Hacker News Reader

Comment by xd | Hacker News Reader

I took on some caged hens (about 6months back now) that were off for slaughter to be turned into dog food. Straight away they took to the patch of land in my garden I gave them and laid eggs .. the eggs they lay are on another level to anything store bought. I can put a pan of water on boil over a stove; crack an egg into it and have a perfect poached egg 2-3mins later. They are creamy and rich as if they have life compared to what now tastes almost rancid in store eggs.

Waking up at sun rise every day to let them out is a pain but more than worth it. That said I wouldn't recommend keeping hens unless you've had exposure to them on some level other than visiting a farm.

View on HN

I added a solenoid-operated latch to my chicken coop that opened when the sun came up. I didn't like getting up at 4:30 in the summer. At night I still manually closed it since I had to make sure I didn't lock a skunk or possum in with the chickens.

> I added a solenoid-operated latch to my chicken coop that opened when the sun came up.

That's pretty cool. Is it battery operated? Do you have your chicken coup next to your home or did you run power to the hen house?

The coop was maybe 60 ft away so I opted for a battery that I'd have to recharge every few weeks. I don't have chickens right now but if I ever get more I'll use a small solar charger and maybe add a few more bells and whistles. I lost a lot of chickens to raccoons and hawks so maybe next time I'd actually do a fully enclosed chicken run.

Funny, I had it auto open at 8am and close at civil twilight automatically, and it was the auto closing that was the much bigger deal for me.

This. It is all in the yolks. Farm fresh eggs from happy chickens can be a nice deep yellow/orange, whereas factory eggs are usually pale yellow.

Of all of the farm products discussed in the thread, eggs show the biggest difference in my opinion

Are you sure this is still true? I thought nowadays it's mostly what supplements they put in the feed. These supplements are sold exactly with this kind of promise.

You appear to be correct.

"Handbook on Natural Pigments in Food and Beverages"

Chapter 14 - Feed Additives for Influencing Chicken Meat and Egg Yolk Color

Pigmentation of egg yolks and poultry tissues (mainly skin and fat) directly reflects the contents of carotenoids in the feed of birds. In most countries of the world, consumers prefer pigmented egg yolks, whereas pigmented poultry tissues are less desired. Especially in the southern part of Europe, eggs with a golden-orange tone of yolks are preferred. This is achieved by supplementing feeds of birds with both yellow and red carotenoids. For this purpose, nine carotenoids are approved as feed additives in the European Union, five natural and four artificial products, six with a yellow color and three with a red color. This chapter describes the ways of pigmenting egg yolks and poultry tissues, how to measure the achieved color, the factors affecting the color of the product, the deposition rates of carotenoids, and the contribution of carotenoids in egg yolks to humane intake.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978008100...

Here's one of these products from BASF:

https://nutrition.basf.com/global/en/animal-nutrition/produc...

Poultry cannot produce carotenoids on their own, which is why the color of egg yolks depends on the carotenoids combination in their diets. However, it is not only the quantity of pigments that matters but also their bioavailability and color intensity. With Lucantin® Yellow (C-30 ester) any egg yolk color between light pastel yellow and reddish is possible.

There is one brand of eggs, happy egg co heritage breed that has some of the deepest color yolks I've seen with a different smell and taste. Significantly tastier. I've tried a lot of brands and price categories and haven't found ones like those.

https://happyegg.com/heritage-breed/

this is not true: https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs

> That said I wouldn't recommend keeping hens unless you've had exposure to them on some level other than visiting a farm.

I recently bought a few acres in SE Texas and several people have recommend I raise chickens both for the eggs and also to help with some of the insects around here.

Why don't you recommend it?

Not GP but how'd you find the land? I'm from Texas (grew up but haven't lived as an adult) and was wondering how to find 1-2 acres

I went through a half dozen real estate agents. After several months and false starts, I found a real estate agent who was close to retiring, loved driving far, and liked looking at rural properties. During the week she'd send property listings to me and I'd yay/nay them. Then on the weekend we'd drive around and see three or four of them -- literally all-day affairs on Saturdays and half-days on Sundays. That went on for several months.

I moved from Houston to my new 5 acres in August after watching the housing market for a year and actively searching for a home for about 6 months.

Honestly the real selling point is that this home has AT&T gigabit fiber :)

AT&T fiber in a rural area? What's the closest major city?

I'm 15 minutes from Cleveland.

I find fiber to be most rare in recently developed suburbs (1980s to 2000s) with buried utilities. It is too costly to dig and lay new fiber to the home underground.

Stringing it along existing poles is cheap, and installing it in new underground utilities is cheap.

> It is too costly to dig and lay new fiber to the home underground

Digging is not required in many locations. Citywide rollout in Christchurch (400k people, low density) mostly used horizontal underground drilling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzGZl0jKRS8

New Zealand (similar size & population to Oregon) with a population ~5 million, used a lending model to fund a national fibre rollout in a private-public partnership. The Government lent money, but expected the project to have a final cost of ~$500M USD after loans repaid in 15 to 20 years. https://archive.vn/20170807221541/http://www.stuff.co.nz/bus...

84% of NZers can access fibre, and uptake is 64% and rising.

That is awesome, I having no idea what Anerica’s excuse is then.

Oh that's easy.

Faster internet for residential service also requires faster interconnects. It requires public infrastructure, residential modem upgrades, residential line installations, backhaul and datacenter hardware upgrades, new servers to mine all that extra data, more expensive equipment to fix/repair line breakages, and better trained technicians who also understand fiber too instead of just copper.

Why waste money on that when the plebs are perfectly "happy" with ADSL or cable and pay a hundred bucks for shitty service and almost zero human support?

> Why don't you recommend it?

Not GP. Can't imagine why they wouldn't. Once you're past the construction phase -- coop, containment, predator defense -- they're fairly low effort. Provide food and water, clean the coop regularly, and pay enough attention to them to quickly notice if your birds start getting sick.

Source: Started with 6 chicks and 8 rescue hens a couple years ago, presently around 40.

I didn't word that well, what I meant to say was get some exposure to chickens and a keeper who will give you the insights you need to understand what's required for happy chickens - even if that is a bunch of Youtube videos.

In Britain a lot of people rush out to get rescue hens and stick them in a rabbit run on their patio which is what I try to avoid encouraging.. being turned into dog food is a better outcome than the quality of life some chickens get.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com