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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

by qq99 2y ago

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

dcchambers 2y ago
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?
- sethammons 2y ago
  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.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> 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.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
  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"
  - daotoad 2y ago
    If only it was only the early hours. The damn things scream pretty much all the time. I've had two neighbors over the years that accidentally kept roosters. So, if you want to keep backyard chickens, save yourself the trouble and get the red sex linked chicks. They are hybrids whose color is very reliably determined by color, so you can be pretty sure you aren't getting a rooster chick. It's either that or brace yourself for the process of turning the occasion young rooster into fried chicken before it gets too obstreperous.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  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.
- fransje26 2y ago
  > 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.
sandermvanvliet 2y ago
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
- AllegedAlec 2y ago
  > - 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.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  > We’ve had a lot of PFOA/PFAS contamination and public health advise says to not eat eggs from backyard chickens Where?
  - AllegedAlec 2y ago
    Purportedly the Netherlands, but the research was badly performed. KNOWN PFAS contamination was around heavy industry, and yeah, if you live near those regions, maybe don't. Otherwise proceed with scepticism and/or some testing.
pulkitsh1234 2y ago
> 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?
- hattmall 2y ago
  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.
- sergers 2y ago
  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.
  - swiftcoder 2y ago
    My friend would spend summers at the family farm, and the youngest kids would be issued a rabbit as a pet for the duration. They'd then make the kids watch the rabbits be slaughtered and cleaned, and serve them up at the end of the vacation... Straight psychopath approach to child raising. The adults were all convinced this is how you made kids grow up tough
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      That's straight from the TV trope book, this is how movies/shows portray Evil Organization training ruthless spy assassins (except usually it's a dog, and they have to kill it themselves).
com2kid 2y ago
> 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!
- Maxion 2y ago
  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.
  - bilsbie 2y ago
    Taste (and health) are two things the market doesn’t select for.
- prepend 2y ago
  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.
  - CharlieDigital 2y ago
    > That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken. Taste is subjective. Sounds like his son preferred the taste of one over the other. My kids prefer nuggets over the whole roast chicken my wife and I eat. The salt, MSG, and seasoning of the nuggets along with the fat from the oil tastes better to them. Sadly, nothing I say will convince them otherwise.
eleveriven 2y ago
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.
- arkey 2y ago
  > 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.
throwaway2037 2y ago
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!
- qq99 2y ago
  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
burnished 2y ago
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.
- lewispollard 2y ago
  > 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
gadders 2y ago
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.
- cjrp 2y ago
  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.
  - n4r9 2y ago
    According to this website [0] you just need to register with the Animal and Plant Health Agency. [0] https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/maintain-the-garden/keeping-chickens/ https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/maintain-the-garden/ke...
  - gadders 2y ago
    There is some paperwork now in that you have to register your flock. I dread the day though that we are told to kill our hens because of an outbreak. It was bad enough keeping them undercover for one winter.
- Vinnl 2y ago
  Sounds like the true answer is having a colleague you can buy £1 eggs from.
MichaelRo 2y ago
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" :)
- KineticLensman 2y ago
  > 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.
  - technothrasher 2y ago
    > At least owls have the courtesy to cough up pellets containing the little bones of their prey As soon as somebody showed me this as a kid, I would constantly be looking in pine groves for pellets. There was something fascinating about pulling them apart and finding the little mouse bones. Whenever I have a chance now, I point it out to kids. Some of them are fascinated like I was, some of them can't understand why I showed them something dirty and boring <shrug>.
theshackleford 2y ago
> 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.
stinos 2y ago
> 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.
- qq99 2y ago
  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!
awongh 2y ago
> 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 https://erewhon.com/subcategory/33022/eggs - $16.99 a dozen
- maxdoop 2y ago
  Erewhon is probably THEE most expensive place lol
  - 0x457 2y ago
    Yeah, using erewhon to gauge price of anything isn't going to yield anything good. Well, it will reveal how much people willing to overpay to avoid seeing "poor" people.
- nightfly 2y ago
  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
  - ramesh31 2y ago
    >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 These numbers are absurd. You need a wooden box and some chicken wire, and chicks cost less than $1/bird. I don't understand why this always comes up on HN, where people are spending thousands of dollars on chickens. It's the simplest animal you can possibly own and they should pay for themselves almost immediately.
    - Larrikin 2y ago
everdrive 2y ago
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.
numba888 2y ago
> 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...
- dotancohen 2y ago
  That's what cervical dislocation is. The cervix is the neck. You're dislocating the head from the body, via the neck.
  - raisedbyninjas 2y ago
    AFAICT, biologists didn't screw up and give two different body parts the same name. Neck bones are called cervical vertebrae.
    - dotancohen 2y ago
      I see where you're going with that. The other body part is also a narrow passageway, which in many contexts is called a neck or bottleneck. In my language, we call that other body part "The neck of the womb" צוואר הרחם.
- arkey 2y ago
  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.
- fransje26 2y ago
  > Don't forget to ask for forgiveness And thank them for their help and for providing you with food.
kypro 2y ago
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.
- deepvibrations 2y ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YFz99OT18k
phpnode 2y ago
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
- koverstreet 2y ago
  You want a rooster, too. A rooster will also keep predators away.
koolba 2y ago
> 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.
- Yiin 2y ago
  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.
  - koolba 2y ago
    Cannibalistic behavior in chickens is not an opinion: https://extension.psu.edu/poultry-cannibalism-prevention-and-treatment https://extension.psu.edu/poultry-cannibalism-prevention-and... It’s one of the reasons factory farms clip the beaks. And regarding egg taste, have fun reading this: https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs
    - arkey 2y ago
      I generally agree with what you are saying, however I'm quite surprised at the pushback about homegrown eggs tasting better than mass-produced. Send me as many papers as you want, but respectfully, I have empirically tasted the difference. I have no interest on imposing my opinion on anyone, but to me it's pretty obvious and easy to understand and accept that a better fed, better cared for chicken will produce better eggs. A bit like with Wagyu steak, no?
pjerem 2y ago
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.
- whycome 2y ago
  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.
  - watwut 2y ago
    Given people grew animals for eating for centuries and generally were more cruel to them then we are , I doubt.
    - NineStarPoint 2y ago
      Those people were a lot more desperate for food than we were too, though.
    - adriand 2y ago
      > and generally were more cruel to them then we are Strongly disagree with this part of your statement. The scale of suffering from industrial animal processing far exceeds anything from past centuries. The one-on-one cruelty of past centuries exists today as well (there are plenty of hidden camera videos to that effect), but what's really different is that now we treat animals as if they are mere inputs to industrial processes, as if they have no feelings or emotions or capacity for suffering. In past centuries, chickens roamed free, sheep and cattle grazed on fields, etc. It was an idyllic experience compared to today's factory farm hellscape.
ozmodiar 2y ago
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.
- selfmodruntime 2y ago
  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.
  - ozmodiar 2y ago
    Yep, this is a problem right here. Once something does make it in it's a massacre.
- cluckindan 2y ago
  Tell them to get a farm dog or two. That’s pretty much the only working answer to predators on a farm.
  - ozmodiar 2y ago
    We're a bit rural but still too tightly packed for farm dogs. They've got a regular dog but it doesn't have quite the free rein a farm dog requires to keep chickens locked down. Kind of the worst of both worlds as far as the chickens are concerned.
- NoGravitas 2y ago
  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.
portaouflop 2y ago
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.
belorn 2y ago
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.
hasbot 2y ago
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.
TuringNYC 2y ago
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?
- arkey 2y ago
  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.
- svieira 2y ago
  Storey's Guides are a good starting point: tohttps://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/storeys-guide-to-raising-chickens-4th-edition-gail-damerow/1125531300 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/storeys-guide-to-raising-ch...
- qq99 2y ago
  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?
dgacmu 2y ago
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.
JamesLeonis 2y ago
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.
- Propelloni 2y ago
  > 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.
  - cameronh90 2y ago
    Depends on the nature and breed of the dog too. My GR goes into livestock guardian mode whenever the rabbits are free roaming in the garden (even though he's a bit scared of them ever since one bit him on the nose), but some dogs, terriers especially, will just instinctively chase and kill a rabbit. I assume it's fairly similar with chickens.
  - JamesLeonis 2y ago
    Totally fair. Unfortunately this dog is a 4 years old black lab and we don't have the capacity to train him out of it. We manage it by keeping him indoors when we let the chickens free range in the yard.
- sparsely 2y ago
  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.
nemo44x 2y ago
> - Chickens are very sweet animals Personally, I find them rather savory. Although deep fried with a bit of honey is good too.
- ilikecakeandpie 2y ago
  Did you find out about hacker news from Reddit?
giantg2 2y ago
"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.
- ilikecakeandpie 2y ago
  Do you know anyone where this has been the case?
  - slothtrop 2y ago
    * gestures to most of recorded history * Before the industrial revolution, 80% of us worked the land, most familiar with animal agriculture.
    - ilikecakeandpie 2y ago
      This is irrelevant. Do you bring up that before the industrial revolution that grown men used to marry children when people talk about modern views on grooming?
      - slothtrop 2y ago
        Did you miss the context? The other user questions whether people have ever been unperturbed by slaughter when raising animals. It's a strange sentiment when you consider that historically we have been much, much closer to the animals we consume and intimately familiar with the process of how they get to the table.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    Yes, I know people who raise chickens for dual purpose. There are entire breeds of chickens that are dedicated to dual production.
- threetonesun 2y ago
  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.
ushiroda80 2y ago
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.
- eckmLJE 2y ago
  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.
  - thesuitonym 2y ago
    > the cost of batteries to cover a decent power outage didn’t make sense to me. Are you trying to power your whole house during a power outage, or just a few necessities like a space heater, a few lamps, and maybe a hotplate?
cactusplant7374 2y ago
> - 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?
fransje26 2y ago
> 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.
- echoangle 2y ago
  Maybe the dog just values immediate reward higher even though it understands it could get even more later? How would you control for that?
wonderwonder 2y ago
"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.
DeepSeaTortoise 2y ago
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.
ciconia 2y ago
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.
Eric_WVGG 2y ago
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.
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softwaredoug 2y ago
I’ve hear another downside is the sheer amount of poop to clean up.
- r00fus 2y ago
  you mean free fertilizer to gather and use.
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jermberj 2y ago
Ignorant question: why might one need to euthanize a chicken?
- qq99 2y ago
  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.
127 2y ago
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.
josefresco 2y ago
> - 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 :-)
reverendsteveii 2y ago
>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.
crystal_revenge 2y ago
> - 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.
seizethecheese 2y ago
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.
- PastorSalad 2y ago
  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.
  - digitallis42 2y ago
    Pea gravel. Lots of pea gravel in the holes. Blow it in with water. You can't tunnel in pea gravel.
    - PastorSalad 2y ago
      I will pass this on to the general, he appreciates the intel.
  - joenot443 2y ago
    That's awesome. My father has been waging a similar war with the coyotes in the woods behind our farm for maybe 5 years now. Your foxes sound way more intrepid though, the coyotes here haven't tried burrowing, yet...
switch007 2y ago
> 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
groos 2y ago
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.
GuB-42 2y ago
> 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.
kvakerok 2y ago
"We can't build a bigger coop - Joey's going into soup."
dylanz 2y ago
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).
horrible-hilde 2y ago
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.
algo_trader 2y ago
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...
seanmcdirmid 2y ago
> - 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.
torbengee 2y ago
Inside the house? How? They shit wherever they happen to be ...
jolmg 2y ago
> 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.
qingcharles 2y ago
Literally nobody is mentioning the fact that to own 13 chickens there were 13 roosters that were euthanized as chicks. 50% of chickens are born male. Nobody wants all those roosters. Some dude in a factory is squeezing the chicks and looking up their buttholes to see if they are male or female, then the males are thrown into a meat grinder (literally). Saying all of that, I would rather eat eggs from chickens that had a half-decent life than those kept in horrible conditions.

by qq99 2y ago

dcchambers 2y ago

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?

sethammons 2y ago
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.

thaumasiotes 2y ago

> 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.

SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
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"
- daotoad 2y ago
  If only it was only the early hours. The damn things scream pretty much all the time. I've had two neighbors over the years that accidentally kept roosters. So, if you want to keep backyard chickens, save yourself the trouble and get the red sex linked chicks. They are hybrids whose color is very reliably determined by color, so you can be pretty sure you aren't getting a rooster chick. It's either that or brace yourself for the process of turning the occasion young rooster into fried chicken before it gets too obstreperous.
DonHopkins 2y ago
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.
fransje26 2y ago
> 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.

sandermvanvliet 2y ago

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

AllegedAlec 2y ago
> - 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.
throwaway2037 2y ago
> We’ve had a lot of PFOA/PFAS contamination and public health advise says to not eat eggs from backyard chickens Where?
- AllegedAlec 2y ago
  Purportedly the Netherlands, but the research was badly performed. KNOWN PFAS contamination was around heavy industry, and yeah, if you live near those regions, maybe don't. Otherwise proceed with scepticism and/or some testing.

pulkitsh1234 2y ago

> 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?

hattmall 2y ago
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.
sergers 2y ago
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.
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  My friend would spend summers at the family farm, and the youngest kids would be issued a rabbit as a pet for the duration. They'd then make the kids watch the rabbits be slaughtered and cleaned, and serve them up at the end of the vacation... Straight psychopath approach to child raising. The adults were all convinced this is how you made kids grow up tough
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    That's straight from the TV trope book, this is how movies/shows portray Evil Organization training ruthless spy assassins (except usually it's a dog, and they have to kill it themselves).

com2kid 2y ago

> 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!

Maxion 2y ago
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.
- bilsbie 2y ago
  Taste (and health) are two things the market doesn’t select for.
prepend 2y ago
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.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  > That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken. Taste is subjective. Sounds like his son preferred the taste of one over the other. My kids prefer nuggets over the whole roast chicken my wife and I eat. The salt, MSG, and seasoning of the nuggets along with the fat from the oil tastes better to them. Sadly, nothing I say will convince them otherwise.

eleveriven 2y ago

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.

arkey 2y ago
> 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.

throwaway2037 2y ago

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!

qq99 2y ago
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

burnished 2y ago

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.

lewispollard 2y ago
> 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

gadders 2y ago

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.

cjrp 2y ago
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.
- n4r9 2y ago
  According to this website [0] you just need to register with the Animal and Plant Health Agency. [0] https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/maintain-the-garden/keeping-chickens/ https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/maintain-the-garden/ke...
- gadders 2y ago
  There is some paperwork now in that you have to register your flock. I dread the day though that we are told to kill our hens because of an outbreak. It was bad enough keeping them undercover for one winter.
Vinnl 2y ago
Sounds like the true answer is having a colleague you can buy £1 eggs from.

MichaelRo 2y ago

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" :)

KineticLensman 2y ago
> 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.
- technothrasher 2y ago
  > At least owls have the courtesy to cough up pellets containing the little bones of their prey As soon as somebody showed me this as a kid, I would constantly be looking in pine groves for pellets. There was something fascinating about pulling them apart and finding the little mouse bones. Whenever I have a chance now, I point it out to kids. Some of them are fascinated like I was, some of them can't understand why I showed them something dirty and boring <shrug>.

theshackleford 2y ago

> 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.

stinos 2y ago

> 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.

qq99 2y ago
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!

awongh 2y ago

> 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 https://erewhon.com/subcategory/33022/eggs - $16.99 a dozen

maxdoop 2y ago
Erewhon is probably THEE most expensive place lol
- 0x457 2y ago
  Yeah, using erewhon to gauge price of anything isn't going to yield anything good. Well, it will reveal how much people willing to overpay to avoid seeing "poor" people.
nightfly 2y ago
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
- ramesh31 2y ago
  >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 These numbers are absurd. You need a wooden box and some chicken wire, and chicks cost less than $1/bird. I don't understand why this always comes up on HN, where people are spending thousands of dollars on chickens. It's the simplest animal you can possibly own and they should pay for themselves almost immediately.
  - Larrikin 2y ago

everdrive 2y ago

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.

numba888 2y ago

> 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...

dotancohen 2y ago
That's what cervical dislocation is. The cervix is the neck. You're dislocating the head from the body, via the neck.
- raisedbyninjas 2y ago
  AFAICT, biologists didn't screw up and give two different body parts the same name. Neck bones are called cervical vertebrae.
  - dotancohen 2y ago
    I see where you're going with that. The other body part is also a narrow passageway, which in many contexts is called a neck or bottleneck. In my language, we call that other body part "The neck of the womb" צוואר הרחם.
arkey 2y ago
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.
fransje26 2y ago
> Don't forget to ask for forgiveness And thank them for their help and for providing you with food.

kypro 2y ago

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.

deepvibrations 2y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YFz99OT18k

phpnode 2y ago

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

koverstreet 2y ago
You want a rooster, too. A rooster will also keep predators away.

koolba 2y ago

> 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.

Yiin 2y ago
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.
- koolba 2y ago
  Cannibalistic behavior in chickens is not an opinion: https://extension.psu.edu/poultry-cannibalism-prevention-and-treatment https://extension.psu.edu/poultry-cannibalism-prevention-and... It’s one of the reasons factory farms clip the beaks. And regarding egg taste, have fun reading this: https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs
  - arkey 2y ago
    I generally agree with what you are saying, however I'm quite surprised at the pushback about homegrown eggs tasting better than mass-produced. Send me as many papers as you want, but respectfully, I have empirically tasted the difference. I have no interest on imposing my opinion on anyone, but to me it's pretty obvious and easy to understand and accept that a better fed, better cared for chicken will produce better eggs. A bit like with Wagyu steak, no?

pjerem 2y ago

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.

whycome 2y ago
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.
- watwut 2y ago
  Given people grew animals for eating for centuries and generally were more cruel to them then we are , I doubt.
  - NineStarPoint 2y ago
    Those people were a lot more desperate for food than we were too, though.
  - adriand 2y ago
    > and generally were more cruel to them then we are Strongly disagree with this part of your statement. The scale of suffering from industrial animal processing far exceeds anything from past centuries. The one-on-one cruelty of past centuries exists today as well (there are plenty of hidden camera videos to that effect), but what's really different is that now we treat animals as if they are mere inputs to industrial processes, as if they have no feelings or emotions or capacity for suffering. In past centuries, chickens roamed free, sheep and cattle grazed on fields, etc. It was an idyllic experience compared to today's factory farm hellscape.

ozmodiar 2y ago

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.

selfmodruntime 2y ago
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.
- ozmodiar 2y ago
  Yep, this is a problem right here. Once something does make it in it's a massacre.
cluckindan 2y ago
Tell them to get a farm dog or two. That’s pretty much the only working answer to predators on a farm.
- ozmodiar 2y ago
  We're a bit rural but still too tightly packed for farm dogs. They've got a regular dog but it doesn't have quite the free rein a farm dog requires to keep chickens locked down. Kind of the worst of both worlds as far as the chickens are concerned.
NoGravitas 2y ago
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.

portaouflop 2y ago

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.

belorn 2y ago

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.

hasbot 2y ago

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.

TuringNYC 2y ago

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?

arkey 2y ago
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.
svieira 2y ago
Storey's Guides are a good starting point: tohttps://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/storeys-guide-to-raising-chickens-4th-edition-gail-damerow/1125531300 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/storeys-guide-to-raising-ch...
qq99 2y ago
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?

dgacmu 2y ago

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.

JamesLeonis 2y ago

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.

Propelloni 2y ago
> 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.
- cameronh90 2y ago
  Depends on the nature and breed of the dog too. My GR goes into livestock guardian mode whenever the rabbits are free roaming in the garden (even though he's a bit scared of them ever since one bit him on the nose), but some dogs, terriers especially, will just instinctively chase and kill a rabbit. I assume it's fairly similar with chickens.
- JamesLeonis 2y ago
  Totally fair. Unfortunately this dog is a 4 years old black lab and we don't have the capacity to train him out of it. We manage it by keeping him indoors when we let the chickens free range in the yard.
sparsely 2y ago
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.

nemo44x 2y ago

> - Chickens are very sweet animals Personally, I find them rather savory. Although deep fried with a bit of honey is good too.

ilikecakeandpie 2y ago
Did you find out about hacker news from Reddit?

giantg2 2y ago

"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.

ilikecakeandpie 2y ago
Do you know anyone where this has been the case?
- slothtrop 2y ago
  * gestures to most of recorded history * Before the industrial revolution, 80% of us worked the land, most familiar with animal agriculture.
  - ilikecakeandpie 2y ago
    This is irrelevant. Do you bring up that before the industrial revolution that grown men used to marry children when people talk about modern views on grooming?
    - slothtrop 2y ago
      Did you miss the context? The other user questions whether people have ever been unperturbed by slaughter when raising animals. It's a strange sentiment when you consider that historically we have been much, much closer to the animals we consume and intimately familiar with the process of how they get to the table.
- giantg2 2y ago
  Yes, I know people who raise chickens for dual purpose. There are entire breeds of chickens that are dedicated to dual production.
threetonesun 2y ago
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.

ushiroda80 2y ago

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.

eckmLJE 2y ago
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.
- thesuitonym 2y ago
  > the cost of batteries to cover a decent power outage didn’t make sense to me. Are you trying to power your whole house during a power outage, or just a few necessities like a space heater, a few lamps, and maybe a hotplate?

cactusplant7374 2y ago

> - 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?

fransje26 2y ago

> 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.

echoangle 2y ago
Maybe the dog just values immediate reward higher even though it understands it could get even more later? How would you control for that?

wonderwonder 2y ago

"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.

DeepSeaTortoise 2y ago

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.

ciconia 2y ago

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.

Eric_WVGG 2y ago

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.

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softwaredoug 2y ago

I’ve hear another downside is the sheer amount of poop to clean up.

r00fus 2y ago
you mean free fertilizer to gather and use.

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jermberj 2y ago

Ignorant question: why might one need to euthanize a chicken?

qq99 2y ago
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.

127 2y ago

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.

josefresco 2y ago

> - 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 :-)

reverendsteveii 2y ago

>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.

crystal_revenge 2y ago

> - 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.

seizethecheese 2y ago

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.

PastorSalad 2y ago
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.
- digitallis42 2y ago
  Pea gravel. Lots of pea gravel in the holes. Blow it in with water. You can't tunnel in pea gravel.
  - PastorSalad 2y ago
    I will pass this on to the general, he appreciates the intel.
- joenot443 2y ago
  That's awesome. My father has been waging a similar war with the coyotes in the woods behind our farm for maybe 5 years now. Your foxes sound way more intrepid though, the coyotes here haven't tried burrowing, yet...

switch007 2y ago

> 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

groos 2y ago

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.

GuB-42 2y ago

> 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.

kvakerok 2y ago

"We can't build a bigger coop - Joey's going into soup."

dylanz 2y ago

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).

horrible-hilde 2y ago

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.

algo_trader 2y ago

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...

seanmcdirmid 2y ago

> - 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.

torbengee 2y ago

Inside the house? How? They shit wherever they happen to be ...

jolmg 2y ago

> 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.

qingcharles 2y ago

Literally nobody is mentioning the fact that to own 13 chickens there were 13 roosters that were euthanized as chicks. 50% of chickens are born male. Nobody wants all those roosters. Some dude in a factory is squeezing the chicks and looking up their buttholes to see if they are male or female, then the males are thrown into a meat grinder (literally). Saying all of that, I would rather eat eggs from chickens that had a half-decent life than those kept in horrible conditions.