I do own two chickens since maybe 6 months for random reasons. Before that I thought they were pretty "stupid"/"uninteresting" animals but I was really wrong.

They are in fact very lovable little beings. They have interestingly complex relationships between them, they are very social and I do have a special bond with the first I got, especially because we hadn’t the necessary hardware to keep her hot enough for multiple days, we had to literally keep her warm between our hands.

Now she is a grown up chicken and she loves it when I go outside.

Also they are in fact pretty intelligent animals, and they are really curious about what happens around them.

I’d ever go as far as saying that they could be the perfect household pets if only the evolution gave them sphincters.

That was a nice personal discovery.

> I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it because I really only eat my own eggs, but perhaps I just got used to them

At 2 years old my son could blind taste test tell the difference between my neighbor's chicken's eggs and store bought eggs.

He refused to eat eggs (still doesn't) until we convinced him to try one of the eggs from our neighbor's chicken's. He liked that egg. Every time we've tried to pass (fancy!) store eggs off to him as our neighbor's eggs he's called us out for lying to him.

He'll reliably eat eggs from the chickens across the street and nowhere else.

So yes, there is a difference in taste!

Quails. Even cuter than chickens and much more easy to keep. Might be one of the easiest to keep animals overall. Not even ant colonies, fish, cats or dogs are as happy with as little as quails.

Housespiders and cacti might be easier.

You need to use quail proof feeders, tho, or you're going to spend a fortune on kitchen scraps or whatever you intend to feed them. They eat just about anything peckable except oats (if you didn't end up with picky ones). Cookef rice, seeds, peas, boiled eggs, sometimes nibbling on each other (-.-), or dirt cheap quail feed. Also mealworms ... its catnip for quails.

> You may have to euthanize a chicken, likely by hand (literally) via cervical dislocation.

I recommend cutting the head off with a pair of high quality, large and well maintained scissors.

Put a bucket in front of you, put the scissors from behind on the neck, just below the head, and cut in a single strong motion.

The lil birdy will not understand what is happening and wont feel uncomfortable during the process. Its head then looses consciousness in sbout 15 seconds, compared to about 30 seconds for the cervical dislocation method. (It'll loose the ability to feel pain MUCH faster than 15s, but I dont think we know how quickly. But probably faster than it'll realize that there's pain in the first place. You've probably cut yourself before and noticed that the pain only kicks in after a moment.)

It is also way easier to not screw up. Just remember to ALWAYS cut the head off completely, as fast as possible. Lil birdie wont die from bloodloss, but sudden loss of spinal fluid, which is WAY faster.

The cervical dislocation method is also very effective, but also much easier to screw up, a bit more uncomfortable for the birdy and could introduce quite some anxiety for the birdy if you hesitate for even but a moment.

On the other hand the cute little critters dont understand how scissors work or what they're for. Even if the method is much less pretty, it's by far the most peaceful method for the birdy.

I've had chickens for probably 15 years now, starting with 3 and ending up with about 20 (mixture of hybrids, pedigrees and rescued battery/farmed hens) and 2 geese. This happens a lot with chickens. Chickens are a gateway drug to more chickens. If you have a few chickens, they take about as much looking after as a rabbit - keep their food and water topped up, and clean them out once a week.

I agree that you won't make money or a profit. The coop money you will probably never earn back, but I can cover the cost of a sack of feed (£12 or so) by selling boxes to colleagues for £1 each.

I think the eggs taste better because a) what the hens eat and b) because they are much fresher.

I've had to kill chickens (and hate doing it), which is sad, but I've never taken one to a vet. It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20.

We've brought chickens inside the house when they're ill (we have tiled floors) but don't do it on a regular basis. If chickens weren't incontinent, though, they would make great indoor pets. Surprisingly smart and pleasant animals. This will also sound weird but if you pick one up, they also smell nice - kind of like a new puppy smell.

The taste is definitely different, and the reason for its is the diet. Small scale chickens tend to eat a lot of grass, rather than the cheaper feed given to factory farms.

A upside that was not mention is that chickens are excellent in cutting grass and keeping weed out of bushes, especially roses bushes. They generally don't eat fruits on bushes like raspberries, but our strawberries was not safe so we used a gardening net over those (also keeps other birds out). Smaller plants/seed may also need a net until they grown in size large enough that the chickens are not interested anymore.

A major big upside we also got is that they hunt down slugs and other insects that otherwise can cause major damage to a garden or lawn. Even ant colonies, which can often be a pain to remove and a major annoyance if they invade your home.

On the downside, chicken hierarchy is a very real thing and they can get into quite bloody fights with each other.

> If you really like eating chicken, you may end up finding it difficult to eat them again in the future after you develop a bond with them.

I used the believe the same, but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land. Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals.

But then the question should be is it just the "bond" which is holding someone back from killing animals? Why can't we just not kill without relying on bonds?

I grew up with backyard chickens. It was great, but youre missing one downside: the smell. Chickens shit a lot. Also, the predator thing is understated. You don’t just need defenses, your defenses are likely to fail. If this happens, you may wake up to the sound of your pet being mauled to death and your yard covered in feathers.

> - You may have to euthanize a chicken, likely by hand (literally) via cervical dislocation. It still ranks among the worst things I've ever had to do in my life. Imagine euthanizing your dog or cat by hand...

I visited a farm as a kid and we had fresh chicken for dinner one day. They had one of those orange road cones with the top cut off a bit to fit the chicken in upside down so they could easily chop off its head. They then run around for awhile after that because their nervous system is still working for a minute or so. Just something to interesting to learn as a 5th grader, I guess.

My neighbor has chickens and the predators are no joke. Raccoons constantly trying to weaken their coop, weasels always ready to slip into any little hole, hawks and other birds of prey circling overhead. They've lost a lot of chickens despite keeping a close eye on them and trying to keep a very sturdy coop. It's like a signal goes out to all the wild animals "COME GET TASTY CHICKENS HERE!" Of course we are in a pretty rural area. You can get some pretty cute fluffy chickens though.

> Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent.

They did tests on chickens, and apparently they understand the concept of showing restraint on a current action, with the view on having a larger reward later.

Something along the lines of: "If you don't eat these grains now, we'll reward you with twice as many grains later".

That's something that dogs can't do, for instance.

> I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it

I didn't notice a significant difference in taste either. Eggs taste like eggs, it is one of the foods where there is the fewest difference between home grown and store bought, and also between different grades of store bought. And if there is any difference, I think that freshness is more significant.

One big difference, though it doesn't matter much when you eat it is the shell. Good quality eggs, including those from backyard chicken tend to have a stronger shell that breaks cleanly.

Maybe if you give your chicken specific food, your eggs can have a specific taste. How you feed them can affect the color of the yolk, which can matter for presentation, but it doesn't tell much else.

> it's definitely _not_ the _monetary_ solution

Does this also take into account the current price of eggs in the same product category? i.e., organic, free-range eggs?

For current Erewhon prices, 8 eggs a day is $11.30 in free eggs a day, so $339 in eggs a month?

https://erewhon.com/subcategory/33022/eggs - $16.99 a dozen

Chickens are really smart and curious animals. They can also learn from each other new behaviour, like eating unfamiliar food, or hunting for small animals (the cries of joy from our cock once he finally got a frog!!!) They also have really marked personalities, once you spend some time with them.

> a large coop

It's large compared to the average, but the longer we've had chickens the more we're convinced they thrive better when given appropriate space (anecdata about average age of our chickens vs all other people with chickens we know), leading me to think something like yours is still too small even for 2 chickens.

For us the minimum is now such that there's at least some of the gras/moss left throughout the year instead of the puddle of mud we used to get. Plus I'm not gonne lie: seeing their (and their ancestors) behavior 'in the wild' it feels morally/ethically better as well. Especially the younger ones are keen explorers: easy to see when let ranging free - they'll go in a radius of like 100m around their nest, but not much further than that. Apart from that one mandatory weirdo obviously.

Definitely it's not about the cost and convenience.

And I haven't seen it discussed much, which tells a lot that the HN-ers are city dwellers with little experience in the countryside life. But the biggest, nastiest, deepest problem with anything animal is ... shit.

Animals produce shit and lots of animals produce loads of shit. And chickens don't have the notion of "this area is for eating, this one's for shitting", they will shit all over the place. So if you don't enclose them and can run to your porch, they'll shit it up so gotta be careful where you step or sit on. If you enclose them, better be prepared to wipe shit of your boots coze no way you can avoid it forever. Then the "pleasant" activity of cleaning up loads of shit from the chicken coop and dispose it somewhere.

Overall, having lived on a farm, my childhood memories of interaction with animals resume to "lots and lots of shit everywhere" :)

My mom has a dozen backyard chickens and I agree with all of these. I'll tack on two bits from my own experience:

Good: Fresh unwashed eggs don't need to be refrigerated. They are perfectly safe at room temperature on the shelf for days.

Bad: You can't leave them with other pets without supervision. One of the dogs got himself a taste for chicken and already ate at least three. You can't train this out of the dog, unfortunately. I had to put down one poor chicken that was deeply injured but still alive. We constantly stay vigilant to keep the dogs and chickens separate.

> You may have to euthanize a chicken

Looking online on reasons to euthanize chickens, it seems to be about not prolonging their suffering when ill.

I don't really know much on farming practices, and I'm not commenting to say that things should be one way or the other. However, I do note that with a human, euthanasia is not a common practice, specially without consent, and one would typically just numb the pain until they pass on their own, i.e. hospice care.

Maybe that's not possible with animals because chickens can't really communicate on the effectiveness of drugs...

Still much better treatment than factory farming.

The ancestors of chickens used to eat our ancestors for hundreds of millions of years, so I have no issues with eating them as much as I want.

I used to get tipped in eggs by this wonderful human at a bar I worked at and while I'm not sure I could tell them apart in a blind taste test I can say that the variety of pretty colors the egg shells came in and the richness of the yolk combined to make them noticeably more satisfying. I have a lot of experience tasting things though, I could absolutely see someone having a similar experience to mine and chalking it up to a superior taste. Or maybe there is a regional component to basic grocery store eggs and I live in a high quality zone, idk.

> - I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it because I really only eat my own eggs, but perhaps I just got used to them

I eat fresh laid eggs very rarely (though have been thinking of raising my own), but can confirm that every time I've had truly fresh chicken eggs the taste is notably superior.

For me the biggest downside is that they reliably attract vermin. I tried a bunch of things to deter rats but they were ever present when we had hens

> You may have to euthanize a chicken, likely by hand (literally) via cervical dislocation. It still ranks among the worst things I've ever had to do in my life.

Traditionally it's done by decapitation. Head dies instantly. No need to suffer. Body runs for a while. Don't forget to ask for forgiveness...

Right! The first egg our chickens laid cost $500, the second $250, etc. It would take a lot of laying for the cost to come even close to grocery store prices (back then) but we quit after a couple of years.

Some other downsides:

- The smell… Chicken crap is horrible. Our neighbour has chickens, we have flies. Lots of black flies.

- Bye bye garden… My dad has two chickens (did I mention the smell?) that free roam and absolutely tear up everything looking for a tasty bite.

- Can’t eat the eggs This isn’t necessarily a chicken problem but mostly a problem with chemical industry. We’ve had a lot of PFOA/PFAS contamination and public health advise says to not eat eggs from backyard chickens

Great points! I agree with everything you said here with exception to the point about it not being a monetary solution. I've built an "extremely" janky coop for almost no cost in the past. At one point I got absolutely sick of eggs because there were so many than I ended up trading neighbors for other goods. The whole thing ended up making/saving me a ton of money in the end. Let me reiterate how unsafe this coop was however... it was as spacious as it was dangerous (very).

> - Your wife may one day want a chicken to live inside the house. You may one day agree to this, and then miss it when the chicken is living outside the house again...

This made me smile very wide, thank you for sharing :-)

"If you really like eating chicken, you may end up finding it difficult to eat them again in the future after you develop a bond with them."

Or you might find them delicious and need to raise more of them.

>I'm told the eggs taste way better

Can confirm. My dad's cousin is a little bit country and has had meat and egg chickens for years. She comes to visit sometimes, and always brings eggs. Store-bought quite literally pales in comparison, which is to say that the dandelion yellow yolks of store bought eggs have nothing on the rich, flavorful orange-as-a-child's-drawing-of-the-sun yolks from her eggs.

Seems to me another downside is the increased difficulty in traveling. As in, if I want to go away for a few days, I'll have to find someone to feed and water the chickens.

Sounds like a classic case of -not the cheapest option, but definitely the most rewarding-. The ethical aspect is a huge plus: knowing exactly how your eggs are produced and giving the chickens a good life.

My dad used to have around 15 chickens — but then a fox somehow burrowed under the fence - which was buried in the ground around 20 cm - and slaughtered them all.

My sister has been keeping a coop in her backyard for over a decade now. She got the, because “I find the sound soothing.” (It really is quite nice)

One other advantage is that they will absolutely hoover up the ticks out of a yard. I’ve tried to talk my various friends who move upstate into getting some for this reason… but yeah it’s a couple grand up front and a new hobby.

> Your wife may one day want a chicken to live inside the house. You may one day agree to this, and then miss it when the chicken is living outside the house again

Whenever someone mentions how unique you can be with language and come up with amazing unique sentences never uttered by anyone before...I shall think of this

You make no mention of feed cost. Do you just depend upon free range "pecking" in the grass, or kitchen scraps... or what? 13 chickens is a lot of daily feed!

I also own chickens. Before I got them I thought chickens were pretty stupid animals and wasn't particularly fond of them, but I liked the idea of keeping them for eggs and some entertainment.

I've had mine for about 6 months now and they've totally won me over...

They're far more friendly and intelligent than ever I imagined. Mine love hanging out with me in the garden. One of them is very affectionate and will sometimes decide to sit on my shoulder and is happy to be held. They're all totally different and have very unique personalities which I didn't expect. Their personality will depends a lot on the breed of chicken you get too and some are much more tame than others so it's worth thinking about the type of chicken you want.

I've trained mine to come to me when I whistle which can be super useful when I need to get them back in the run. Obviously you can't train them like dogs, but they're surprisingly smart and will learn things.

They've very curious animals. Mine like to fly up onto my window sill to watch us in the kitchen which is quite sweet.

They'll eat pretty much anything so they're very cheap to keep once you have your coop built. I have 3 (getting a 4th soon) and it's costing us about £3 per month for their feed which makes up about half of their diet, and for that they'll give us about 60-90 eggs. I wouldn't get them for the price of eggs though. If you want to give them a good home it's going to cost you. They're also quite a lot of work. I need to clean mine weekly, feed them daily and provide them general care. Buying an automatic coop door is a good way to reduce some of the hassle of having to let them out and shut them in every day.

I don't eat mammal meat, but I do eat chicken and fish and its been hard for me to eat chicken recently. I'm trying to reduce the amount of chicken I eat in favour of eggs.

The eggs do taste better but that depends on what you are feeding them.

You don't have to eat your chickens, it’s up to you.

predators and rats and avian flu are the tough problems.

The concept is kind of analogous in many ways on if one should have solar power to hedge against power outages. I.e definitely can be worth it but will take up time and investment with long payback period.

Thanks for the detail. I never thought about vet needs for chickens. How would you know they are sick? I know with my cat, her mood and activity would shift. Is it apparent when a chicken is sick?

How does one travel/vacation if they have chickens? Are they self-managing enough to be left alone for 1-2 weeks a couple times a year?

> Chickens are very sweet animals

My father asked for, and got, a chick for Easter once.

It grew into a rooster that took over the backyard by terrorizing the whole family. Only my grandmother, who had grown up on a farm, was willing to go into the yard.

> Your wife may one day want a chicken to live inside the house. You may one day agree to this, and then miss it when the chicken is living outside the house again...

A friend of mine complained to me a few years ago that the people in the apartment next to hers were raising a chicken. The crowing woke her up in the morning. But she consoled herself that soon enough they'd eat it.

I was pretty amused at the whole idea of raising a chicken inside an apartment.

Your hypothetical children may tell stories for decades about how they were the ones who had to scoop the poop into the outdoor composting area and that the strong smell of urea lives with them to this day.

uh, speaking hypothetically and not at all of our own family chicken adventure when I was a kid/teen.

Also, if you have to kill a chicken, study how to do it and practice beforehand. Botching it will also live with you - I learned this one the hard way.

All that said, I'm glad I had the experience of (helping) raise chickens. It was an adventure, and the eggs were great. I've pondered it on and off again as an adult but have thus far resisted the temptation.

> - Your wife may one day want a chicken to live inside the house. You may one day agree to this, and then miss it when the chicken is living outside the house again...

Isn't the more likely case that they shit everywhere but the family loves them so much they won't let you put it back outside?

Ignorant question: why might one need to euthanize a chicken?

A big upside; with chickens you have the best possible composting system. They will eat almost all food waste. (but, please be careful to avoid the small number of foods which are unhealthy for chickens) And, they turn that waste into compost. Depending on volume, they can also completely handle leaves, grass clippings, and other yard waste. For leaves, they love to scratch through them and will poop on them. They'll break down the leaves in record time.

"Predators, foxes and hawks, you need defenses"

This one is something I think people maybe don't consider. My brother has chickens, they have a coop but pretty much have the run of his property in a rural area. He has had to kill a coyote and a bob cat so far. Not a reason not to get them, but something to consider before doing so.

> Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent. You will grow to love all the silly things they do. You can pet them, they are super soft, and can become quite tame. They can purr.

Chickens are ruthless and will not hesitate for a moment to kill and then cannibalize their coop mates. The best way to avoid it is to have a single breed as they tend to start by attacking anything different, literally spots or discolorations, on other birds.

Yes, chickens will eat other chickens.

> I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it because I really only eat my own eggs, but perhaps I just got used to them.

All eggs taste the same. Which is great because eggs taste great.

> Your wife may one day want a chicken to live inside the house. You may one day agree to this, and then miss it when the chicken is living outside the house again...

Chickens are filthy animals and the thought of having one indoors is disgusting.

good luck with this

how hard would it be to break even with 200 chickens in a typical European town (excluding land costs)? i am just imagining if a small company decides to raise its own chickens-eggs for lunch time...

Inside the house? How? They shit wherever they happen to be ...