People have been keeping intelligent animals like chickens, pigs, and cattle for millennia. And continuing to eat them.

Ironically, vegetarianism really only started to become popular in the Western world once people lost their connection to farms, and meat and poultry were something you bought in pieces, plastic-wrapped.

It didn't stop me and my family. (Chicken katsu is still one of my favorites dishes.) To be sure, we did not eat our own chickens (just their eggs). Somehow we were able to still mentally distance ourselves from ours and "the others".

I was living in San Jose in a dense suburban neighborhood. It became legal to have backyard chickens so I jumped at getting three chickens. (We had three young daughters, see.)

One mysteriously died. Of the remaining two, the bossy one decided she was a rooster and started crowing, of a sort, in the morning hours.

So we had one asshole neighbor complain and I was obliged to send them off to live with a friend who had some property in the Santa Cruz mountains. Sad. And afterward, neighbors strolling by said they missed the chicken sounds in the neighborhood.

I'll spare you the unfortunate ends for the two. I'll say the Santa Cruz mountains represent more predators and require someone with a little more responsibility than my friend showed. (I don't blame him. It was really my fault — having more or less dumped them on him.)

I have grown up with chickens through out my childhood and I strongly disagree with that take. If anything, it makes it more reasonable to eat chicken given that backyard hens are more sustainable and more natural than processed food bought in the store. Chickens reproduce at a very fast pace, and it is not like one is going to eat the oldest and nicest ones.

It does however makes factory farmed animals much less fun to eat, both in term of taste and the knowledge of how much better backyard hens has it. It is like buying clothes manufactured from countries with less-than-stellar working environment.

Some people get used to it. We did some work to prepare our barn for chickens but never quite 'pulled the trigger' because between our tenants and other friends we are swimming in eggs. (It was funny as hell that some of our chicken-keeping friends had a fox family living in a stump in front of their house. Their chicken house was solid but they'd catch the mama fox on the game camera every night bringing home a chicken from somebody else's flock every night.)

Our favorite meat lately has been roadkill deer. Two days ago a friend was traveling to a job site up route 89 on the side of the lake when they hit a deer. He called us on his cell but we didn't want to drive that far that day. The next day my wife was planning to drive out in that direction to help a friend, the friend welched out but she went to see if the deer was still there, it was, so she loaded it into the back of our Honda Fit and I was told, when she picked me up at the bus stop, to stash all my stuff with me in the passenger seat.

Turned out the intestines didn't splatter, it was cold, and there wasn't serious tissue damage from the crash so we're going to get a huge amount of meat out of it. Between roadkill deer and deer my son hunts and deer other people hunt on our land we might need to get a bigger freezer.

My aunt names all her chickens. She will also grab one and twist its head of with her bare hands while carrying on a casual conversation with you.

I told the kids not to name the roosters, but we eat them regardless. Once again, humans excel at holding contradictory thoughts.

The only reason we don't eat dogs or cats is because they don't taste good. Predators don't make for good eating. They have to work too hard physically for their food. It makes their meat tough.

That said there are places where dog is eaten usually as a stew because that makes it more tender.

> More people will start to find...

...that roosters are total assholes.

There's room for exactly one in the flock, and I have no emotional difficulty turning the rest into stew. The "chickens are cute" narrative only works in a carefully curated frame.

Have chickens and they are dumber than fish. Have no qualms about eating them.

I’m from a rural area. I have formative memories of raising caring for and slaughtering animals. Hunting and fishing, literally put food on the table. I don’t remember anyone complaining that the chicken in the gumbo came from the yard.

I don’t know, farmers always had dogs on the farm but they didn’t eat them and continued to eat the chickens. Chicken is really great and succulent. Hard to resist frying one of them up and sucking the meat off the bone. Absolutely no desire to do that with a dog.

> More people will start to find eating intelligent emotional animals as abhorrent as eating dogs or cats.

Why do you think that people abjuring consumption of emotionally observable animals is more likely that the opposite: growing an acceptance of eating other sentient beings as part of the cycle of life?

Wait until we find out how intelligent broccoli is.

Considering the bizarro world we're now living it, I wouldn't put it beyond us for it to go the other way.

If people realise they are still comfortable eating intelligent emotional animals like chickens, the dogs and cats of this world should watch their backs!

Given people grew animals for eating for centuries and generally were more cruel to them then we are , I doubt.

I don't eat sunflower-seeds, as sunflowers murder one another by throwing shade.

My understanding is that birds are about as intelligent as mammals.

Funny I know some people who grew up with chickens who think they are nasty, aggressive and disagreeable. Like little dragons.

    > That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken.

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.

> That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken.

It will depend on whether the whole chicken is chicken proper, or one reassembled from nuggets.

eggs are homogenous in nature, so a blind test between two eggs can reveal the superior quality of one type of homogenous product. Especially when it is an egg, which is entirely "natural"

a chicken nugget is not the same thing as whole chicken, because it has many chemicals, additives, flavouring agents, msg, organ meat, etc and is then battered or crumbed and deep fried before being packed. It also has a different texture altogether, and is eaten with the hands which children find easier than using cutlery.

compare a child tasting two different varieties of dark chocolate in comparison to a milk chocolate with caramel filling, or two varieties of whole milk to chocolate skim milk, et cetera.

Nuggets are mostly skin and cartilage, so maybe that preference stems from the nutritional needs of a growing child.

Taste (and health) are two things the market doesn’t select for.

Anecdotally I have regularly switched between store-bought eggs and eggs from my friend's little farm over the last 20+ years, and try as I might, regardless of consumption method, I have yet to taste a difference. I have also asked many friends over the years if they notice any difference and all have agreed with me.

It doesn't matter though, I still prefer my friend's eggs to store-bought ones, I'd rather not support that dirty industry.

I cannot tell the difference between backyard eggs and fancy store bought (organic, free-range) eggs, but I can tell the difference between that set and industrial store bought eggs.

Anecdata also, but I can compare the eggs at home (homegrown) vs. any normal restaurant around and there definitely is a notable difference in looks and taste.

That said, this applies to scrambled or fried eggs.

Omelettes not so much, as seasoning might play quite a big part, and even less with cakes, baked goods, etc. in which eggs are just one more ingredient.

Honestly, does it matter? If raising the chickens that yield your eggs makes your breakfasts more enjoyable, is physical vs psychological causality relevant? The important thing here is enjoyment of our food.

This backyard chicken and that backyard chicken does not have to be the same tho

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£1 egg is quite expensive tho: 10 free range eggs at Tesco cost like £3 or so.

Eggs are still pretty cheap in the UK, free range ones for £1.50 or so.

Hahaha - possibly!

I think it is the distinction between "livestock" and "pets".

I would also be very surprised if any vets ever managed to treat a hen successfully. They tend to hide any illness until very sick.

It makes sense if someone likes chickens in general but doesn't care much about any individual chicken.

The geese we put to bed every night, and let out in the morning so they are generally locked away when a fox would come. A friend of ours has about 15 geese and pretty sure they have lost goslings to foxes.

They good at deterring delivery drivers though, and generally alerting people.

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/ke...

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.

Murder is also part of the “circle of life”, whatever that may mean, given that it’s pablum that means nothing. As is disease.

We rightfully find these immoral and don’t engage in them.

That’s not a defense of the immoral act. It’s just words to describe the immoral act.

> It's a natural and normal part of life

So is dying of smallpox.

Wikipedia:

> Smallpox is estimated to have killed up to 300 million people in the 20th century and around 500 million people in the last 100 years of its existence.

Completely natural, and completely normal.

That doesn’t mean we should be engaging in it in 2025.

The naturalistic fallacy is not justification for killing living things.

Ease cannot be used to ethically justify an action. But even so, you ignore that, according to research, people who eat meat have worse health than people who don't.

> being vegetarian doesn't exclude you from the necessity of killing in order to live. You're just killing forms of life that you emphasize with less, which is very reasonable and rational but also not materially different.

That’s like saying you kill chickens to eat eggs. You don’t kill a plant to eat its fruit. In fact, plants benefit from animals eating what they produce, be it oranges or tomatoes or something else and crapping the seeds somewhere else for proliferation.

Harvesting crops is materially different from slaughtering animals, and calorie for calorie, plant-based nutrition involves less termination of life than getting calories from animals (if you're grouping insects and non-animal life into the "forms of life" being killed).

If people don't like killing in general, or killing animals more specifically, they can live a wonderfully health(y|ier) life by going plant-based, be responsible for less killing, and today do it without having to give up the textures and experiences they've be conditioned on.

It's difficult in 2025 to conclude that a person who doesn't choose to eat this way is particularly opposed to killing, in the way that you propose.

Being against child slavery doesn’t exclude you from benefitting from child slavery when you use your phone.

I guess you should just be pro child slavery and enslaved some kids to do your housework then?

Cars kill 50k Americans a year. I guess we are just ok with killing peoplr and therefore shouldn’t be against murder either?

It doesn’t even take philosophy 101 to understand there’s a significant moral gulf between killing deliberately and incidentally.

> People don't like to kill in general.

I used to believe this.

Then I came up with a twisted question to ask people (I am fun at parties)

The question is something like, if you had to come up with a name for someone to kill within twenty four hours can you do so? The conditions are you get a full and unconditional pardon. It won't be held against you at all. If need be, we will even arrange it such that the person can't protest. However, once you agree, you must come up with a name and you must follow through. You must kill this person no matter what within a short time frame (make something up like a month).

I expected people to answer no. You can't come up with a name in a day! However, over half the people I have asked have said they have a name right now.

I grew up the same for much of my childhood tho it was never hidden or explicitly stated all the time. I bear absolutely 0 resentment about any of that tbh. I just fed the chickens, petted the goats, waved the bees away from fruits and helped pluck the chickens

In the end it makes me feel like the people eating their nuggets but have a traumatic reaction to what created them are the odd ones.

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

The first step is to acknowledge that there is something wrong here. This categorization of "pets" and "farm animals" as different sets is completely virtual. In real life, both are just animals.

This argument would be valid if humanity would continue all practices it has done "since the dawn of time".

We have dropped some practices and we continue with some. We no longer leave the dead to rot, we bury/burn them, and so on. We developed religions, science, etc, and we are in a different era now, our lifestyle has completely changed, we don't have to hunt, don't have to build our own shelters, and we are no longer nomadic.

I am of the opinion that `killing animals` is a practice we can safely stop now, it was a necessity at that time, but right now it is completely optional.

There are various angles to look at this. One is sustainability and another one is morality.

Sustainability: Do you think we have enough animals to feed 8 Billion people on earth meat daily? I hope you know why we had to fallback to agriculture as a source of nutrition. Why most early settlements were started on river banks?

Morality: My moral standard is: Don't kill animals for my own sake of pleasure, kill only what's necessary for my survival, kill only what is there to kill me/hurt me.

So can I "kill" plants?: Yes (Using the term 'kill' wrt plants is just wrong, but I will continue with it for the sake of argument).

How is it morally okay to kill a plant but not okay to kill an animal?:

Let's agree on the definition of an animal. By animal, we all mean the set of (humans, pets, goat, horse, pig, lion, etc), there are no plants in this set. They are in a set called `living_beings`, which will have bacteria, viruses, insects as well (who can be further clubbed into smaller sets). Now my moral standard is "Not kill animals" (Not 'don't kill living beings'). It is on this entire set, not selectively for X or Y, which will be hypocritical. I am applying the same level of morality to everyone in this set. Now coming to plant-based food. First of all vegetarian food is not just plants. It is fruits, vegetables (akin to fruits), seeds, leaves, and other different parts. The plants are not always "killed" unlike when producing meat-based food (except eggs). The plants are "evolutionary hardened",i.e. built for harvesting, they don't die if you pluck a fruit (moreover they drop it naturally). They don't die when you take a flower or take a bunch of leaves (as long as you are within limits). The same can't be said for any animal.

Is the use of pesticides, deforestation, and killing of insects/rodents okay for producing large amounts of vegetarian food?:

No, I am against that but I don't see any other alternative to feed the calorific needs of 8 Billion people on earth. Of course there are other farming practices but they can't be commercialized or don't have high yields. As much as we can, we should try to eat locally sourced items to avoid carbon emissions due to transportation over large distances.

So what will be my ideal world that is according to my moral standards?: Ideally, everyone has a backyard where they can grow their own plant-based food. If you want better nutrition coverage, keep some chicken and eat the eggs. Let the chickens enjoy their lives, doing chicken things.

Will I eat an animal if I am stranded on an island with nothing else to eat?: Yes, at my current level of ego, I would prefer to stay alive by killing and eating the said animal.

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.

Pea gravel. Lots of pea gravel in the holes. Blow it in with water.

You can't tunnel in pea gravel.

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...

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.

Yep, this is a problem right here. Once something does make it in it's a massacre.

>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.

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.

> 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>.

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.

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.

Yes. It was quite a culture shock to see eggs stacked up in the middle of the aisle in Mexican grocery stores. I also find that, in general, Mexican store-bought eggs taste better and have a much darker-yellow yolk.

Iirc, it’s only the US and Japan that acid wash their eggs, thus stripping the natural protective layer, and require refrigeration.

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.

Everywhere that is never tested. How do you know for sure you are on good soil, and that no contaminated soil was used under your house and garden, which no doubt were levelled before construction started?

This includes feed. Commercial animal foods literally contains waste, such as plastic, due to waste food recycling not being required to be unpacked.

Sure, you _can_ control these things, but more often than not, people don't. Semi commercial hobbyists don't have the money.

AFAICT, biologists didn't screw up and give two different body parts the same name. Neck bones are called cervical vertebrae.

Not to mention, raising meat chickens is sad. We've bread them to gorge themselves so they bulk up fast. That results in essentially morbidly obese chickens. We ended up with two on accident and they couldn't even climb the ramp into the coop after a few weeks. The just gorged and sat around in the dirt. It was very sad. Raising non-meat chickens takes a lot longer and the meat output is much lower.