells me 10 to 1 but I'm not sure if that is correct. Is there any other species that has a similar extremely lopsided number of one sex?

olooney 10y ago
The natural sex ratio of chickens is 50/50. Chicks are sexed when a few days old and excess males are disposed of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_sexing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_sexing There is strong evolutionary pressure that keep sex ratios at close to 50/50 in the vast majority of species. Some species (e.g. clown fish) have environments and traits which push this equilibrium away from 50/50. Fisher's explanation for this phenomenon is widely accepted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle
- cneumuel 10y ago
  Right, and just in case anyone is in doubt, the ratio for cattle is also 50/50. There is no sexing that I am aware of, but if someone is a vegetarian and drinks milk, they are still supporting the schnitzel industry.
- tbrock 10y ago
  Obviously the natural ratio is 50/50. I was wondering more if it s bad that we skew it so much unnaturally to one side.
MustardTiger 10y ago
That's not the natural ratio at birth, that may be what some people like to keep their flock at by eating the males.

LionessLover 10y ago

> A farmer who sells 250 chickens a year can bring in $1,250, versus the extreme-poverty line of about $700 a year. (That's the comment when you answer the quiz correctly.) What a simplification. I'm all for the chickens, but the quiz and this quiz-answer-comment make it seem a little too easy. If you want to sell 250 chickens a year you a) need quite a few more than that, b) you need SPACE - and it should provide plenty of free food for hundreds of chickens (so, LOTS of space), and c) the more chickens the higher the risk of disease, and several hundred chickens is <i>a lot</i> of chickens for a poor guy, d) if you don't have LOTS of space you will need to get food from somewhere (and pay for it?).

ensignavenger 10y ago
250 chickens a year wouldn't be that hard. 8-12 weeks from birth to butchering weight would mean you need a substantially smaller flock than 250 birds. If they scrounging for most of their diet, it may take a bit longer to get to butcher weight. Also, if they are scrounging you need more space- and your success will depend on keeping predators out. But you won't need 'several hundred' chickens at any one time to reach that goal.

jds375 10y ago

I find it a bit odd that he doesn't mention actually eating the chicken itself at any point. He mentions selling the chickens for more nutritious food than just eggs... But isn't chicken meat alone pretty nutritious?

shireboy 10y ago

I am not poor, but did recently raise chickens for about a year, and did the math on how they fared as an investment. I would disagree they are "easy and inexpensive", though in a 3rd world setting with some luck it may vary. Here's a rough summary from my experience: -1 x Coop (self-made from scavenged wood, home store bought wood, wire, and hinges) ~$400 -5 x laying chickens ~$100 (Chicks are cheaper, but you pay to feed them for N months before they lay, and they need special care. Even then, some died or got sick and quit laying) So let's call it a $500 initial investment. Mine laid roughly 12 eggs a week. Near me, we pay $5 for a dozen farm-fresh eggs. So it would take ~100 weeks to pay off my investment, not taking into account the ~20/mo for feed, bedding(hay), wormer, and time spent fooling with them. Time-wise, in addition to building the coop, etc. I had to let them in/out daily and feed and water them. They were fun. I like fresh eggs and I'll probably do it again sometime. But a good investment they were not.

deleted 10y ago
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return0 10y ago
so most of your cost was the coop. You could just put any old fence in a corner of your garden and you'd be fine. And you can feed them all the leftovers of the day.
- shireboy 10y ago
  Then the raccoons and cats would get them and I'd never make my money back.
mod 10y ago
I think this is way out of line. (I also keep chickens, though not with the tractor I'm about to list): Here's a $300 chicken tractor, complete package: https://www.aosom.com/pawhut-96-wooden-backyard-hen-house-chicken-coop.html https://www.aosom.com/pawhut-96-wooden-backyard-hen-house-ch... Depending on your situation, you might not need much of a coop. I would expect you could get away with $100 in supplies, in the US--not using scavenged wood--if you didn't need an enclosure etc, and just a small coop with nesting boxes. Chicks are $2 and less, so it seems absurd to pay $20 for a laying hen. In my area I think hens are worth about $6-$8. Your 12 eggs/week (for 5 hens) was a bit low, but of course that can vary greatly by variety. Many hens can lay for 4-5 years, though, and slow down as they go. I'd expect near the end you'd get 12/week. FWIW I had 9 chickens and was getting 3doz+/week. If it was winter, you might have needed a light in the coop to extend 'daylight' hours. They lay more slowly in the winter. My feed runs about $12/month in the winter, $3/month right now. I seriously can't see how you could feed 5 chickens $20/month worth of feed. Around here 50lb bags of layer pellets go for $10-$12. Plus I throw them scraps from the table, which would be waste anyway. I bought one thing of straw that is going to last about 2 years for $12 at TSC. I don't count my time--and actually, these days my six year old does nearly all of the work to take care of the chickens (releasing, feeding, locking up at night). The straw need not be purchased, though--plenty of substitutes could be had for free or cheap. Shredded newspaper would probably work. For your $500 + $20/month I think you should have been able to handle about 15-20 hens and therefore triple your production, or make your money back in about 30 weeks. Even at 100 weeks, it's not a bad investment, IMO, given that it just generates money forever after that.

cmurf 10y ago

Impractical to raise chickens in cities where it's illegal to butcher them. The egg laying tapers off at 3 years, but they'll live to ~10 years. That's a pet, or a freeloading chicken you have to feed but don't get eggs from. So...? Yeah, not terribly practical unfortunately.

y04nn 10y ago
You can eat it after 3 years.
- 50CNT 10y ago
  Not if you are unable to butcher them.
  - 4ad 10y ago
    Of the many problems 3rd world countries have, this is not one of them.
pc86 10y ago
The inability to butcher the animal is definitely a problem. I'm not well versed in this area, is it typical to butcher a chicken after the egg laying tapers off, or does it typically happen before/much after? If you're doing this for convenience, it may be worth making a trip out of the city to have someone butcher them when the time is right. If you're doing this to save money, it's likely you don't have an easy means of transportation for something like that.
- cmurf 10y ago
  If it's a male, typically butchered young, 40-50ish days. You only need so many roosters, and they're loud once they get old enough to crow. In most U.S. cities, crowing roosters are illegal, but mainly that's because it pisses off the neighbors. Butchering elsewhere might work. Seems like a pain. And seems like there could be a limit on how many you can butcher rather than making it illegal. E.g. Denver, I think you can only have eight chickens at a time anyway. Age wise, eating chickens are always young, less than 50 days. Some people might butcher the egg laying chicken at first molt when it'll stop laying eggs for 1-3 months. Others do it at 2-3 years when it tapers off. These are tougher meat chickens but they stew fine.

jakeogh 10y ago

I started raising chickens 2 years ago. A few things I have learned: If you have a yard that they can run free in, they don't need a coop. Chickens will happily roost in the trees. I live in southern Arizona, so the winters are mild, but I know of people that do the same thing in much colder climates. Chickens are tough. An added benefit is they are actually safer, if they are locked in a coop, and a predator gets in, it's going to kill them all. Outside, they can hide (good luck finding a scared chicken, they are really good at bolting to a hideaway) or fight. Chickens make all kinds of commotion if there's a predator around. They will make their nests in secluded shady spots and unlike a coop, they do not poop in their nests so the eggs are very clean. I supplement their foraging with chicken feed, but it's not necessary, there's enough critters and plants, they often just ignore the feed. What they really want is your compost, no need to separate out what they eat and don't eat, they do that. The rest attracts their favourite food of all: bugs. Going coop-less also removes the chore of cleaning the coop. In AZ their poop dries up very quickly and if they are free range it's not really noticeable since it's so spread out. They need lots of water and shade, so make a continuous drip somewhere in the shade. Domestic cats don't mess with full grown chickens, and in my experience they leave the chicks alone too if they are fully feathered and about pigeon size. The cats eat pigons on a regular basis, but they let the chicks run around and seem to enjoy them. In the daytime it's common to see the cats and chickens laying around in the shade within a foot of each other. Racoons like chicken, and they are good climbers, but the chickens just make lots of noise and fly off if one gets too close. By then I have my paintball gun out and the Racoons learn quickly to get dinner elsewhere. I'm constantly surprised about how smart they are, if they know they are not allowed in a spot they will wait for you to go away and then rush over. If you catch them in the act, they freak out and run off back to their allotted area. I find small firecrackers a good way to tell them "stay away". They learn quickly. Most of my chickens are good flyers, they can easily jump up to a perch 5ft above the ground and then into a tree from there. They could also easily fly over my fence and exit the yard, but they _never_ do. I wish I had started years ago, the eggs are fantastic.

ischnura 10y ago
I have seen a similar setting in Brazil with small Bantam chickens. Some breeds are more self-sufficient l than others. What chicken breed do you raise?

Animats 10y ago

Some idiot in my neighborhood tried raising chickens, and they got loose. Some days I've had 16 chickens in my front yard. There are at least two roosters, so the flock is self-sustaining. They hide in the creek gully where they're hard to catch. This has been going on for two years now.

wtbob 10y ago
> Some idiot in my neighborhood tried raising chickens, and they got loose. Sounds like some philanthropist has kindly provided you with all the chicken you can eat — if you catch it.

ddon 10y ago

According to this table, raising ducks is more interesting than growing chickens: https://www.tyrantfarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/duck-vs-chicken.png https://www.tyrantfarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/duck-...

huac 10y ago
if you have a lake in your backyard?
jakeogh 10y ago
My neighbour keeps suggesting I add some ducks, seems like a good excuse to make one of these natural pools. Also, in town where I am, you cant have a rooster (thank god), but male ducks are aok.

SixSigma 10y ago

I would raise iguanas https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/ar/magazine-articles/iguana-farming https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/ar/magazine-articles...

gfo 10y ago

This sounds like a fantastic idea. However, if he really gives a flock of chickens to a bunch of families in need, won't that reduce their monetary value over time? If every family has chickens, the monetary incentive isn't there for others to purchase them, or the higher supply will squash demand and drive the price down. There's still the health benefit and it's obviously a great initiative.

trial1234 10y ago

I used to spend majority of my Summer each year (when I was a pre-teen) in a very poor South Indian village where my extended family lived. Our family owned a large flock of chicken. I enjoyed feeding the chicken, feed like rice, maize, wheat, etc., though for the most part, the chicken did not expect to be fed anything. They would just graze on whatever they found. Now that I look back, interestingly, every family (even the poorest) in that village owned a flock of chicken. It was as though the flock of chicken was one common thread that ran through every household in the village. At the time though I didn't have the sagacity to realize the economic incentives of owning a flock of chicken.

dingleberry 10y ago

Raising chicken is a recession-proof investment which made robust by 'cloning' <- you put initial capital, got divident of its type; type can be money, chicken, plant, whatever; multiply base by cloning. I plant kangkong. Initial capital is 1usd, about 300 stems. harvesting biweekly, i get 2600% roi. That's divident part. I can clone the kangkong by cutting and replant cut stems. It's multiplying the capital part. Similarly with chicken, one can eat dividend (eggs) and multiplying base (breeding/'cloning') with cash only, i cannot get good dividend (say, by buying bond); much less luck with cloning cash legally. Extrapolating to basic income, observe that poverty is lifted fast if the cash is invested in high roi activities (like entrepreneurship) that grow and scale fast. It's the type of activity that matters more than the cash.

tkyjonathan 10y ago

This makes no financial sense. You would be better to eat the chicken feed yourself (corn/grains) and get x50 more caloric value for your money.

spoofball 10y ago

The way chickens are raised today, you'd be insane to raise chickens. Chickens of the old, roamed the grass, picking little shits that no one could find or eat, growing slowly but steadily, surviving and mating. Today, they gorge on soybean-B12 juice that was raised on ex-rainforest area. It's highly unsustainable and ridiculously bad investment. Bill Gates has previously written about meat and its sustainability and has shown serious lack of understanding of how it all works on a global scale. Yes, chickens being raised on a field filled with little nutrients only chickens can see is exactly the same as cows being raised in an environment where grass grows around them and climate is pretty stable. That's not the way Africa or India will get its dosage of meat, and it cannot be done in any way other than massive soybean way (the best source of protein and growth for all living animals). When we get Africans or Indians on the luxurious flesh, we'll never get them off the bandwagon and the unsustainability of the process will ruin more rainforests, more oceans, more living species and more life. Absolutely disappointed with Bill. I guess he's totally oblivious to the dead oceans zones that are caused primarily by animal agriculture. Or that 90% of the rainforest is being cut primarily for soybean, that is primarily given to the animals in the animal agriculture. Can't believe a guy was solving a problem this huge and he seems to still be on the meat bandwagon.

stinkytaco 10y ago
I'm not sure you followed the article. He's arguing for small scale, not large scale investment. Raising chickens primarily for their eggs, and secondarily for their meat. Indeed, he appears to be advocating "chickens of old" as you call them, rather than industrial operations to increase self-sufficiency. Because they continually produce food, are largely self-sufficient, living off calories otherwise rejected and because they are small and inexpensive, chicken's are an excellent investment on a small scale.
- spoofball 10y ago
  But that is a hundred year old story. I can't see what is so insightful about that. (small scale is efficient for local needs) What he's not mentioning at all is that the Africans and Indians will get conditioned by meat. Their cultures will grow on meat. I saw it happen to my native country. When meat was just a once in a month occasion, after just 50 years, everything else is considered food for the poor and flesh is in every meal. Why would we want to repeat the same mistake? Condition new 2+ billion people on meat, increase their desire for luxury and let the capitalism meet the demand? It's absolutely impossible that small scale chicken farms meet the demand of 2 billion people and we all know that Brazil will start cutting more of the Amazon (it's already doing that) to raise more soybean to get that newly discovered stream of money. One can do the calculation for cattle, and you'll see that grass-fed cattle barely meets 10% of the current demand. I'm quite baffled by the lack of mention of the long-term consequences in the article. Not only will they get richer, but shifting their culture from mainly plant-based to meat-based will have a huge impact on the world. Just look at China and what happened in the last 60 years. From a country that had only 4kg of meat per person per year, they now have 50kg - just recently their government organization urged their people to eat less meat. (Chinese ocean floor is practically dead) Not to mention this: http://globalfarmernetwork.org/2016/06/open-letter-to-the-eu-parliament-from-a-kenyan-farmer-leave-africa-alone/ http://globalfarmernetwork.org/2016/06/open-letter-to-the-eu... Why wouldn't Europe give GMO to Africa? Why wouldn't everyone lobby for more plants in Africa? Because we want to sell that unsustainable dairy, eggs and meat.

josu 10y ago

A touch of humor, a clip from Harmony Korine's brilliant Mister Lonely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2B4q1yWk2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2B4q1yWk2U

neves 10y ago

What about the chicken feces? Wouldn't it be terrible for your health to live in a small house full of feces?

Dowwie 10y ago

Please note Bill's address to the community about his charitable donations contingent upon our participation. I like how he is engaging the community to spread a good idea.

carapace 10y ago

(Useless blank page without JS enabled. Whine. Complain.)

srymrgates 10y ago

I don't know why would you raise chicken, but I do know why your mother raises cocks

nunb 10y ago

Joel Salatin of Polyface farms might be an interesting read. He also has a lot of videos on youtube. Here is one [1] but I recall seeing an interesting video where he runs larger ruminants (cows) and then chickens (coop on wheels) and then plants the area (the chickens aerate the soil). He also wrote an article "Everything I want to do is illegal" and has several books on the mess of agricultural bureaucracy. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQ5y5_0dRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQ5y5_0dRc

cplease 10y ago

> They empower women. Because chickens are small and typically stay close to home, many cultures regard them as a woman’s animal, in contrast to larger livestock like goats or cows. Women who sell chickens are likely to reinvest the profits in their families. Uh... this is empowering??? EDIT: > If you read this article, watch the video above, and answer one question below, I will donate—on your behalf via Heifer—a flock of chickens to a family in poverty. OMG, it's finally happened for real. Anyone remember this? "Hello everybody, My name is Bill Gates. I have just written up an e-mail tracing program that traces everyone to whom this message is forwarded to. I am experimenting with this and I need your help. Forward this to everyone you know and if it reaches 1000 people everyone on the list will receive $1000 at my expense. Enjoy. Your friend, Bill Gates"

mackal 10y ago
In cultures where it is "considered woman's animal" the chickens provided by Heifer will most likely be raised by them. These woman will help bring in money for their families. That is what is empowering.
- cplease 10y ago
  I get what the words say. What I am remarking on is that engaging in domestic, socially-acceptable and conventionally female work around the household for the economic benefit of ones family (as opposed to oneself) is a highly strained interpretation of "empowering." Yes, if the alternative is wallowing in penury and being completely economically dependent, it is certainly better. But empowering?
  - creshal 10y ago
    Why is it not empowering to give women more economic independence, in way that's sustainable in their societies? Suffragettes in Europe had to fight for more economic rights for fifty years after getting the right to vote, and it was messy, protracted battle. (Until the 1970s, German husbands could dictate whether their wife were allowed to work or not, and kept control over their earnings for even longer.)

shirro 10y ago

Lots of people keep backyard chickens even in developed countries. Most of the local schools have chicken coops.

deleted 10y ago

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raintrees 10y ago

Meta: Almost 10,000 lines of code for that web page (I have NoScript on by default, I check source to see what I am missing when I get blank pages). But back to the main point: When my wife and I moved up to this very rural area of coastal Northern California, we took over dad's chickens. He had been keeping them penned, but we let them out, and the eggs became drastically better tasting. More protein, I assume. It has also taught me that chicken-based epithets carry some weight, they are not the brightest of creatures. We are considering adding a few more this year, we have avoided roosters, so we do not have the risk of fertilized eggs. The trade off is we pay for the odd hen or two, once every couple of years or so. We now enjoy more traditional recipes that use uncooked eggs or lightly cooked - I hadn't realized what I had been missing. I have definitely learned quite a bit, but so much more to go.

known 10y ago

Bill Gates should live in a 3rd world village for 6 months to really understand the nuances of poverty; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untouchability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untouchability and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

ramblerman 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

known 10y ago

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.