Is this chicken feed conspiracy theory real, or is it just a way to get more video views? What do you all think about the price of eggs?
First gas, now eggs. The need for fear and rage is strong in some. How many eggs do you eat so that the price truly impacts your life? How about switching to something else while the egg industry works through this?
Eggs are the only way that some people are able to get animal protein. Not everyone has the budget to just "switch" to something else. Eggs cook fast (save energy) and are easy to make. Veggie protein? Well, canned beans can be expensive, and dried beans are difficult to deal with. I've been cooking for decades and I still can't get them to cook right unless I use an InstantPot. And everything else in the US is so expensive lately. Even just basic flour is something like 2x what it was a couple of years ago. It's not just the war, either. I've been watching prices jump up high since 2020. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for stupid reasons. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the "conspiracy" was nothing more than Purina buying and using sub-standard grain products because it was "cheap". They don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to making animal feed.
BTW, almost lost a dog to the melamine contamination issue. Poor dog never got better, either. I definitely remember Purina denying anything was wrong with that food until someone did some lab tests that showed the contamination.
We printed dollars like they were going out of style during the pandemic, and now the chickens have come home to roost and brought their eggs with them. And maybe that tradeoff is worth it, but it is a tradeoff. Economics might even be summarized as the study of tradeoffs.
Urban farmer Lerner, I guess. Overalls, straw hat 'n all. "Got m'own aigs, fried chicken - and fertilizer fer th' corn crop out front!"
Chickens can be pretty fun to raise. I want to move to a place with enough room for me to have chickens again.
New Canadians do it - In small, city backyards yards, here. Italians, mostly - even 40+ years after they get here. I have no objection, and they're very careful - the City DOES have ordinances. It's always a "clandestine op." Back around 1967, my wife showed me a solid brick chicken coop in her home town. Right beside the main house. No chickens for many years. It had a couple of rooms, running water, VERY small bathroom, heat - and its own municipal address. She'd lived in it long before, until she was about five or six, with her Mom and Dad.
This was in Welland, ON so, both. Welland was/is a trilingual city. 60% English, 40% French and 30% Italian. There were also about 15% Ukrainians and at least 10% Hungarians. - YOU figure it out. The Hungarians and Italians were the best vegetable gardeners. I found a way to tell which gardens were Hungarian and which were Italian. Count the pepper plants and the tomato plants. More tomatoes? Italian. More peppers? Hungarian. It worked 150%.
Right. Another thing about vegetable protein. It's hardly ever "complete" from one source -- containing all necessary amino acids to be "complete." Usually one source of veggie protein lacks one or two, so it has to be combined with another. A common "complete" veggie protein combo is peas and rice. There are others. These days, you could likely spend more money building complete veggie proteins than you'd spend on eggs. Back in 1989, I took a 3-unit college course in nutrition - it's where I learned this kind of stuff. Our instructor, Linda, was a Registered Dietitian. (That takes a Master's here.) I took the course out of desperation, because I needed just ONE course in anything to graduate, and my first six choices were unavailable. (Summer session.) It turned out to be really interesting, and gave me all kinds of info. About the most useful single course I ever took. There's a lot to knowing what to eat, how much, and why. It's not quite rocket science - but it's close. Hey, Linda! I'm sure you're out there - thanks again. What you taught me is a good part of the reason I've made it to 80!
