Eggs US – Price – Chart
809 comments
·February 5, 2025mplanchard
afavour
This is also a great defense against something like bird flu. When you centralize operations a disease can spread through a population like wildfire. When it's a number of smaller, separate operations the impact is lessened.
aj_icracked
Totally agree with this. After selling my last company (iCracked W12) I had been playing around with the idea of how to build the world's largest decentralized food production network - think millions of people leveraging their backyards to produce, share, and sell protein and vegetables. I've always wanted to build a company that blends smart home / AI technology with backyard agriculture and we decided to start with chickens. I have been raising chickens for 15 years and automating my coops with Arduino's, automatic doors, cameras for computer vision, etc.
We spent 2 years building and designing a AI / smart coop and it's been a fascinating company to be able to build. We've trained our computer vision model on around 25 million videos and have gotten extremely good at doing specific predator detection, egg alerts, remote health monitoring, specific chickens in a coop and behaviors etc. We're at the point now where we can say, "Hey AJ, there's 2 raccoons outside your coop, the automatic door is shut, all 6 chickens are safe, and you have 10 eggs that can be collected". Super fun project and would love y'alls feedback. If you're interested in seeing what we're doing we're at www.TheSmartCoop.com
explorigin
> I had been playing around with the idea of how to build the world's largest decentralized food production network
Years ago I worked on Farmforce that is basically this. In America we have centralized agriculture. Over the ocean, small-holder farmers in Africa provide lots of food to lots of markets. Keeping track of all of these farms, their herbicide and pesticide usage and weather-based yield projections is already a solved problem.
blast
You just want to work on things that crack easily.
TylerE
Seems interesting a bit but surely the economics are rather brutal? Even a traditional coop has an ROI of years and years and years.
aimanbenbaha
Amazing project! I always get excited when I hear new innovative ideas to improve ecosystems/businesses that are taught of as "traditional". There's this My First Million podcast episode with Justin Mares (DTC Food entrepreneur) where they talk about boostrapping alternative food biz ideas and are very bullish on these verticals and they also talk about various types of birds breeds and how cornish cross became the predominantly type of chicken raised.
Regarding this smart poultry startup, where I'm from I often hear from poulty farmers chicken should be able to roam free and have a wide space to lay around eggs and reproduce. I'm curious how this limitation is addressed to backyard herders?
iancmceachern
Very cool, let me know if you need and hardware or design support. I've done a lot of agtech stuff
KennyBlanken
> We're at the point now where we can say, "Hey AJ, there's 2 raccoons outside your coop, the automatic door is shut, all 6 chickens are safe, and you have 10 eggs that can be collected". Super fun project and would love y'alls feedback.
Nobody is going to pay you anywhere near the amount of money you'll need for the energy and equipment to do this.
"Well shit, coyotes got one of the chickens" and then...just go get another chicken for...about $5 each. There's no data you could possibly collect that would interest people enough to buy your company.
The whole point behind chickens is that there are some manageable startup costs but then they're cheap to "run" - if you have a big enough property and free range 'em or use a 'tractor', even your feed costs are cut.
> I had been playing around with the idea of how to build the world's largest decentralized food production network - think millions of people leveraging their backyards to produce, share, and sell protein and vegetables.
It's not decentralized if everyone has to use your app (I'm guessing your plan is to get a cut...) This stuff already exists. They're called "farmers markets."
It's also called "talking to your neighbors." That's been going on for hundreds of years.
> build a company that blends smart home / AI technology with backyard agriculture
Hammer, meet nail that does not exist.
oceanplexian
Actually the inconvenient truth is that it's not.
Free range birds are able to interact and spread the disease more easily than the caged birds which can be quarantined. At least in my location all the cage free inventory is totally wiped out.
Zanfa
The only thing caged birds do is interact with other birds. There’s a reason antibiotics are so widely used. It’s like a massive Petri dish.
mplanchard
That’s not at all the case here (VT). The local sellers are essentially all pasture-raised, free-range, etc., and their eggs are the only ones in stock. I have read some posts from them talking about the various ways they keep segments of the flocks separated, and they are being quite careful about any outside access.
Edit: I guess also the birds are indoors much more anyway, given the winter. It's 11 F here today, so probably they're huddled up inside :)
boplicity
Cage free does not mean they're out in a field. It means all of the birds are in one crowded space. Eggs that come from birds that genuinely roam the pasture are exceedingly rare.
lukas099
Free range birds cannot be quarantined?
SketchySeaBeast
Really raises the question - should vital infrastructure, like food production, be built in an attempt to maximize profit or resiliency? Have things swung too far in one direction?
afavour
To my mind there's no question that it's swung too far. But it's very easy for me to live in the country and say "oh I get all my fresh produce from the local farm!" when there are cities of millions of people that need feeding too. Scaling while retaining resiliency is not easy.
codemac
In many cases maximizing profits increases supply through efficiency, especially in the case of things like food. Increased supply is usually considered a safer place than a lower supply if it's vital.
Every step you take that makes food more expensive, some use cases of food are no longer possible (say, free eggs in all elementary schools or something).
How many of these uses are we ok eliminating so the wealthier population has a more consistent/resilient supply?
epistasis
> built in an attempt to maximize profit or resiliency
I think framing it as an either/or is a bit of a mental trap. They are sometimes in opposition, sometimes not.
For example, those farms which were not resilient are not maximizing their profits, since they've had more than a year of warning of avian flu. They were operating to minimize work and costs, not maximize profit, and they are losing out on a ton of it right now.
Those operations which built with resilience, or got lucky, are swimming in profits right now.
bluGill
1000 years ago we were much less resilience, and that despite farmers then optimizing for that and not profit. (read acoup.org for long discussions on what farming was really like over different times in history)
Frost1x
We as thoughtful human beings can consider non-extreme points where we find other optimizations that aren’t necessarily around profit or resiliency. We can create a new metric called “human progress mertric” where we consider profit as a strong driver but also put weight on things like resiliency and allow profit to slide a bit so our real goal is better achieved.
Rarely ever, IMO, are worthwhile goals entirely profit optimized or resiliency optimized. Some blend tends to be best, and sometimes you can even have both simultaneously (they’re not always inherently mutually exclusive, although those taking in the winnings may want it to be).
conradev
A surprisingly large amount of the United States' crop yield comes from rain falling on non-irrigated fields (85%). Our biggest crop is corn, and corn is very water-sensitive at specific points in its growth.
There is no infrastructure to protect there – only infrastructure to build (irrigation), for better resiliency.
concordDance
Profit works very well if there are many food sources with uncorrelated problems.
Still works fairly well as long as capital owners are smart and use insurance (who in turn advise their users on how to reduce their risk).
financetechbro
Feels like we’ve swung exceedingly far. Our drive to capture efficiencies through economies of scale make us very vulnerable to systematic disruption
heavyset_go
The disease affects wild bird populations heavily and is just as transmissible to disparate flocks as it is larger flocks. Breeders tend to keep their flocks isolated, often for genetic reasons, and because they're their cash cows versus just cattle.
I generally agree with you about centralization and monocultures, just in this case I don't think it's really going to change things.
singleshot_
If all the birds are in a farm, would you have more or less inter species infection than if lots of people lived close to chickens?
What’s worse for the community, eggs from factories going way up in price due to supply shocks, or rapid and pervasive infection in the community?
lowbloodsugar
Profit of course! And only short term profit! Don’t want any of you eggheads trying to constrain profit to the goal of not killing all our customers!
fullstop
I highly doubt that the farmer down the street from me is testing for avian flu.
Their eggs are fantastic, though!
azinman2
It spreads so fast and is lethal enough that they probably don’t need to test, because they’d know quite quickly.
palmotea
> This is also a great defense against something like bird flu. When you centralize operations a disease can spread through a population like wildfire. When it's a number of smaller, separate operations the impact is lessened.
But muh efficiency!
vlan0
Yes. Vital Farm eggs. Been $8 a dozen for a long time. No change in price.
What we're seeing are the consequences of factory farming and not treating animals like the living beings they are.
tcdent
I've been paying almost $11 for them.
Digit-Al
Wow! That's crazy. Here in the UK, the most expensive eggs in my local supermarket - which are Clarence Court Burdord Brown eggs - are only the equivalent of $5.08 per dozen. Those are the posh, expensive, eggs that only those with a bit of extra cash in their pocket, and a desire to eat more healthily, would buy.
vlan0
Big city "tax"? Whole Foods and the local co-op out in WNY are both $8 a dozen.
jimmydoe
Good you can still buy them. All vita farms are oos even $13/dozen ones in my local whole foods.
whalesalad
yep. been a long time coming. it's unfortunate that when it favors them this is a talking point for the maga folks... but when it hurts them they are nowhere to be found.
whateveracct
If I avoid name brand stuff, my prices generally aren't bad. Like you said, the local eggs have been stable.
Locally sourced chicken also is reasonably priced and often on sale. There was BOGO (mix and match) last week so I got a whole chicken and a 2lb pack of breasts for $12 total. Both beautiful quality. With a bunch of minor cheap produce, herbs, and pasta..that's chicken soup + a chicken one pot meal that'll last us all week. Sometimes those whole chickens are on sale for 99c/lb!
TylerE
That is likely to change. Why should they sell a superior product for less?
mplanchard
Well, if you know your local farmers and buy from them regularly, it doesn't look great if they jack their prices up unnecessarily. They also know that they're competing against the perception that local food is more expensive. In normal times, factory farms can always undercut their prices, so it would make sense for them to use the current situation as an opportunity to get more people to start buying local (due to the prices!) and hope that they will continue to buy local once the prices invert again (due to the quality).
whateveracct
This has held true for literally 4 years. And it's not some niche store - it's a Kroger-owned chain!
hammock
Why not?
jl6
Are small local farms able to keep producing as normal because the birds aren’t getting bird flu or because they’re not testing/killing them?
hwillis
Bird flu has 95% lethality in chickens and takes ~48 hours to kill. It's not like they can get away with ignoring it. Testing happens when you wake up and half your birds are already dead.
That said OP is asserting local costs haven't changed without evidence. Even if that were true (and I don't think it is- local farms are also being hit hard eg duck farming in NY) it probably speaks far more to small operations having a harder time changing their prices. Or the cheap eggs are just places who haven't been hit yet.
mplanchard
I was wondering how I could provide evidence for you other than walking to the grocery and taking a picture, but I found at least one of our local farms that has their prices online: https://www.maplewindfarm.com/collections/retail-store -- I'd expect it would be quite easy for them to change their prices on their own storefront and in their farmstand, where I often buy their eggs.
A dozen large eggs there right now is $7.90, which is right in line with what their costs have been for at least the last year (they are one of the more expensive local brands).
Unfortunately I just went to the grocery last night, so I don't have any reason to swing by today, but next time I do I'll try to remember to snap a pic of the egg section to share.
I've seen a bunch of posts online from the farms about how they're doing biosafety protocols, keeping groups of chickens isolated from each other, etc. I'm sure that increases their costs somewhat, but whatever they're doing seems to be keeping them insulated from the worst of the flock die offs, and regardless, their prices haven't really changed.
Larrikin
I personally don't really like eggs. I only buy them when I need them for ingredients in something I plan to cook soon, so I haven't been tracking their price over time. But we are making a cake this week and had been hearing about the eggs problem for a while now.
Yesterday, eggs were not sold out at my local grocery store. There was a sign saying they may limit purchases. The crappy bottom of the barrel eggs were selling for 9 dollars a dozen. Pretty much all the eggs that touted organic or farm fresh on their containers were going for 4 to 5 a dozen, which seems reasonable. I assume those are from the local farms.
mplanchard
The local farms here at least are being really cautious about testing and isolation. Many of them sell their eggs to the local grocery stores, so they are bound to the same standards as other eggs.
I don’t see what benefit they would gain by not testing, anyway: if their flock is infected and a significant portion of the birds die, they are going to lose revenue the same way a massive egg producer would. If anything, I’d imagine them to want to be more cautious, since they have fewer eggs in their basket as it were (fewer total chickens).
greenie_beans
here is a recent news story about exactly this: https://www.mynbc5.com/article/vt-farm-takes-steps-to-preven...
joecool1029
Depends on where you're at. I mentioned in my last comment that bird flu is killing snow geese nesting near me. It's also infecting crows. The snow geese are not likely to interact with backyard chickens but the crows absolutely will.
hammock
Smaller flocks, so the damage of an outbreak is contained
uticus
> they are now often cheaper...increase the resilience of the system as a whole
cheaper and resilience are not proportional here. in fact, cheaper is proportional to efficient, which large producers are better at (apart from questions of healthiness, etc). i can't argue against resilience though, although that comes at a cost. speaking as a backyard-chicken-raiser of some years.
roughly
"Cheaper" varies by the costs of the various inputs. A local chicken farmer which sells to a local market has, aside from the costs of the land, chickens, feed, and labor, the costs of putting the eggs in a truck and driving the truck to the market. Larger distributors have the cost of collecting the eggs, driving them to a warehouse, storing them, potentially repeating that while optimizing inventory and locality, and then driving them to the market. The cost of gas, labor, electricity, and a variety of other factors can dramatically swing the cost calculations. Combined with the noted lack of resiliency in the system - the multiple additional logistical steps, the multiple points of failure in the system, the larger blast radius of those failures - and the "larger is more efficient is cheaper" calculus isn't quite as cut and dry, as we've seen over the last couple years.
bluGill
Many of your small producers are not counting their full costs. They see they $ from selling eggs, but don't count the cost of the barn, their labor, the land the chickens are on... A real accountant would find all those hidden costs and figure out how you allocate the cost of the light bulbs in the barn to each chicken - only when you have all those numbers can you really see if it works out.
mplanchard
Sorry I’m not sure I follow your point. I’m saying that given the current situation with bird flu, the local eggs are often less expensive at my grocery store.
I’m not saying that they are less expensive to produce or that they will remain less expensive at the store during normal times. However, paying the extra costs during normal times means those farms stay in business, which means I can still get eggs for the same price right now as I can in normal times.
dawnerd
What I find weird is people’s aversion to buying the organic and local eggs. They had them for half the price as the factory farm eggs yet people weren’t touching them.
soerxpso
I think it's largely a matter of routine. People have been buying the same eggs for years; switching is perceived as a risk by our monkey brains.
monetus
A lot of local eggs here will have slightly orange yolks and my family just won't do it, not even in cornbread.
whalesalad
the orange yolks are usually a sign of better hen health... the irony of this. they taste a lot better, too.
perfmode
I’ve always bought the most expensive pasture raised free range cage free eggs at Whole Foods. If I recall they used to be around $10 per dozen.
Been a while.
Anyone know Is this still the case?
wiredfool
Meanwhile in Ireland, I can get a tray of 30 free range for 8 eur at a vending machine on the dog walk. Or 15 for 4.50.
Lidl is maybe marginally cheaper, prices there have gone up maybe 20% in a year.
perfmode
Free-range hens have some outdoor access, but pasture-raised hens roam outdoors freely with significantly more space to forage.
null
schnable
free range isnt the same as pasture raised.
garyfirestorm
its 3-4$ at trader joes - still 8ish in WholeFoods in Michigan
RyanOD
I've definitely noticed the pricing for eggs at our neighborhood Trader Joes staying constant while the pricing at our neighborhood Safeway has doubled.
jcdavis
Still $3.50 at TJs in SF last week still, which is by far the cheapest around (that I'm aware of).
Pretty surprised they are still that low given prices elsewhere.
agloe_dreams
The free range eggs at Aldi in PA are ~$5.30/doz vs ~$6.50/doz for the normal eggs. Might be cheaper than normal.
jghn
This. I buy my eggs at the farmers market from a local, actually small, farm. I pay $8/doz. In normal times this is very expensive. But you know what? Tomorrow when I go to the farmers market they'll still cost me $8/doz.
bityard
I guess I don't see why local farmers _wouldn't_ raise their prices to maintain their premium above store-bought eggs. They certainly have around here.
jghn
Because in setups like I'm describing the farmers tend to start building relationships with their customers. Price gouging is generally not the best way to maintain those relationships.
In previous egg shortages over the years the couple of farmers I use would sometimes impose limits like 1 carton per customer or something like that. But not jack up prices.
adrianmonk
Maybe they see it as a way to acquire new customers. They are in the very unusual position of being able to undercut their bigger competitors on price while still making a profit.
Right now, buyers are probably shopping around a ton. You can probably get customers who normally wouldn't be interested. After they try it, some of them may decide they like it and could become long term customers.
aucisson_masque
Lots of people suggesting to build chicken coop. i have one, sure it's not much work. 2 minutes every day to grab the egg and bring the food and water, but then every 3 year you got to take the hatchet, grab each chicken, cut right on the neck and then hang it with it's feet while it's bleeding out and flapping its wings.
then there are the few occasion where you miss with the hatchet and it cuts half its neck, its head hanging down, attached by a quarter of the neck from it's body with the blood jumping out and the chicken running in circle for quite a lot of time.
it's also rare but sometimes even when you cut perfectly, the chicken will manage to get out of your hand and again you got to watch a headless chicken running in circle for some time.
If you are the kind of animal loving people in city, i'm not sure it's worth it.
bonus point, in summer you get a lot of fly because of the chicken shit, they reproduce in that. you can get in there and clean it everyday but it's a lot of work, and fly traps barely works when the heat is shinning strongly on the chicken shit. fly reproduce too damn quick.
Also chicken have hierarchy where all the up top chicken will bite on the ass of the chicken under it, so if you are the top chicken you got a nice ass but the one at the bottom it has a bleedy ass and sometimes they manage to kill them.
if you got to buy another chicken to replace it, it may not be accepted by the old one and so again -> bottom hierarchy, death by ass biting lol. it's funny but it significantly decrease the economic worthiness when you got to replace you chicken once in a while.
Beside i don't know what you do with chicken corpse in city, you aren't going to put it in recycling can.
Support your local farmer.
cco
Having slaughtered my fair share of chickens on a relatively small but not back yard operation, there is a much easier way!
Buy a t-post (any 3-5 foot rigid metal pole will do but a t-post has perfect geometry). Next, you'll grab your chicken, lay her down on her back or stomach [1], once she has settled down you're going to lay the t-post gently across her spine just a bit behind her skull.
Now place your feet on either side of the t-post to secure it, grab her legs, and in one swift motion pull and stand up.
You will very quickly decapitate the hen and once you do it a couple times it'll be very low stress for both you and the chicken. This latter part is key, if you're stressed, unsure etc, the animals will be the same.
You can improve this further by keeping an upside down traffic cone around, drop the bird into it once slaughtered and that'll contain the flapping/running around you mention.
In my experience, for novices, this is the easiest method for all parties and reduces the risk of slips, mistakes etc.
[1] Back is sometimes easier, they'll often go into a trance. Sometimes you can lay them on their stomach and trace a line to relax them, there are youtube videos of this.
Yajirobe
This is all so brutal. I can’t believe you people are discussing such things so nonchalantly
picture
I think your sentiment encapsulates the hypocrisy of modern people where the systems have developed over thousands of years to further and further insulate us from all the less pretty aspects of life, to a point where we largely forget the fact that we shit and kill things for food and greed. Our meat comes pre-portioned on a polystyrene tray and wrapped under cellophane. Just abstract blocks of yummy protein. We also built garbage collection and sewer systems that lets most of us forget about the waste we produce. Out of sight, out of mind.
Humanely dispatching chicken is probably among the most mundane, natural, necessary, and arguably righteous aspects of what humans do to survive. While this part of the modern system is certainly not a "bad thing", I still think about my friend's opinion that everyone who eats meat should kill and process a living creature at least once in their life. If they can't handle it, then they shouldn't eat meat
cullenking
it's hard to do, but easy to talk about. i've done my fair share of slaughtering and currently have a freezer full of meat birds. i don't like the process (you feel bad, you have to do things that also are instinctually gross to someone not used to it), but i will continue to eat meat because i think it's part of a balanced and healthy diet.
i do respect vegans though - many people don't live by any principles so it's nice to see them on display. my principle on this topic is that if i'm not willing to do it myself, then i probably shouldn't offload it to someone else and still consume the end result.
mbs159
Wait till you see how they do it in slaughterhouses, you'll think this guy is a saint
BrokenInterface
Can I just say you've made my day with:
"You will very quickly decapitate the hen and once you do it a couple times it'll be very low stress for both you and the chicken."
Best giggle I had in years!
wil421
Use a traffic cone. It will be easier and calm the chicken down.
cco
Definitely can help, but I've found that for people that don't do it very often, it's very easy to make mistakes with a knife. The t-post method has very little opportunity for mistakes and really makes it a lot easier for people that don't have a ton of experience, i.e. backyard poultry owners.
highstep
highly agree. after using a cone anything else seems haphazard and cruel.
aucisson_masque
That's actually very clever.
gadders
>>but then every 3 year you got to take the hatchet, grab each chicken, cut right on the neck and then hang it with it's feet while it's bleeding out and flapping its wings.
We've had chickens - up to about 20 at times - and have never done this. We're not farming them. Once they become too old to lay they can still hang out with the other chickens and scratch around. We don't mind that they're "retired".
I have had to dispatch sick chickens, or ones that have been attacked by foxes, but that's maybe one a year if that and I typically do it by wringing their necks.
//edit// And if you have a rooster, it stops a lot of the intra-hen fighting, especially if you introduce new hens into the flock.
not_the_fda
Its certainly an option. Chickens can live 7-12 years so that's a lot of feed for a chicken to not produce eggs. More economical to make soup. Their livestock, not pets.
gadders
I think I can afford the lifetime cost. Some of our hens are rescued battery hens as well so I'll take the financial hit for the good karma.
ammojamo
Just to offer a different experience, we've kept chooks for years and it's been great.
However, we do have a large yard where they are free to range around – I think this is key.
In my experience there is no need to kill a chook after 3 years. Average lifespan for a chick is 8-10 years. Egg laying frequency does decrease with age, but there's no need to kill them just because they're slowing down a bit. Our oldest chook is 8 years, and laid her (probably) last egg only a few months ago.
When it does come time to kill one for whatever reason, the broom stick method breaks the neck instantly - easy and clean, just a bit of flapping around. As for the body, we just bury them if we are not going to eat them.
I think the heirarchical behaviour depends somewhat on the breed and the environment. Our chooks do have a clear hierarchy, none of them have died as a result. We have a mix of breeds - Australorp, Plymouth Rock, ISA Brown and one other mystery breed.
Flies probably depend on your environment – in Australia here we have a ton of flies already, I don't think the chooks make much difference!
Some of our chooks have a lot of personality and are almost pets, especially the early ones we basically hand raised as chicks – although you don't want to be too sentimental about them either. You have to be OK with killing them if that becomes necessary - it's still a sad time when I have to do that though.
If you have enough yard space and like the idea of being connected to the creatures that supply some of your food, I'd totally recommend giving chooks a go.
* edit: should have added, we don't keep a rooster which probably changes the dynamics too
jen729w
> In my experience there is no need to kill a chook after 3 years
I assume you don't have ISA Browns? We just had 3, gorgeous girls, but they all started laying lash eggs at about 2yo.
The ISAs are bred to lay, and -- turns out! -- 300 eggs/year isn't sustainable for a poor little chook's insides.
Don't get ISA Browns. It's heartbreaking and, if you decide to treat it vs. letting them die (we did), expensive.
We loved our girls to death. Chickens are amazing pets.
ammojamo
We do have some ISA browns which are 2-3 years old, but no lash eggs yet – they all seem pretty happy – I guess it just depends.
That said, I'm not that emotionally attached to them – I like them, care for them, but if I thought they were seriously sick I would put them down. We're all different :-)
cullenking
there is absolutely a reason to kill your chickens that aren't laying - it costs money to feed them. if you don't optimize for price by slaughtering your older hens you will easily be paying > $10 a dozen for eggs.
all bets are off though if you consider chickens pets, instead of livestock.
basic economics for me: 20 chickens, a dozen eggs a day, 30 dozen eggs a month. decent non-organic feed is $20 a bag, organic is $35 a bag. one bag per week if you have the space to do daily free ranging on a decent sized chunk (half acre chicken yard in my case). Round up $0.50 per dozen for incidentals (bedding, repair, replacement chickens semi-regularly due to predation). That's $3 a dozen for non-organic, $5 a dozen for organic.
Drop productivity in half, organic eggs start costing $10 a dozen, and you have to work for those eggs. Cut productivity to 25% and you are even more expensive. In my experience, you are at 50% productivity within 3 years depending on the breed.
Also slaughtered old hens make good soups :)
ammojamo
All good points, but I would add a couple of things:
1. Scale also comes into play: We only have 8 hens, and are able to significantly supplement their feed with scraps from the kitchen, which are effectively free. The chooks are free ranging over a similar area (~half an acre), so the lower density means more free-range food for them, I guess. As a result, our feed costs per egg are actually much lower than if we had more chooks, and keeping a few old hens around is a negligible cost for us.
2. We regard our chooks somewhere halfway between pets and livestock - it's not a binary choice. We enjoy having them around so they have some intrinsic value for us, but at the same time if they were getting too expensive to keep, we'd be OK with occasionally cooking one up.
ivanjermakov
After reading that, I'm not only not want to build a coop, I don't want to consume eggs anymore lol. I guess I'm too "animal loving people".
AngryData
You don't have to slaughter them, if you get regular heirloom chickens. The ones bred for corporate mass farms, yeah they are better off dead because they are genetic freaks either bred to only be meat and turn into a solid mass of meat that can't really walk or to shoot eggs out like a gatling gun, both of which are horrible for any potential long-term health. But traditional chicken breeds you can just accept having less eggs as they get older. Really the super genetic bred chickens aren't good for backyard growers to start with, you aren't going to consume that many eggs or want to have them so fat and meaty they can barely walk after 3 months.
My parents have had chickens for the last 40 years, never once slaughtered one. They either live to old age, or a predator comes along and grabs a slower older one or two.
Cthulhu_
This is the harsh reality that a lot of people that have gotten used to the convenience store aren't ready for, but also we're in a slow revolution where people are becoming more conscious of the humane cost of animal products and are switching diets or changing their purchasing behaviour.
Definite difference between "city people" and rural people though. We had cousins stay with us for a week or so the one time, granted they were a little younger, but they didn't realize milk comes from a cow. So of course we took them to the local farm we got our milk from so they could see the cows up close.
mbs159
It's a good idea to see where your meat, milk and eggs come from. If you can't stomach it, then why put it in your stomach?
MisterTea
> but then every 3 year you got to take the hatchet, grab each chicken, cut right on the neck and then hang it with it's feet while it's bleeding out and flapping its wings.
Is this a requirement? My friends parents keep chickens and dont kill any of them.
They dont have fly problems as the chickens spend most of their day outside of the coop letting them shit on the ground like nature intended. This disperses the waste preventing it from piling up into a fly trap.
As far as the pecking order, yes, there were issues with birds attacking others but they dealt with this by splitting up the pens. The chickens sort of form clicks around roosters and the in-crowd is safe while outsiders are harassed. So they identified the clicks by watching who follows who and moving them to the other pen. In some cases they had protective garb, chicken clothing, that protected chickens rear ends from further harm or aggressive rooster mating.
> Beside i don't know what you do with chicken corpse in city, you aren't going to put it in recycling can.
NYC sanitation has a composting bin program (granted it's not popular) which would likely be the best method of chicken corpses disposal. My only issue in cities is chickens should be raised on green land and most is paved allowing little to no ability for the chickens to feed off the land.
simonsarris
How many do they keep? It's not a requirement but after ~3 years they hardly lay, but still eat, and most people looking for serious production are not interested in running a chicken retirement home for X additional years of life as well.
MisterTea
About 30 total. They are not serious about production and let them live out life so that makes sense now.
gadders
You don't have to kill them if you're doing it for fun/as a hobby.
If you're trying to do it commercially you might want to.
russdill
The solution to an potential cross species epidemic is probably not to have a bunch of people live in closer proximity to the primary disease vector
catlikesshrimp
The axe blow is the fastest method when you have to kill several chickens.
Alternatively, use a very sharp kitchen axe against a wooden plank. Place the chicken's neck between the axe and the plank and hammer the axe. This is the slow approach
Alternatively, use a long sharp blade to sever the neck the same way you would slice a cucumber, with a fast sliding cut.
EDIT: Cannibalism is more frequent when there is some malnutrition. Of course, sometimes you have to sacrifice the worst offenders.
batushka5
In our setting predators do the job - hawks do lions' share (LoL) and foxes the rest. So agingn chicken does not happen. Although we had a rooster - a tiny one, which had incredible surival skills - was over 10 years, killed 2 bigger roosters himself, numerous unobedient hens, survived direct fox attack and dodged hell knows how many hawk strikes. Eventually went blind and had to part with his head out of mercy.
davidw
I've been fiddling around with the Albertsons API for fun. It's kind of neat to see a whole year's worth of purchases in nicely formatted JSON.
I have half an idea to create something like a personal inflation tracker, but I'm still thinking about it.
It's entirely possible that these goons will start fiddling with official statistics around things like unemployment and inflation to tell us that inflation is not actually happening any more and that therefore we must cut interest rates, or some such.
thuanao
You may be interested to know MIT did a project called ["The Billion Prices Project"](https://thebillionpricesproject.com) to scrape the web and calculate CPI.
Sorry to all the tinfoil hats, it closely matched official CPI.
UltraSane
It will be interesting if that is the case by this time in 2026,2027, and 2028
jorblumesea
for now, wait until the Trump admin gets into full gear
duxup
Changing data doesn't seem like their style, I suspect the pattern for this administration (based on past history):
1. Simply drop the topic and ignore it / drop the topic (arresting Hillary, china tariffs, etc).
2. Declare the problem fixed and again ignore it.
3. Blame the boogieman of the moment.
And as usual just behave like children in order to fill the airways / distract.
9283409232
Trump's last administration drew on a NOAA hurricane map with a sharpie to try to convince people he was not wrong about a hurricane path. Changing data is his style.
duxup
I honestly think that one was ignorance more than direct malice. I think he is in fact as ignorant / incurious as he seems.
kobalsky
> It's entirely possible that these goons will start fiddling with official statistics around things like unemployment and inflation to tell us that inflation is not actually happening any more and that therefore we must cut interest rates, or some such.
in the end statistics is a science, and results can be cross-referenced with independent sources.
you may get away with a bit, but not with much [1].
[1]: https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/economy/argentina-loses-bid-...
anigbrowl
Don't rely on this. It works when bad actors are isolated and hoping nobody will notice, but not so well when there are tens of millions ready to repeat the official line, whether they believe it or not.
kobalsky
tens of millions? well then your problem is not that officals could fudge the numbers, your house is on fire, of course my comment doesn't apply.
nanidin
And yet we have the saying "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics"!
crtez
Is it an official API? I’m not able to find any links about it, if you could provide some I’d love to look into my own purchases.
araes
It's apparently an API, although it's both difficult to find, and apparently only available through an email request to Albertsons. The website is here:
https://www.albertsonscompanies.com/amc/
The email request is at the bottom. mediacollective at albertsons
davidw
I was actually just looking at the calls the web site makes to a back end and using that.
davidw
If you get in touch with me (email or Blue Sky DM) I would be happy to think about how to share what I have so far, although it's not much at all.
pton_xd
> It's entirely possible that these goons will start fiddling with official statistics around things like unemployment and inflation to tell us that inflation is not actually happening any more and that therefore we must cut interest rates, or some such.
Like when the BLS overstated payrolls by 818k!! in March of last year, the largest negative revision in 15 years? And then the Fed did an emergency 50bps rate cut in September just as payrolls unexpectedly went up 250k and inflation seems to be coming back.
The unemployment and inflation data has been inconsistent for a while now.
johnnyanmac
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/04/job-openings-decline-sharply...
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm
Still happening. We sure have been suddenly wild unaccirate with the job market while the Feds need to keep saying "everything is fine but...".
relaxing
> Like when the BLS overstated payrolls by 818k!!
So one Meta SRE? Is this supposed to be a lot?
dmoy
818k jobs, not 818k USD
https://www.bls.gov/ces/notices/2024/2024-preliminary-benchm...
They're usually within +/- 0.1% for the estimate, that time it was 0.5% off
el_benhameen
I see an advertising API, but I don’t think that’s what you’re taking about. This sounds pretty interesting, can you point me to where you found it?
rcpt
It'll be funny when crypto people's "Truflation" reveals that the pro-crypto government caused more inflation than anyone.
simple10
I live in CA and saw a massive jump in prices when the state ordered chickens to be euthanized due to bird flu. It was also the first time I saw grocery store shelves completely empty of eggs for days at a time.
Prices for organic eggs have somewhat returned to pre-bird flu levels but the regular sales and discounts have stopped. Non-organic eggs are still significantly higher.
themaninthedark
My understanding is that free range law have recently gone into effect in CA.
Were the organic eggs already free range? That would explain the price stability there and variation of the non organic.
simple10
AFAIK, free-range and cage free are not heavily regulated terms like organic, which is a registered and trademark enforced term. At best they just mean the hens have a bit more room to move around. Neither of them actually mean there is no cage.
It's why we see "pasture raised" as the more premium marketing term. It still doesn't mean much without looking into the specific farm.
russdill
Certain 3rd party certification systems exist, such a https://certifiedhumane.org/
pests
Michigan just switched to cafe-free only at the start of a year due to a new law going into effect. Prices were increased around the holidays as retailers preemptively switched their stock.
Might not be well defined but I’m sure it’s defined enough to be law.
bluGill
Real pasture raised eggs do taste better. I believe this is because the chicken get to eat bugs - store bought eggs that advertise "fed an all vegetarian diet" taste worse than regular store bought - though both are bad. (taste is of course subjective). Most store bought pasture raised eggs taste just like any other store bought egg - sure the chickens get to pasture but there are too many for them to get enough bugs in their diet.
jeffbee
Do you mean cage-free hen regulation? This statewide regulation has been in effect since 2022.
ars
Free ranging chickens is the proximate cause of Bird Flu. Chickens get it from wild birds that land near them.
States are going to have to repeal those laws and confine chickens in sealed buildings to protect them.
anthonybsd
I am in NJ and shelves are not empty here but the prices are off the charts. In December I bought eggs in Stop and Shop for $3.19 for a dozen of large brown eggs. Yesterday I bought the same eggs for $9.75 each.
ceejayoz
Y'all are getting hosed. The Whole Foods ones around here (upstate NY) are $4.19/dozen as of today.
araes
Checks out:
Store: Rochester NY and Buffalo NY -> 365 by Whole Foods Market, Large Brown Grade A Eggs, 12 Count, 24 oz, $4.19
Notably, if I put in Downtown LA as the store location, I actually get even cheaper eggs offered. Not sure where this market's getting their prices from:
Store: Downtown Los Angeles, 788 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA -> 365 by Whole Foods Market, Grade A Eggs Cage-Free Plus Large Brown (12 Count), 24 oz, $3.79
Using: Whole Foods - Eggs [1] with a local store selected
[1] https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/dairy-eggs/eggs
anthonybsd
Yeah, maybe I'll check local Whole Foods in a few days too. This is literally nuts: https://stopandshop.com/product/egglands-best-cage-free-larg...
latchkey
I'm in CA and TJ's was empty for months not too long ago.
daedrdev
Im oretty sure thats TJs fault, they regularly run out of eggs for years now if you go at the wrong time
latchkey
Sounds like a combo of ABF and this...
"Trader Joe's is transitioning to carry only cage-free eggs by 2025."
https://www.allrecipes.com/trader-joes-egg-shortage-2024-874...
I was more reacting to the "first time" anecdotal evidence.
mleo
Not sure what time you go to TJ's. In SoCal, I go nearly daily, a benefit of living 50ft from the store, and while stock is currently low, I have only seen it empty once. Again, it could be that when I go at lunchtime, they have the daily delivery available, but by the evening it is gone. Their prices for regular eggs remain <$4/dozen.
villedespommes
I'm in NorthCal, they usually have some supply in the first few hours of opening
OnionBlender
Same in SouthCal. Employees said to come in the morning. An hour after opening they still had lots. Although there is a 2 cartons per household limit.
NickC25
I'm in South Florida.
There are 3 Whole Foods within a 15 minute drive of me, 4 Publix, 2 TJ's, a Sprouts, and 2 Costco locations in that same range as well.
Nowhere have I seen eggs.
0xbadcafebee
This is it? This the big meme of 2025? "Remember when eggs were expensive"?
Ukraine is at war, minorities are being oppressed at home, an economic tidal wave is about to hit us vis-a-vis Chinese imports, the economy is on the ropes, and big brother is literally banning the government from saying words like "sex" and "gender" - but, oh boy, can you believe the price of these eggs???
Is every person in this country eating thousands of eggs a week and I had no idea?
exceptione
It is finally some positive news. Before the election, inflation was down, but egg prices were up. So this was a big thing according to social media bots and algorithms.
Now prices have gone through the roof, but it is not a big thing anymore.
coldblues
This is what people fundamentally care about. The price of food, a roof under their head, clean water, fresh air and general healthiness. The problems you describe are beyond most people's grasp or reach.
throwaway5752
I submitted this. Egg prices became a political trope during the election, and were summarily forgotten afterward. Eggs are skyrocketing now and it is not a front page story. The reason they are skyrocketing, out of control H5N1 contagion in cattle and poultry operations, is not a front page story. There seems to be very little being done about food cost or yet another widely-predicted-by-epidemiologists emergent global pandemic. Apparently those are less interesting for the person in charge than punishing federal employees for perceived slights while doing their jobs.
I have posted previously about the Russian genocide on the Ukraine people and I agree with you about the rest. Some people can't see past the tip of their nose, though, and care about eggs.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
meiraleal
[dead]
null
Spivak
I mean egg prices became a meme for exactly the subtext you're implying. This election season was unbelievably frustrating because of how large a focus was placed on economic conditions which as a general rule leads to throwing out incumbents. And the new generation running the GOP is a bunch of people who look more like a conspiracy forum than a government. To the point where Democrats got nervous and ran someone who in 2008/12 could have run as a Republican. Trying to give moderate Republicans for whom the economy is their biggest issue someone to vote for.
But as soon as the election was over the economy was suddenly great and none of that mattered. Despite consumer prices having either not moved at all or gotten worse thanks to bird flu, looming tariffs which look to extract straight from people's wallets and a proposed tax policy that is about the same for everyone who isn't mega rich. The egg price thing has become a, "guess we know what people really voted for." I was looking forward to the tax cut that'll probably never come.
0xbadcafebee
Strangely enough, just last week I heard somebody complaining about egg prices in Dollar General. And I live in red country. So at least on the ground, people haven't forgotten about the eggs.
dinkumthinkum
[flagged]
qwerpy
All I can come up with is that DEI programs got canceled. It probably feels like oppression if you were previously benefiting from it.
As a minority (Asian) I feel the opposite of oppressed.
snakeyjake
>As a minority (Asian) I feel the opposite of oppressed.
That's because strong acceptable use polices based on the "E" in "DEI" meant that organizations ranging in size from Meta to Hacker News deleted comments when they turned into "kill the dirty ch**ks" during COVID.
It is now acceptable on Meta to post comments calling trans people mentally ill sexual predators.
Why do you think that, given a crisis requiring a boogeyman-du-jour, it will not one day very soon be acceptable to call for the deaths of the "dirty bat-fucking ch**ks"?
It's already acceptable to use the n-word on twitter.
I'm an upper-middle class property-owning married straight white male with children. Also dogs. And a veteran. And a small business owner.
>>>I<<< am safe.
Everyone else is up for scapegoating, all it takes is for the current trans boogeyman to lose its effectiveness.
colonial
Yup, bird flu moment. I'm very glad my family put up a chicken coop in our backyard years ago; we get a ~carton a day, and they last forever even outside the fridge due to the natural "sealant" still being intact.
Hopefully store prices will come down as the year goes on and flocks bounce back.
gretch
I've been thinking about this for a while as well
A question if you have time to answer - How many birds per sq meter do you have? What's your total land area? And how do you deal with accumulation of chicken poop?
Thanks
colonial
Off the top of my head:
* Maybe 0.25 birds/square meter? There's ~12 total (we raise some for slaughter now, so it fluctuates) and they have a large enclosed outdoor area attached to the much smaller (6m^2, perhaps a bit more) indoor coop.
* Several acres. We let them free roam during the day with someone to supervise, but otherwise they have to stay secured (coyotes.)
* Inside the coop, the standard way is the "deep litter" method. You cover the floor in several inches of pine shavings and turn it over with a rake daily. Add a new bag of shavings here and there, and cycle it out completely maybe twice a year. The old bedding makes for good compost. If it doesn't smell, then you're good. For the outdoor area, we just auger it over and add mulch/soil around the same time the bedding is replaced.
(Note - tending to the birds hasn't been in my wheelhouse for a while, so don't take this as gospel!)
jkestner
With a coop, it's a bit like a litter box. We put down hay, and change it out with the poop every couple of weeks, into a compost pile.
Chickens are way easier than a dog or cat day-to-day, with distributed risk.
ars
The commercial eggs also last forever outside the fridge. That thing about the natural sealant is a widely believed myth.
Source: I leave my commercial eggs outside the fridge, and they last with zero problems.
sethammons
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8561600/
what myth are you talking about?
The study found that washed eggs had higher bacterial counts in their contents after storage compared to unwashed eggs, particularly at higher temperatures. Key findings include:
Cold Storage (4°C for 8 weeks): There was no significant difference in bacterial counts between washed and unwashed eggs.
Warm Storage (30°C for 12 days): Washed eggs showed significantly higher bacterial contamination, suggesting that washing increased the likelihood of bacterial penetration.
Bacterial Types: The number of hemolytic bacteria and coli-aerogenes was also higher in washed eggs.
ars
First of all the washing procedure they used is not what is used commercially. Commercially they also spray mineral oil on the eggs which this study did not do.
And then of course there's this line:
"These differences between unwashed and washed eggs are not significant."
bink
As I understand it this can be safe or not-so-safe depending on where you live. If you're in the US you're likely buying sanitized eggs, whereas that's not standard practice in most other countries.
sva_
> source: anecdote/survivorship bias
declan_roberts
I don't think it's a myth compared to unwashed eggs.
You should try leaving washed eggs out on the counter for 20+ days (incubation for a chicken) and see.
bena
Are you implying that these eggs would incubate chicks? Or are you using the incubation time as a sort of natural timer? Like they would last that long if they were unwashed, but washed eggs wouldn't last even the incubation period.
ars
I've left them for 2 months (I found a big sale, so I bought a bunch). The yolk broke easily when I opened the egg, but it was perfectly fine to eat. And it was not small and dried out as implied by someone in the thread.
joecool1029
I live in NJ on some bird migration routes, the area I'm in has nesting snow geese right now and they are infected, birds dead, dying, and struggling to fly, some of the parks have been closed to the public due to concern of it skipping to humans. There's at least one large egg farm only around a 5 minute drive from this flock (one of ISE's). I have no idea if it skipped in there but given the short distance it's very possible.
mcv
What's going on with eggs in the US? The whole world had high inflation after Covid, so that's not US-specific, but eggs tripling in price? That is extreme. I don't think my (Dutch, free-range organic) eggs went up more than 25%.
tzs
Massive bird flu outbreak that has killed many egg laying chickens and required euthanizing many more to try to contain the spread.
In just the last 3 months over 30 million chickens were killed, which is about 10% of the total US egg laying chicken population. Overall the US has lost so far something like 40% of its egg laying chickens.
dkjaudyeqooe
I guess the flu hasn't made it to the EU, large eggs at Lidl have been about 28 cents each for many months now.
stevenwoo
Bird flu in the US has spread to wild animals and other species of wild and domesticated animals so it is very widespread, also there is a vaccine but poultry farms refuse to use it because of cost and it would make the meat/eggs not suitable for export, poultry producers have resorted to making their poultry farms as clean as possible, washing trucks that come onto property, making employees wash and wear protective clothing to prevent contamination and the disease still makes it onto these farms. The method we used last time we had bird flu pandemic on poultry farms was mass culling of flocks that had any infected birds, but it has not worked for long this time so the cycle of kill flock, clean everything out, raise new birds raises long term capital costs for poultry farmers in USA.
barbarr
Bird flu, made worse by concentrated farming of chickens. Those operations are basically disease factories and some bird flus come from them.
ars
That's actually not true.
Bird flu comes from wild birds, not factory farming. Chickens get it when wild birds land near them due to free range laws.
The solution (possibly temporary) is to confine the chickens in sealed buildings so they can't contact the wild birds.
misantroop
And the reason why it spreads so well is still concentrated industrial farming.
brendoelfrendo
An avian influenza outbreak has killed roughly 20 million chickens so far and is not yet over.
idlewords
Bird flu is what's going on.
autoexec
It's just greed. A couple years ago Cal-Maine Foods, whose birds were never infected at all, raised their prices anyway and their profits went up 718% https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/business/egg-profits-cal-main...
dan-robertson
Why is it that egg producer greed/generosity matches well with the times when there is an egg supply shortage/surfeit?
null
rsynnott
Bird flu. Though, also, US inflation was _somewhat_ worse than Eurozone inflation (Eurozone peaked higher but rose later and fell faster).
null
bluedino
Meanwhile, chicken prices haven't increased at KFC, Hooters, or Popeyes.
ars
That's because chickens raised for meat don't live long enough to be affected.
A second reason is because chickens get sick by contact with wild bids, due to free range laws for egg laying chickens.
Meat chickens don't go outside, they are kept in large barns, although without the pens and egg collection of their egg laying sisters. So they are not affected.
empath75
Bird flu
jnmandal
Meanwhile, my chickens cost exactly the same as they did 12 months ago. :)
codingdave
Which is great, so long as your flock does not get the flu and die.
We have had chickens in the past, and while I fully support anyone wanting to do their own chickens, the level of effort to keep them clean and healthy, safe from predators, and the labor to take care of them is non-trivial. They were the most expensive and labor-intensive "free eggs" we ever had.
oaththrowaway
I have lost 2 flocks of chickens to a combination of raccoons, foxes, and skunks. Interestingly enough none of those could kill my turkeys - they are big enough to fight them off I guess. They don't lay as many eggs though.
It is a lot of work, but after my last group was killed off 2 months I have not impressed by store eggs, so I'm planning on re-enforcing my coop so I can get another group of them soon.
joe8756438
i have a simple system for keep my birds safe from land predators.
so the birds get a point for each level of protection they receive. each group needs two points to be safe.
i mainly raise geese, which are tough, not going to be bothered by a hawk. geese (turkeys similar) start with one point. an electric fence is one point, a fully enclosed coop is one point, night light (.5?), guard animal (.5?). chickens are always inventing ways to die, so they start with 0 (should probably be -1).
fingers crossed i haven’t lost any geese to land predators in three years and only one chicken that flew the enclosure. hawks have taken a few chickens, but never when the geese are around.
reginald78
Do skunks hunt chickens? We lost ours when we were a kid to raccoons and weasels. The later being better suited to getting into the coop.
Our neighbor's chickens were devoured by black bears twice. They had one wily chicken that managed to escape both events however.
theonething
> I have not impressed by store eggs
Curious to know what differences do you discern between store and fresh eggs? Not doubting you, just curious to know.
joe8756438
yes. i have a flock and the feed alone puts a doz at $3.
the labor is somewhat enjoyable and the chickens are incredible child-leftover disposal machines. but when you factor infrastructure and labor youll probably never recoup your “investment” in eggs.
for anyone dealing with land predators, get electric poultry net. it’s magic.
declan_roberts
Is that true even right now in the winter? My hens are basically pensioners at this point. I'm planning on refreshing the flock this spring.
dkjaudyeqooe
You say that, but just wait until they unionize.
zie
Fake/Vegetarian eggs are priced the same here, so I made the switch and am only using fake eggs now for most of my cooking.
camel-cdr
One packet of Kala Namak salt goes a long way.
hombre_fatal
This tofu scramble recipe became an instant staple in my diet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc5pZ-PY-H8
Tastes more eggy and hearty than real eggs. And, like eggs, it's a good base for throwing in other ingredients like chopped tempeh, seitan, some sort of grain, mushrooms, etc.
It's a good gateway recipe into eating tofu in general.
christophilus
Gonna try that out. I just made her latest Chinese-style tofu and rice... super good.
Derek Sarno has some really good vegan breakfasts, too, if you haven't tried them.
pkaye
Which one do you use? I was looking up the Just Egg brand in the US and it was more expensive than the free range chicken eggs brand we use. We've been trying have a more plant based diet but just stick with chicken eggs for now because we don't use it every day.
zie
My local grocery store only has 1 brand, so I use that one. I don't know the brand, but apparently others say it's "Just Egg". I have no idea. I don't pay attention. If I ever got another option, I'd try that one too and then perhaps care :)
I agree if the pricing wasn't basically the same I wouldn't have even attempted the switch.
I just happened to notice the cost of eggs going up again and saw fake eggs at the same price and thought, well I'll try those, why not!
PyWoody
Are there any particular brands that you like?
stickmangallows
I use different things based on what it's for. Ground flax seeds for baking, aquafaba for souffles, tofu with black salt for scrambles, "Just Egg!" for egg wash when frying, and maple syrup for egg wash on breads. Of those, I mostly bake, so keeping the flax seeds around is much more convenient for me than regularly buying eggs anyway.
zie
I've only ever tried one brand. It's the only brand my local grocery store carries. It's a yellow carton with black writing, if that helps. I'm too lazy to go walk into the kitchen at the moment though.
chneu
Just Egg! Is the brand. It's really simple and easy to make at home too. It's just mung beans and black salt blended very well. You can bulk order yellow mung beans for super cheap.
whimsicalism
arent eggs already vegetarian
OJFord
It's not a strictly defined term, in the UK people generally mean lacto-ovo-vegetarian by it (they will eat eggs and milk) but many combinations are possible and what's most common varies geographically - in India for example it would generate taken to mean lacto-vegetarian (milk, no eggs).
Wikipedia has a nice table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism#Varieties
mullingitover
Yes.
Vegetarians don’t eat meat (including fish, although some religious sects have a marketing deal with fishermen to count fish as a vegetable for some reason), do eat animal products.
Vegans don’t eat meat and also don’t eat animal products.
dml2135
I always found this a funny etymological thing. Going just by the words themselves, if you asked me to guess which was which, I'd say they should be reversed -- "vegetarian" seems to clearly imply "eats a diet made up of vegetables" whereas "vegan" is more ambiguous and seems to fit "mostly eats vegetables but also will eat some non-meat animal products".
But what I'm guessing happened is that the less-strict diet came first (at least in the modern era), so got the "vegetarian" moniker, and then we just needed another work for the strict no-animal-products diet so had to come up with "vegan".
epistasis
The usage of the term "vegetarian" in the US is not consistent enough to come up with a precise definition, probably due to the mixture of so many cultures bringing their variation and translations. So it's always good to clarify on particular food items in my experience. Some will consider eggs part of a vegetarian diet, others will be practically offended at the ridiculousness of the idea.
0xffff2
Huh? I'm American and even used to work as a professional line cook. Vegetarian has only ever meant "no meat products" to me. Vegan means "no animal products of any kind", and anything else requires a more specific phrase like "I'm vegetarian, and also I don't eat eggs", or "I can't eat any dairy products at all", or whatever.
dastbe
Eggs are definitely a grey area for vegetarians, to the point where vegetarians will describe ovo-lacto-vegetarians where they are ok with eggs (and animal milk) whereas others aren't.
sonar_un
I've been vegan for over 15 years, but even when I was vegetarian, I never really considered eggs to be vegetarian. Though some people do.
null
vips7L
Technically since they're not meat and aren't born, but they're not vegan or ethical. The treatment of hens is inhumane.
whimsicalism
i'm vegan, just describing the state of modern american understandings of words
zie
Some vegetarians make exceptions for eggs, but I wouldn't call it "vegetarian" personally. You do you though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism
niceice
Did you find some that aren't filled with terrible oils and other bad-for-you ingredients? I haven't in my area yet.
chneu
Just fyi the whole "vegan foods are full of toxins and chemicals" is mostly nonsense pushed by the dairy and beef industries. They've spent a lot of money paying fitness, alt-right, and trad-wife influencers to push nonsense about vegan foods.
The one I love is the "there will be mass famine" if everyone goes vegan narrative that meat-heavy eaters like to talk about.
niceice
Just fyi fake eggs and fake meat and fake butter are highly processed and include bad ingredients like other highly processed food.
llm_nerd
Here in Ontario I'm buying eggs for $2.99 / dozen, or about $2.10 USD.
This isn't a boast or schadenfreude, but is an observation that the protected, stable industry (supply management), which itself yields smaller, less industrialized operations means that while bird flu is a problem, it's hitting smaller clusters rather than gigantic mega operations where gigantic numbers of birds get culled.
So while our eggs are more expensive at times, there are benefits.
Scoundreller
It’s great for the industrial food processor or restaurant chain that has a consistent demand/menu for eggs.
But more meh for the consumer that’s more liquid/dynamic/reactive and can easily substitute ad hoc if something gets too expensive.
It’s an industrial subsidy at more than one level.
llm_nerd
Consumer demand for eggs and milk is extremely consistent over the short term, and when the price explodes people just...pay more. Hence all of the mad rushes and bizarre hoarding behaviour for this perishable product across the US. People are just spending more of their income on eggs, and bizarrely might be buying even more than normal. Over decades people change habits but for something acute they just suck it up.
>It’s an industrial subsidy at more than one level.
It's food security. There have been times Canadians were almost convinced to eliminate it to pander to the US, but in the face of the idiocracy taking hold down South, and its boom-bust agricultural sector (one that yields enormous numbers of farmer suicides)...yeah, it isn't ever going anywhere.
Scoundreller
If we wanted to be strategic about food security (and deem supply management to be the way to do it), we’d supply manage primary food energy like beans and oats. Oh, and crop inputs like fertilizer.
Meat/eggs/dairy mostly destroys food energy. I guess you could argue the set pricing ensures food security for the animal.
latentcall
I highly highly recommend keeping chickens for those with the ability, space, and time to care for them. You don’t need acres. I was able to do it on a 1/4 acre in my city and as long as you follow the local ordinance you’ll be fine. Getting a half dozen eggs a day at this moment. Happy to answer questions if anybody has any. Been keeping chickens in town for 3 years.
bombcar
I'll just add that the coop is for you to look at. The chickens don't need anything fancy, so you can build one out of nearly anything.
Neighbors might complain if it looks really weird or run-down.
Fresh, local eggs have remained around the same price here. While more expensive than eggs from large producers in normal times, they are now often cheaper.
This is a great reminder of how important it is to support local farmers and small operations, which increase the resilience of the system as a whole.