In the report titled “Do hens produce more poop than they do eggs?” on March 3, 2006, it is reported that a small profit can be made from raising egg producing hens. For the initial question, which concerned only one chick, something very important was left out…Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t you need a rooster (male) to aid in the reproductive process? So, if you had one hen, you get no eggs until you get a rooster, which you also have to care and provide for, cutting into your profit margin.
If you bought fertilised eggs for cooking, you’d end up with a bloody mess of dead chicken foetus rather than delicious eggy goodness. So no, you don’t need a rooster, and in fact to keep one would harm production.
Well, not quite. If you pop the egg into a refrigerator right away, the embryo will just be a dinky little spot. Many people who prefer sympathetic magic to actual dietary science will pay extra for that.
Guy who used to work at a chicken hatchery checking in. It’s perfectly true that the vast majority of commercially sold eggs are unfertilized. Most of the hens that lay them are kept in nasty little cages, with no rooster in the barn. (The idea that hens need a rooster to lay eggs seems surprisingly common, though. I’ve seen contestants on Survivor who’ve been rewarded with 3 hens and a rooster keep the rooster around instead of eating him, apparently under the impression that they needed him to get eggs.)
On the other hand, in order to get the hens who lay the eggs, you obviously need fertilized eggs, from special “breeder barns”. I’ve collected those eggs, and the ones that weren’t good enough for hatching got shipped off for sale – probably to be made into baked goods and the like, I don’t know. Like John W. says, since they were refrigerated right away, no embryo developed, and they were perfectly fine to eat.
I’ve never watched Survivor, but I assume this was one where they had the men and women in seperate tribes. I can see how some of my more sheltered bretheren could have such a misconception, but surely any post-menarchial woman could figure things out. Right?
If they were pre-development, how could you tell which ones weren’t good enough? About the only think I could think of would be if it were broken open or something, but I wouldn’t want to eat anything that had been broken open in chicken-nesting.
Well, it wasn’t exactly nesting…they essentially laid the eggs on a conveyor belt, which took them around to me. I had no way of knowing if they were infertile, I just rejected the ones that didn’t look good to me, and yes, in fact, being cracked was the one of the main reasons. (Some of them were obviously double-yoked, strangely bumpy, too small, or just too dirty). That’s why I assume many or all of them went for industrial use – most of them were just too ugly to sell in stores. (Still fine to eat though - management had no problem with the workers taking some of the rejects home for personal use, and they were tasty.)
The analysis given in the “Chicken and Egg” answer was not economic, but strictly accounting. An economic analysis would have revealed that the biggest cost in raising a single chicken would be time. In addition, the cost per hen were way to low as the large operators have economies of scale. A single hen would be highly uneconomical; the person would be better off working at mcdonalds or trying to get a raise than trying to save the few bucks for eggs every week. The eggs gotten this way would be some mighty expensive eggs (figure every hour is worth lat east 5 bucks, for someone making 15/hr an hour devoted every week to the hen would cost 15 bucks in opportunity cost).
Una, you really know your shit!
Yet another great article! You did, however, forget to mention one minor detail: Chickens stink to high heaven. The reek that comes from those birds… ::shudder:: Gah… My mom used to raise such foul fowl. ick. ackk… (When are we getting that pukey-smile?)
My only nitpick to the original article was the price of a standard “large/extra large dozen” in US dollars.
I’d not pay over $2.00 for a dozen eggs… regular eggs anyway. They may make those organic/free range eggs, but I’m not “shelling” out my bucks for them!
[QUOTE=JustAnotherGeek
Yet another great article! You did, however, forget to mention one minor detail: Chickens stink to high heaven. The reek that comes from those birds… ::shudder:: Gah… My mom used to raise such foul fowl. ick. ackk… (When are we getting that pukey-smile?)[/QUOTE]
Yes, it was a fine article. I have to agree about the stink, and it’s not just the manure. In a big operation, a few chickens die, and they are incinerated. You might think it would smell like cooked chicken, but the dominant aroma is burnt feathers. The manure, though, also produces an astonishing number of flies. On my visit to a friend’s uncle’s chicken & egg farm, we made the mistake of leaving the windows down on the van. We were swatting flies :smack: :smack: all the way home, and had to fog the van with bugspray to get rid of them.
“According to the National Resource, Agriculture, and Engineering Service (NRAES), broiler hen litter production is said to be approximately 1.25 tons per 1,000 birds brought to market.”
but…
“A broiler complex, including breeders and pullets, that processes one million birds per week produces approximately 65,000 tons of manure annually (Weaver and Souder, 1990).” <http://www.msstate.edu/dept/poultry/complit.htm>
So which is it? 1.25 tons per 1,000 birds produced or 65 tons per 1,000 birds produced? That’s a pretty big discrepancy. Also, the latter reference refers to manure only, whereas the SD article refers to the more-inclusive litter.
One minor quibble - you made the claim that post-laying birds don’t taste all that good. While it’s true that the meat is not up to contemporary standards of taste and texture, such birds are sought after for making broth. If you want a really rich chicken broth the best thing for it is a post-laying hen.
