Bird flu is still a concern for backyard flocks.
If you’re willing to do the work, pay out the initial startup costs (and you can’t just grab the cheapest coop and call it done), make sure you have a vet that will work with chickens, and are willing to read up on their care, sure.
Chickens are fucking awesome. They are also messy, can be loud, aren’t always legal to keep in all towns, and can be a lot of work.
As an example, just our two and a half birds (one is a volunteer that’s kinda ours, but kinda not) we’ve gotten about 500 total into shelter and basic food and water dispensers. That’s on the cheap end, and we are essentially one bird shy of being too little space. A fourth bird could barely be kept properly, and a fifth would be unhealthy for them. It’s a smallish run, with a smallish coop. Both built rather than bought as a kit, which is why it was only 500 for everything. If I had been able to do the work, it would have been cheaper though.
Food is about 40 every three months for us, so not bad at all, and we could buy cheaper food.
Sweat wise, it’s maybe an hour a day every day, plus an extra hour or two a week for cleaning. And that’s for 3 birds, the more birds you add, the higher that goes for cleaning.
So far, a year and a half in, zero vet bills, but only because I’m comfortable dealing with minor issues. We’ve had a case of bumblefoot, a cracked beak, and the rooster had a bunch of feathers torn out by a dog.
Which is another factor. You may think you don’t have predators in your area. Having chickens will probably change that. Not only will anything sufficiently hungry go after them, but it you don’t have a big rooster, chances are they’ll succeed eventually. Only reason we still have the one hen is our rooster being one hell of a fighter when his flock is threatened.
Then, you have the scavengers. Rats, mice, squirrels, all kinds of critters will come for the free food you have out. You might get possums and raccoons too, after the eggs.
There’s a lot of poo. Like, the pile we have out in one far corner of the yard of mixed bedding and waste is about knee high and maybe five feet across. It does turn into decent soil eventually though. It just does so slower than it builds up, because bedding is bulky.
But! After all that, the eggs are the smallest benefit. I grew up with family that kept chickens as food and to sell as food, as well as the eggs. They weren’t very well socialized, so I didn’t realize how damn nice they can be to be around.
Outside, they follow me around and keep me company. If I pull up a chair, they’re scratching and piddling around me because they like the company. Inside (ours are pets), the one hen is always with one of us. She’s loving and sweet and bossy and sassy and entertaining and cuddly. The rooster, a little less on the sweet side, and he won’t pad train, so his indoor visits are shorter. But even when he’s ornery, I can pick him up, and he just melts when I’m petting or scratching him.
Hell, we had a disagreement earlier. He said my toes are food, and had insulted his lineage. This did not end the way he thought it would. He did not eat the yummy toes, despite biting them. Instead, he got tucked under my arm and babied until he was ready to behave. Five minutes later, he had forgiven the toes, and me. He melted a little and crooned.
How fucking cool is that? One of nature’s orneriest, scrappiest, outright mean at times critters, that will fight dogs, coyotes, possums, hawks, you name it; but he’ll also beg for scritches under his neck feathers and purr.
It isn’t for everyone. And if you think they’re something you can just throw in your back yard and get eggs from with no real effort, you’ll likely end up with your chickens gone.
Or you could go vegan and stop abusing other animals.
no one is abusing animals
exploitation is abuse. People are seeing these chickens as only a means to make eggs, instead of the individuals that they are.
I disagree that exploitation is abuse
My mom and her husband have a handful of chickens in their garden. They have a large, fenced off area surrounding the garden where they can move about freely, a well kept and insulated shed for the nights and they get fed with quality feed and often some treats and tablescraps they enjoy (they just love spaghetti for example). The chickens have names, adore their humans and are more like pets than livestock.
How is that animal abuse?
Modern chickens were bred so that they produce so many eggs that they literally drain their bodies of calcium. It wears their bodies down. Seeing them as someone to be exploited and only as a means to produce eggs is what is abusive.
In order to keep them healthy, you have to give them either an implant that stops them from producing eggs or feed the eggs back to them so that they recover the calcium.
Plus, what happens when they get old and stop producing eggs? Then what do you do? Do you just keep them around? Or do you kill them and then eat them? Doing that would also be abusive.
Seeing them as someone
most people don’t see chickens as people, so this isn’t a concern. they’re animals, not someones
You’re an animal too.
And yes, they are someones. They are sentient. Each individual has personality. Whether people acknowledge that or not does not make it not true.
I’m a person. humans are animals, that is true, but we are distinct in important ways. denying this is dehumanizing.
No, that is a speciesist take. We are not distinct in the ways that are most important. Among many similarities non-human animals feel pain and don’t want to die. Those are the most important ways that we are the same.
Do you think humans evolved in a vacuum? We share a lot of similarities in our brains with other types of animals that also have brains.
It is not dehumanizing. Here’s a quote to think on: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression”
When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression
i’m not equal with animals. this is just more dehumanization.
that is a speciesist take
speciesism is rational. i wouldn’t ask an elephant to engage in a discussion on lemmy.
non-human animals feel pain and don’t want to die.
we don’t know that any non-human animal understands personal mortality, so we need to clear up an ambiguity in your syntax there. the don’t even know if they know they colud die. if you don’t know you could want something, to say that you don’t want it is almost tautological. we can’t say teher is any evidence they want not to die, though.
you are using an expansive definition of “someone” that most people don’t recognize and most disagree with.
Most people thought slavery was okay at a certain point in time… Just because most people think something doesn’t make it right.
comparing slaves to animals is what slavers do.
You’re an animal too.
I’m a person. humans are animals, that is true, but we are distinct in important ways. denying this is dehumanizing.
We are the same in important ways too, denying this is just a cope.
one of the important ways we are the same is our comparable physiology that allows us to have a symbiotic relationship in which we provided them with food and protection and the ability to reproduce, while gleaning for ourselves nutrients.
They do exactly that, they mix the crushed up eggshells under the chicken feed to help them recuperate. As for when they get old, they keep them until they die naturally, though they have also given some older chickens to an animal sanctuary/petting zoo thing in the region before.
I certainly abhor industrial scale animal abuse as is practiced, but as a life long vegetarian myself who is used to more harmonious animal husbandry I also believe there is an ethical way of keeping animals as livestock (and benefiting from their produce).
Are they eating their eggs? That would be the only problem I could see with that situation. seeing them as something to be exploited for what they make, rather than as individuals.
Whenever I wonder if something is abusive, I just compare it to what it would be like if they were a human. If there was a human woman in your care with the same intelligence of a chicken, you wouldn’t think it was okay to milk them and drink their milk. That would be fucking weird.
