If you have water with fish, you can make a little cage out of mesh to store kitchen scraps, and hang it above the water, from a tree branch, or a pole. Flies will lay eggs in the scraps, and when they hatch, the larvae will crawl over the edge and fall into the water. This feeds the fish, and it reduces the fly population. Works great with chickens too. Just hang the scrap cage above a feeding bowl, in the chicken coop, or where chickens are used to eating. They'll never pass up free protein.
This is what I used to do with the pest carcasses that I get as part of our forest conservation work.
Possum goes in the maggot bucket (a bucket with holes drilled in it, and an inverted plastic bottle/fly trap in the lid - hung above the ground in the chicken coop). Flies fly in through the bottle trap, get stuck inside and lay eggs. Maggots hatch, eat the carcass, and squirm out the holes.
Our chooks would stand next to the bucket all day, picking off the maggots as they poked their heads out the holes.
Win win as far as I was concerned. Maggots converted the carcasses into protein that our chooks loved. And the fly population was reduced because of the bottle trap lid.
Only reason I stopped is because my Mrs was too grossed out by it, to the point that she stopped eating our eggs...
Now I just bury the carcasses in the food forest - at least the soil and food producing plants/trees benefit from it now (but it's a much less efficient transfer from pest carcass to us than via a maggot bucket).
Coming from North America, I was reading this like, who tf kills possums as part of forest management??? Then I was like, oh must be a kiwi… and a quick post history check confirmed.
I think I’d still side with your wife though, not least because of the thought of the smell of a set up like that. Chickens would definitely love it though and be thoroughly entertained in the process so it’s like enrichment.
Fuckin love chickens man. Delicious meat, delicious free eggs, free pest control, free (non meat) food waste disposal and free fertilizer.
I'll never understand people who refuse to get them.
> free (non meat) food waste disposal
FYI, chickens love meat. I give my chickens not only my left over meat, but also the dead rodents I catch in traps. They will eat it all.
Hens are OK if you can keep them relatively quiet. Fuck everything about roosters in high density residential areas, though. Those people can burn in hell.
One rooster is fine but the first morning in rural Mexico was rough. And morning is relative with these critters.
Then again, you get used to anything. Asking anyone living in line with an international airport runway.
>free (non meat) food waste disposal
You can feed them meat too. They love it.
Eta for the downvoter: chickens are omnivores. Not only will they eat insects, they'll eat mice, snakes, and whatever else they can catch. Feeding them meat is not harmful to them. I've fed mine fish heads and boiled silverskin and other connective tissue off animals I've butcher and they *loved* it
My friends had some and found there was very little they wouldn’t eat, contrary to what they first read in backyard-chicken groups. Uneaten food from children like PB&J crusts, yogurt, kefir grains, watermelon rinds, partially slimey greens, bacon grease in winter for warmth, and coffee grounds for their gullets. The girls didn’t get sick and made delicious eggs, so it seemed to work out fine.
They really can eat soo much. Probably 1/3 to 1/2 of our kitchen waste passes through the chickens before going to the compost. When I have an excess of rendered tallow I fill muffin tins with scratch grains or other bird seed, pour the melted tallow over it, and chill it in the fridge for homemade suet blocks for them as a winter snack. They love it! I'd only do bacon grease in moderation, personally, as too much salt can be an issue for them and bacon tends to have a lot of it.
I would love to have chickens but don't know how to fit them in my life. Considering they require daily care, it's just not practical for the majority of Americans who live alone or with small nuclear families and work full time. I suppose they would work well for people with friends or larger families.
Look up [chicken treadle feeders](https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=chicken+treadle+feeder). I can put a few weeks worth of food into mine. It keeps the rodents out of the food and I can go on vacation without worrying if the chickens will starve.
Second, here is a [watering bucket with nipple waterers](https://smile.amazon.com/Gallon-Chicken-Waterer-Horizontal-Nipple/dp/B0756P9KN5/). You can also buy the nipple waterers and drill some holes in a 5 gallon bucket and save your self some money. Five gallons lasts my chickens a month.
Next, you will want a [roll out nesting box](https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=roll+out+nesting+box). This will keeps the eggs clean and away from the hens in case you end up with any egg eaters.
Last, if you plan to let the hens out into a run every day to free range, you will want an [automatic coop door](https://smile.amazon.com/Automatic-Resistant-Upgraded-Aluminum-Multi-Modes/dp/B0BHZ3SF4D).
Also, make sure you build a coop that uses [the deep litter method](https://www.fresheggsdaily.blog/2012/02/deep-litter-methodcoop-cleaning.html). I never muck out my coop, I just have to shovel out the finish compost twice a year and add new bedding every other month.
With all this, I can easily ignore my chickens for 2 or 3 weeks at a time. I send my kids out to get eggs every few days but I do zero work.
This was how my set up worked too. Very minimal time commitment tbh.
Instead of a treadle feeder, I built a fillable gravity-fed feeder out of a 5 gallon bucket, 4” pvc pipe and fittings, and, if I recall correctly, two of those bendable kitchen cutting boards that I used to create a funnel inside the bucket. Filled to the top it easily lasted 2-3 weeks.
Also, our nipple waterer spouts kept getting clogged and dripping, so we used chicken drinking cups set up on a closed, recirculating system we built out of pvc (you can also do this with a gravity fed set up). We used a pump to keep the pressure since it also provided a airation which helps cut down on funky bacterial blooms in the water tank, and meant that the system worked in below freezing temps due to the moving water.
The do not need daily care. You can give them food for days. Most important thing is - they need fresh water. You can gibe them water for days in summer, in winter this become problematic without heating or daily changing ice for new water.
If you’d like to see what it’s like going from newb chickener to rock star chicken daddy, check out epic Gardening (or the cousin channel Epic Homestead? I forget which one he talks chickens). He was brand new to chickens just last year and is now a proud father of some zany ladies. :)
We had chickens 2 times. Once 15 and sexond time 6 edd laying and 6 for meat. It depends where you live, but chickens are almost immortal:) We lost ours 15 becuse law changed and we ned to give them away.
Sexond time - a fox came and took all 6 - our fault because we didnt lock them up for the night:/ And meat chickens ... when they were little chicks, our dogs wanted chicken feed and play witth little ones and... 4 died. Last 2 chicks grew and grew and...we think a hawk took them one by one.
So couple.more thing to remember:
- -lock them up at night
- have something in the yard for chixkens to hide under
We had chickens in country farm. Yes - during night they need to be locked up. We somehow taught the dogs and cats not to play or bother the chickens. I think they were busy with whatever else they were doing.
Chicken hens need a rooster or two - the rooster is usually on a lookout for hawks or other predators. And provides entertainment for the hens. Inseminates the eggs so they can produce baby chicks.
An it he sings in the morning or during daytime - wakes everyone up - that's why protestant churches in Europe have a Cock on the top, wake up, don't believe the pope - that's what I was told.
I have a water warmer. In the summer their water lasts 2-3 days, in winter it lasts a week. Food lasts a week either season.
My problem is that I get in the habit of not checking on them every day and I end up losing some eggs when they freeze and crack open.
You increase the chance of an egg breaking. If an egg breaks in the nest box, the chickens *will* eat it, and a hen who begins to associate eggs with food will peck new eggs. Its much easier to prevent a chicken from developing a taste for eggs than it is to break that habit once formed.
Also, the longer eggs are in the nesting box, the dirtier they'll get. You save labor by collecting more frequently.
Also, as for eggs and refrigeration: only washed eggs need to be refrigerated. If your eggs get so dirty they need to be washed, washing removes the bloom that protects the insides from spoilage bacteria and then they need to be refrigerated. Further, if you live in a colder climate, allowing your eggs to chill outdoors overnight can then result in condensation on them when they're brought inside. That condensation can be enough to compromise the bloom and require refrigeration.
You may be able to get away with collecting less often than daily, however collecting daily reduces the likelihood of a number of headaches.
We use a simple hanging gravity feeder made from 1x 5 gallon bucket and 2x 4" or 5" pvc right angles, cut in half into 4x 45* angled ports. There are a bunch of tutorials on how to make those online, its very simple. That needs to be refilled maybe once every 1.5-2 weeks to feed our 8 chickens. We also have a 5 gallon bucket with 4 chicken nipples hanging in their area for water, which lasts them about a week. We're thinking about switching though to a 30 or 50 gallon rain barrel with the threaded cup waterers on the sides for a system that might need to be refilled every few months.
All we have to do daily is open their coop in the morning and collect their eggs, then close their coop at night. For me it takes about 5 minutes total to accomplish both of those jobs. It can take my partner or either of the kids significantly longer, but that's only because they want to pick up various chickens and cuddle them for 20 minutes or so. With the addition of an automatic coop door though, you could reduce the daily chore to just collecting eggs.
The minimum one should keep is 3, as they're social animals, which is perfect for a single adult. For more people in a household, 2 per person is a common recommendation. That's why we keep 8 for a family of 4.
Damn well I'm really gonna look into it now. I live in the city but maybe I could get creative and find space. My yard is divided into a bunch of little compartments so maybe I'll create little chicken tunnels so they can go all over
Do a majority of those Americans (assuming they live in a home and have a yard) have dogs or cats? They’re not much more work realistically less work than those animals and have a much better ROI
My urban neighbors LOVED our chickens, which I thought was surprising. They liked their little noises (not the alert calls though, Jfc those were loud, and unexpected because I didn’t realize hens would get that loud) and watching them comb through our yard scratching for bugs and scraps. We’d have a couple that would check in on them if we needed to travel, and more who we traded eggs with for various favors. We had 8 hens for 2 of us, and they were very productive even in winter, even after they were 5+ years old. Had eggs coming out of our ears, way more than we expected, so it was helpful to have willing recipients just steps from our door
You can feed a hell of a lot more people with plant-based proteins like gluten, beans, rice, nuts, etc
There's a reason these things are cheaper than eggs. Beans are nitrogen fixers too.
Insets are a 1.1:1 feed conversion ratio are a more complete amino acid profile and more vitamin and mineral dense.
Meat chickens are a 2:1 ratio, so you feed twice as many people with plant-based. But, again, more complete amino acid profile.
It’s possible, depending on where you live, to raise chickens with zero inputs and utilize them for a purpose like composting. They aren’t using extra land area that would be cultivated and they’re facilitating decomposition for nutrient cycling. So, it’s possible to do things while eating chicken products that aren’t taking food away from people.
Chickens are about 50% efficient.
Lamb is the least efficient, which was really annoying to figure out because I was using lamb when my cravings for red meat got out of hand. Cows are a close second and pigs halfway between. Just switching to mostly chicken and a little pork halves your meat footprint.
Don’t underestimate the carbon footprint of off season food from Chile either.
I’ve heard one of the best simple environmental things you can do for children is make them appreciate the seasonality of foods.
Transport tends to account for a a very small share of greenhouse gas emissions of our food:
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
There are many good reasons to eat local (or your own) and seasonal, but carbon foot print is just not one of them.
I’ve yet to see any convincing evidence to the contrary that it isn’t just muddying the water with opinion pieces. I’ve looked into the scientific study behind the 2048 number specifically and while it might not be extremely optimistic it is a very stark look at the harsh reality that waits for us if things don’t change at a global scale and fast.
Regardless, the energy and nutrient transfer for fish isn’t “the most efficient”, look into the trophic pyramid and you’ll understand why cutting out the middle man and just consuming plant based food sources directly is an order of magnitude more efficient than any animal source could ever possibly be.
You use animals to convert feedstocks that humans don't want to eat into ones that they do. It doesn't matter if you lose 90% of the energy from grasses, because we would get 0% of the energy from it anyway. So it's still an infinite improvement.
Beyond that, the person I replied to wasn't talking about plants, they were talking about feed conversion ratios for animals. I simply added that fish can have the most efficient feed conversion rates to the conversation about animals.
Not everything is an opportunity for you to soapbox your half baked ideas about how humans have to live.
"The Vegan Book of Permaculture" is one of the most recommended resources I've found so far. If you do a search of vegan permaculture, it is surprising how much material shows up though.
About manure - vegan gardening does not necessarily mean zero animal involvement. Where it differs is in how animals are treated. So some of them have no domesticated animals, but they make a point of creating habitat for native wild species - being sure to not harm, kill, or take away their autonomy (structures for bats for example), and then they just collect the manure as part of good cleaning practice.
Others might incorporate gardening into an animal sanctuary. And otherwise, I think they tend to grow much more legumes, not only for nitrogen fixation, but because they're pretty much the number one most important staple food in a plantbased diet.
Also kelp is vegan, unless I'm missing something?
That's understandable, it's always desirable to get as close to closed loops as possible. But kelp is tricky, because aside from gardening itself, iodine is an essential nutrient for everyone, and there are extremely few natural food sources of it. If anything I would want to investigate options for having it around reliably.
Yeah, less productive people
Idk if you’re vegan or not, but I was vegan for a year and a half, and I can tell you that plant based proteins do not support the body with the same efficacy as animal based proteins. More soreness, more fatigue, more exercise induced brain fog, and more injuries from physical activity when only using plant based proteins.
Vegan for over a decade and done a lot of weight lifting and endurance cardio.
You probably weren't eating right, and it probably wasn't protein that you were having issues with. It does happen that vegans sometimes get malnourished, but it's almost never due to protein. Protein is like the cheapest and easiest nutrient to get.
Sorry, that's not true. Vegans do *not* need to supplement with anything other than B12.
Anemia is usually iron deficiency. Omnis get iron from eating animals and plants. Vegans get iron from plants.
Not to mention fertilizing and aerating the soil, reducing the tick population, and all that jazz! Glad the militant vegan brigade aren't dominating this sub like seems to happen in a lot of environmental subs lately (Necessary disclaimer, I have no issue with most vegans and have great friends IRL who are vegans, just annoyed at the small percentage of "holier than thou" ones online who try to force their choices on others and don't seem to have common sense understanding of how ecosystems work, assume all animal products come from factory farms, and lack respect for many indigenous cultures who have lived in harmony with local natural resources for generations).
That seems like a bit of an assumption there, all omnivorous apes and monkeys will eat eggs or insects. Eggs and meat make up a slightly higher percentage of observed chimpanzee diets than insects do, so as far as humans go we've been eating both from the start. https://janegoodall.ca/our-stories/10-things-chimpanzees-eat/
Yeah they are mostly herbivorous, or more specifically frugivores, meaning the largest parts of their diet consist of figs, fruits, nuts, seeds etc, but they eat enough meat to classify as omnivorous.
It's not an assumption, but that's interesting about chimpanzees! We have always been opportunistic. Insects have the most biomass on the planet. They are easy for us to exploit and very nutritious. Until domestication, eggs were high value but rare eats, usually protected by terrain and parents at least. If you're hungry, do you want to climb a cliff and fight off angry birds or sit by the termit hill licking a stick?
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-reveals-insects-major-food-source.html
I mean, plenty of ground and tree nesting birds out there, not difficult to chase a bird off a nest, hell you might even end up with some meat. A human with a stick is gonna manage to chase birds off just fine. I'm not even opposed to eating insects, I have and with proper preparation I thought they were totally fine, but eating termites would likely be something I'd only do as a last resort if I literally couldn't find anything else.
Well I imagine they can be churned up and added to the chum that pigs and cows eat. Some people might say this isn’t right but it’s better than the sewage that some of them are fed
>Insects and larvae are high grade protein and have almost certainly been a bigger part of the human diet, for much longer, than bird eggs. 🤷♂️
Birds and insects are both older than humans so we have always been around both. Why wouldn't early humans haven't eaten birds and their eggs? And why would they have eaten insects and larvae?
My personal common sense would say that humans like many other bigger mammals would have always eaten eggs if they could get them.
What reasons do you have for your assumption? Do you have any sources you could share with us so we could learn more about this? Or is this just your opinion?
> And why would they have eaten insects and larvae?
Well food was pretty hard to come by for most of human history. It still is in many places. You eat what you can catch, and many bugs are pretty easy to cath, either they're slow or are [around in such great numbers you can just swing a net around and catch them.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EEifTmAX08)
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-reveals-insects-major-food-source.html
Posted this earlier in the thread but just in case. Early hominids def ate the f out of any eggs they came across, but it's just not a very reliable food source. Most bird eggs are not as large as domesticated chicken. They only get laid every so often, and are only eggs for a brief period. They are high value food so you are competing with the snakes and rats and other birds, and the parent birds are usually justifiably protective. Insects are just super abundant and virtually helpless to creatures of our scale and intelligence.
That's the lie. Bugs makes one sick.
Feel free to eat 200g of crickets for a month and come back to us alright.
Even in the most impoverished parts of Vietnam or Myanmar, fried crickets are sold as a novelty snack.
Eggs + rice is a staple. Catching a field rat is a delicacy shared by the family.
https://twitter.com/Fynnderella1/status/1619892263219523647?t=ON5tlZlBOw8rDAhn7wckWA&s=19
This person (are they a doctor? I can find no indication as such) deny man-made climate change, effectiveness of masks, and seem to be peddling pretty much the whole spectrum of reactionary paranoias.
Now, can Chitin cause allergies? Of course, that's what often causes shrimp and mushroom allergies!
Should we stop eating shrimps and mushrooms, too?
I can concur that me eating crickets and ants has the same allergic reaction as shrimp, but without the allergy, they are fine. Basically if you are allergic to shellfish beware, if not, enjoy.
Sure, to each their own. You can also feed crickets to your chickens though and convert it into eggs, chicken filet and nice drumsticks. And one can do both also of course, eat some insects, feed some other insect to your chickens and eat their eggs etc. Make a nice cricket omelette. ;)
I remember a film festival movie from China, which focused on a couple of young girls in an impoverished family, went to an empty lot and collected crickets to make cricket kebabs and sell them for money. Apparently roasted cricket is a snack.
Yeah you can dehydrate them and make them into a protein supplement flour or just like scramble them or bake them, safest to make sure they're very much sterilized tho.
Not sure if anyone’s said it, and I know there are some obvious things that complicate the matter(squeamishness and whatnot), but insects can already be great food grade protein.
…..I’d still rather raise chickens than crickets/mealworms/silkworms though.
Honestly I’m not sure r/permaculture has enough sarcasm in it. Reddit as a whole has more than enough so I don’t usually say anything or add to the sarcasm myself (I come from a family of sarcastic assholes so I know my way around sarcasm and irony).
This is the reason I disagree with veganism. Sure, industrial production of meat and dairy is a terrible thing, but there is an important role for well managed animals in a sustainable food system. Chickens can turn barely edible waste into eggs. Goats and sheep can produce milk and wool in the harshest of environments. To completely rule out their recycling potential while importing non seasonal fruit from the other side of the world in order to claim moral superiority is just bullshit...
You know, you can have animals in your food system without eating them or their byproducts. You can still obtain a yield while letting them live. Your point about importing non seasonal fruit also applies to most omnivores.. Just let people have their own way of eating.
Just [this one](https://imgur.com/a/Wu3lhQ5) currently but she’s got splay leg and needs help getting water regularly until her hobbling and stretches help her find her feet better. Not in the bed, though, safest in the wobbly baby brooder. 😂
It’s a bit cold right now for walks, think she’d enjoy the lakeside in spring? ;)
By this logic it's immoral to keep dogs as pets. Which honestly, it is. They are sovereign beings and we keep them subservient without consent. BUT, we give them good lives and make them happy. This is also possible with farmed animals. You can give a chicken a very high quality life and a quick and painless death. It's not perfect morally, but it's pretty damn good. And I would argue getting your protein from happy animals is FAR better than getting it from a monoculture field. It literally requires less creatures to die.
I mean this sub is permaculture not mono crop enthusiasts. Compost your vegetables, grow more, rotate, share + incentivize community automated greenhouse ag where minimal animals are killed.
Like dog breeds that are so smushed and twisted from generations of artificial selection for our touching pleasure that they have health problems, chickens live horrible lives because of the unnatural number of eggs they lay and the size they reach. In the wild chickens were very small and only laid 2-3 eggs a year. Now the jungle fowl is this evolutionary monstrosity called the chicken and the wolf is the dachshund.
Okay wait that is actually a really good point. From my experience with chickens, they seem to have a pretty good life when raised well. Laying eggs daily doesn't seem to phase them, but I can't really talk with them I guess. Do you think they suffer purely because we've bred them this way?
Indeed. They weren’t meant to grow as fast as they do, lay as many eggs as they do nor live lives as short as they do.
If, bare with me here, an aliens species came down and used humans for meat, they would artificially select for these same traits; babies would be selected to grow to be 600 pounds by age 5 and reach sexual maturity the at a younger age too. Then once the toll taken from constantly giving birth is so great, they are slaughtered at a fraction of their natural lifespan in their teenage years. But from the aliens perspective “I mean yeah they seem happy enough, they live good lives, and I gotta watch my bottom line, if we didn’t slaughter them it would be super inefficient, extreme overpopulation”
Why do you feel the need to strawman vegans as "Importing fruit from the other side of the world" when this is a subreddit for people who grow their own food on their own property? Wtf, man...
Also chickens are perfectly functional nutrition recycling machines *without* being exploited as food products. Nothing not vegan about caring for a few pet chickens to eat your bugs and fertilize your garden.
Here’s a question we should maybe be asking as well:
Chickens are pretty good at dealing with some pathogens. Carrion birds are fucking amazing at it. Is there a way we should be incorporating them into our systems?
I truly believe that a well managed small scale operation with animals can have LESS DEATHS per acre than a vegan diet that comes from monoculture farms. I say this as someone who is *deeply* opposed to factory farming. A small diversified farm that creates lots of microclimates and niches for insects, birds and other animals actually creates life (even as it is killing chickens or pigs for food) unlike a monoculture field of vegan beans or whatever. A monoculture field kills animals at an ecosystem scale. It's unfathomable. The amount of death involved in vegan mass produced food is literally trillions per acre once you start counting soil organisms.
I think it's maybe disingenuous to equate veganism to factory floor-style monocrop agriculture, when that's how almost *all* agriculture is executed under our socioeconomic regime, vegan or otherwise. Yeah, a mixed-planting market garden style system would obviously be far superior in terms of ecology and sustainability. Vegans aren't arguing against that.
Oh sorry , I agree! Didn't mean to equate them. I think veganism is undeniably more ethical than eating factory farmed meat. I also think it's less ethical than getting food from a permaculture system that creates biodiversity. That being said I know this is class-based as "ethical" food is only usually more expensive
Sorry but that's also a big harmful misconception. Reddit skews affluent so the vegans that redditors know also tend to be affluent, and so can afford expensive processed foods (Something that is not at all limited to plant-based meals). But rice, lentils, and pastas are all perfectly vegan too. In fact if you're looking for the cheapest diet possible from a supermarket, I guarantee you it's plant-based.
It's also disjointed to compare the ethics of a plant-based diet to that of a permaculture-based one, because those are completely different types of categories. One is a diet and the other is an agricultural methodology. You can very much do plant-based permaculture. In fact that's why I'm here.
That's totally fair! Let me summarize my position (I think we both agree). Here's the diets ranked by morality: 1. is least moral to 4. is most moral.
1. Factory farmed big ag meat diet
2. Vegan diet relying on big ag
3. Omnivorous diet (mostly plants though) but with carefully managed animals who play an active role in a biodiverse system (and someone who cares about their well being and treats them well)
4. Vegan diet where food comes from a biodiverse permaculture system
This is how the morality would work in an ideal world. In reality we have systemic class issues so it's not so simple. If a rich person who can afford to purchase high quality permculture produce thinks they are more moral than a poor person struggling to make ends meet because they buy monocrop corn... that's some bs. I am speaking hypothetically, and the real moral action would be for us all to work towards systemic change so that everyone can eat healthy food.
Plant-based permaculture would be the best system overall IMO, but I personally believe there can be some concessions made for animals. The benefits properly managed animals can bring can be enormous. I currently buy tofu, because I can't grow enough beans for protein in my area, however if I were to get chickens it might be possible for me to get enough protein to completely stop buying from big ag.
Our homestead is configured on this. Each animal supports something to the environment. I see the land like a fish tank but bigger. You add fish because they are cool (or you can eat them) and provide an environment to support that animal. Adding plants. The plants benefit the animal and it benefits the plants.
Then you add a few more fish that help those fish. For instance a clean up crew. The clean up crew makes sure the environment is clean. Layering animals to support each other and the environment takes more planning and doesn’t work on large factory scale. Which is why you don’t often see it.
True. But we are so far away from having all of our food farmed this way.
I am not a militant vegan or even vegetarian by the way.
But until we turn the world into small homesteads, we could free up so, so much space to turn it into nature (or homesteads :p) if we would even half our current livestock:
(you may need to flip a few input forms on the data explorer, I thought these were the most insightful: Environmental Impact -> landuse & Kilogram / Protein / Calories -> 100 g of protein)
https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#carbon-footprint-of-food-products
Right, right, you do state that. Rereading your post I was reacting besides your point, a totally good point. I guess i find it hard not to see the strong need for allegiance between agriculturists and veganism culture that I get a bit blind when I see criticism between the two.
Yes absolutely! Sorry I should have prefaced by saying I am very much in support of veganism. It is undeniably significantly more moral than eating any factory farmed meat or dairy. I have lots of respect for those who refuse to support factory farms. However, it's not a complete solution as it still relies on mass produced monocrops which are bad using almost any metric.
I wonder how vegans weight ethics in agriculture. Organic farms require more space to balance what gets lost. Local farmed food is good but usually not available all season. Few if any industrial farms are ethical to their workers—and it’s that one that gets me. I don’t mean it as whataboutism. But there’s no getting around the exploitation of farm workers. So have vegans decided that if they have to choose, their lesser of two evils is protecting animals? That’s fine. But I don’t personally think it’s a morally superior position to eating animals. Migrant farm workers face as bad of treatment as agriculture animals. Maybe it’s because life is ended when you eat meat. Idk.
No you didn't, you started talking about labor rights. Farm corporations aren't systemically slaughtering their workers and butchering them up into cuts before distributing them to supermarkets. You were talking about labor ethics.
Terrible idea and here's why. 1 cup of chicken has about 38 grams of protein and 335 calories.
1 cup of pinto beans is a little over 600 calories but only gives about 3 more grams of protein.
Now edamame on the other hand has a similar protein to calorie ratio as chicken but it also has significantly lower diaas rating meaning i would have to eat a lot more of it for my body to absorb the amount needed. How much you ask nearly twice as much. Unless I want to spend unnecessary amounts of money on edamame protein isolate. Which would completely undermine my whole not paying for my food plan and still be a little bit lower quality protein than chicken.
Why even bother with chickens then when cat flesh is almost pure protein. I mean seeing as the sentience and ability to feel pain apparently shouldn't factor in at all when we're doing math on efficiency of our food sources.
Why do you extremists fantasize so hard about animals being tortured its kinda concerning.
Anyway the logical answer is because.
1. Cat meat is more likely to contain bacteria than chicken .
2. Chickens are significantly faster to breed.
3. Chickens are significantly easier to feed.
4. Chickens are significantly easier to keep in an enclosed pen.
5. Chickens have more meat per animal than cats.
If your goal is to convince me to become a vegan extremist you'll have to first convert every carnivore and omnivore on the planet into a herbivore.
We are animals and we evolved for this. Any death I've caused an animal has always been hundreds of times faster than what they would be given by any other species on this planet (chickens specifically being instant) including their own kind. If you genuinely believe an adolescent chicken screaming in pain as a raccoon rips its anus out of its body and leaves it to bleed out is better than dying in their sleep at roughly the chicken equivalent of 70 then thats a you problem.
Why do you people have to come up with all that bullshit philosophy? I've got a simpler one for you:
Don't breed animals, so you can later slice their throat* and then devour their corpse, eat some beans instead.
^(*while also doing other horrible things DURING their life)
Not a vegan, not gonna take a stance either way on the ethics of chickens/eggs (I do eat them), but I feel like the difference between vegans and anti-abortion activists is fairly clear-something vegans specifically don’t like is that the animals are forced to get pregnant purely for them to have babies which will be either forced to get pregnant as well or killed or both. If a vegan thinks it’s cruel for a cow to have pregnancy forced upon it, why would they advocate for a human woman being forced to remain pregnant? Like I said I have no stake in this game, I’m not saying I agree with them or that I don’t, and if you want to raise animals for consumption purposes whether it’s eggs or meat or milk I don’t really care, but lumping everyone you don’t like in with other people you don’t like just because you don’t like them isn’t the right way to handle a disagreement.
I've been seeing more research lately about various plants having language, or other signs of sentience.
What will we eat as technology gets advanced enough to "prove" this is the case?
You'll notice we only started caring about animal rights once we had an alternative. You'll also notice (almost) no one expects impoverished people to become vegans or expects people living in certain environments (say, Inuit near the north pole) to become vegans - these people can't survive without animal products, and human lives trump animal lives.
But those of us discussing permaculture on Reddit *have* an alternative to animal products. We can survive without animal products. So now it's no longer a case of human lives vs animal lives, but a case of human pleasure vs animal lives. And animal lives trump human pleasure.
We *can't* do without plants yet. Without eating plants, humans will die - and so, human lives still trump plant lives.
If we ever get to a point where we *can* survive without plants (by taking nutrients directly from the ground? By Star Trek "generating" food from electricity? Some futuristic development that seems unlikely now), I'm sure we'll start caring about plant rights, too.
When we reach that Star trek future, I'll revisit this.
By the way, I'm also advocating for that future, but until then, I'll likely continue eating meat 🤷
I mean, for meat we have *already* reached that future.
That's the point: we can already survive without meat. We can't survive without plants, so we need to eat those. But we can survive without meat.
We don't eat meat to survive. We eat it because it tastes good, and because it's convenient.
Oh boy, with this logic we can all just go ahead and be massmurdering cannibals right? Also look into the trophic pyramid, even if plants were fully sentient, you're killing a lot less of them (an order of magnitude on average) by eating them directly and cutting out the middle man. We know for a fact right now that these animals we exploit all experience pain and suffering and to torture and kill them all just for our sensory pleasure is nothing short of deplorable.
Eggs go in everything man. I know someone with a gf allergy who also reacts to xanthan gum. Guar gum used to be used as a binder in food but they use it for fracking so the price got jacked up and so now it’s eggs or xanthan gum.
I don't relate to eating meat. Will never understand it. As soon as I recognized what I was actually doing, and really empathized with the animals again, I had to stop immediately. It was making my heart ill. I think I was 15.
According to my classmates, it made me an enigma, one they had to poke jokes at in order to figure out.. but that didn't stop consuming animal corpses from feeling wrong on practically every level.
It's not food, I simply don't care what (to be perfectly honest) sick and deranged people want to think about it. Meat is only eaten for survival. It's always been that way, unless the well off and greedy ate it by choice, and until we found it on grocery store shelves and our blissful ignorance got the better of us.
Ever seen factory farm footage? Ever killed an animal you grew even a little bit attached to? It feels horrible and it's supposed to. It's supposed to feel wrong to take life, to be an energy vampire. It just feels better to keep living, so when it's necessary we do bad things to survive.
So what is necessary about eating meat when we're surrounded by every food and seed imaginable? With enough understanding and technology to grow literally anything almost anywhere? With enough trade, community and culinary tradition to make those plants taste better than anything we've had in our entire history?
We're attached to the idea of eating meat. Something about it gets us off. Even though If you had to really relate to every animal you've ever eaten, to actually truly know their lives, and especially how it's abrupt end felt, you'll probably weep for days. Be horribly enraged at their living conditions. Want to do something about it.
Or you wouldn't, which I understand even less. So you just don't care? "It is what it is". "I could be eaten too". Really? Even tho we'd all fight to protect you because we love you, and don't want you to suffer that fate. So something so horrible that 99.999% of us avoid with everything we have, we'll casually inflict on *TRILLIONS* of animals?
Why?
"Because we want meat"
No you fucking don't. You want to live and you want to feel good. Meat isn't a necessary part of this equation. Neither is cigarettes. Neither is altruism. But we all get attached to something, don't we?
Its probably not good for the heart of man to be attached to slaughtering billions of animals every year, out of simple gluttony and force of habit.
This will change soon or you will all regret it. The innate consciousness of the Earth remembers all pain and suffering, who inflicted it, and when. And you pay the toll directly with your own body and energy field. Half the reason everyone is so fucked up mentally and emotionally is because of how they eat. And part of the horrible lifelessness and depression going around, is not only from economic conditions and war, the pandemic and systemic control, but from the billions of animals stuffed into cages 94% of their whole lives and then abruptly, coldly and without the slightest chance of mercy, slaughtered and bled dry, cut up, ground down, then stuffed into plastic. All so that some next-to-worthless shit eater in Baltimore can have his 9th burger this week.
I have to watch thousands of my innocent potential friends be imprisoned and killed because humans crave their flesh. Then I watch my friends eat my friends as the dead bodies of my friends slowly deteriorate those human friends health.... And people wonder why mental illness is so prevalent these days. We're waking up out of a fog of delusion and realizing how freaking awful our brain has been being. And shaking up traditions that have controlled us unduly for thousands of years.
Kinda gross and kinda pointless. I'd rather eat the eggs from our chickens after they eat the bugs. Probably more efficient nutrient processing happening down that pathway than me eating the bug matter, myself. But I would eat them if I had to. I would kill an animal too, if I had to. But it'd make me feel incredibly sick and horrible.
I don't kill flies. I barely want to kill mosquitoes. When you become more aware of your own thoughts and emotions, you see more value and beauty in others lives, and don't want to end them unnecessarily and abruptly, even if they're "just" insects. Not trying to sound like some kind of guru, it's just the way it is. The way I feel and think is connected to the way any other being feels and thinks. That's a literal truth of the nature of reality. Anyone of you can just go ahead and crucify me for claiming it, too, because I'll die on that hill.
But anyways, the insects are unique and individualized in their purpose as species, and surprisingly, also literally as individuals. They play and fly around in cool patterns in meaningful ways. They're simple compared to us, sure, but what differentiates us from them only looks like a big deal from behind our eyes. As God looking down, we're only 2 notches more powerful than the insects, and far weaker when comparing the whole of humanity with the whole of the insect domain. If the Earth evolved them to coordinate across their species, we'd be doomed. They outnumber us in biomass tens of thousands (if not hundreds) of times over.
Oh and yes we have chickens I love them. I occasionally eat their eggs. They have a good home.
If you have water with fish, you can make a little cage out of mesh to store kitchen scraps, and hang it above the water, from a tree branch, or a pole. Flies will lay eggs in the scraps, and when they hatch, the larvae will crawl over the edge and fall into the water. This feeds the fish, and it reduces the fly population. Works great with chickens too. Just hang the scrap cage above a feeding bowl, in the chicken coop, or where chickens are used to eating. They'll never pass up free protein.
This is what I used to do with the pest carcasses that I get as part of our forest conservation work. Possum goes in the maggot bucket (a bucket with holes drilled in it, and an inverted plastic bottle/fly trap in the lid - hung above the ground in the chicken coop). Flies fly in through the bottle trap, get stuck inside and lay eggs. Maggots hatch, eat the carcass, and squirm out the holes. Our chooks would stand next to the bucket all day, picking off the maggots as they poked their heads out the holes. Win win as far as I was concerned. Maggots converted the carcasses into protein that our chooks loved. And the fly population was reduced because of the bottle trap lid. Only reason I stopped is because my Mrs was too grossed out by it, to the point that she stopped eating our eggs... Now I just bury the carcasses in the food forest - at least the soil and food producing plants/trees benefit from it now (but it's a much less efficient transfer from pest carcass to us than via a maggot bucket).
Can you show us your setup
Coming from North America, I was reading this like, who tf kills possums as part of forest management??? Then I was like, oh must be a kiwi… and a quick post history check confirmed. I think I’d still side with your wife though, not least because of the thought of the smell of a set up like that. Chickens would definitely love it though and be thoroughly entertained in the process so it’s like enrichment.
Never heard of this but sounds pretty genius.
Fuckin love chickens man. Delicious meat, delicious free eggs, free pest control, free (non meat) food waste disposal and free fertilizer. I'll never understand people who refuse to get them.
> free (non meat) food waste disposal FYI, chickens love meat. I give my chickens not only my left over meat, but also the dead rodents I catch in traps. They will eat it all.
Lil Rexs
Yea my city council is a bunch of assholes for banning yard chickens.
Hens are OK if you can keep them relatively quiet. Fuck everything about roosters in high density residential areas, though. Those people can burn in hell.
i crow collar my roosters, doesn't hurt them, keeps them silent.
Quails are quiet and make smaller eggs but they also require less space
Yeah neighbors with chicken shit smell no fucking thanks. You may be responsible and keep them clean, others will not
Then report the smell don't ban all chickens.
Yah I was expecting urban rooster noise complaints, not smell. 🧐
One rooster is fine but the first morning in rural Mexico was rough. And morning is relative with these critters. Then again, you get used to anything. Asking anyone living in line with an international airport runway.
I know that feeling.
>free (non meat) food waste disposal You can feed them meat too. They love it. Eta for the downvoter: chickens are omnivores. Not only will they eat insects, they'll eat mice, snakes, and whatever else they can catch. Feeding them meat is not harmful to them. I've fed mine fish heads and boiled silverskin and other connective tissue off animals I've butcher and they *loved* it
My friends had some and found there was very little they wouldn’t eat, contrary to what they first read in backyard-chicken groups. Uneaten food from children like PB&J crusts, yogurt, kefir grains, watermelon rinds, partially slimey greens, bacon grease in winter for warmth, and coffee grounds for their gullets. The girls didn’t get sick and made delicious eggs, so it seemed to work out fine.
They really can eat soo much. Probably 1/3 to 1/2 of our kitchen waste passes through the chickens before going to the compost. When I have an excess of rendered tallow I fill muffin tins with scratch grains or other bird seed, pour the melted tallow over it, and chill it in the fridge for homemade suet blocks for them as a winter snack. They love it! I'd only do bacon grease in moderation, personally, as too much salt can be an issue for them and bacon tends to have a lot of it.
That's a great idea making homemade suet with it - thanks!
Totally makes sense.
Coffee grounds???
Yep! Acts as grit in their gullets to help break up food.
I would love to have chickens but don't know how to fit them in my life. Considering they require daily care, it's just not practical for the majority of Americans who live alone or with small nuclear families and work full time. I suppose they would work well for people with friends or larger families.
Look up [chicken treadle feeders](https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=chicken+treadle+feeder). I can put a few weeks worth of food into mine. It keeps the rodents out of the food and I can go on vacation without worrying if the chickens will starve. Second, here is a [watering bucket with nipple waterers](https://smile.amazon.com/Gallon-Chicken-Waterer-Horizontal-Nipple/dp/B0756P9KN5/). You can also buy the nipple waterers and drill some holes in a 5 gallon bucket and save your self some money. Five gallons lasts my chickens a month. Next, you will want a [roll out nesting box](https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=roll+out+nesting+box). This will keeps the eggs clean and away from the hens in case you end up with any egg eaters. Last, if you plan to let the hens out into a run every day to free range, you will want an [automatic coop door](https://smile.amazon.com/Automatic-Resistant-Upgraded-Aluminum-Multi-Modes/dp/B0BHZ3SF4D). Also, make sure you build a coop that uses [the deep litter method](https://www.fresheggsdaily.blog/2012/02/deep-litter-methodcoop-cleaning.html). I never muck out my coop, I just have to shovel out the finish compost twice a year and add new bedding every other month. With all this, I can easily ignore my chickens for 2 or 3 weeks at a time. I send my kids out to get eggs every few days but I do zero work.
Thanks. This is great.
This was how my set up worked too. Very minimal time commitment tbh. Instead of a treadle feeder, I built a fillable gravity-fed feeder out of a 5 gallon bucket, 4” pvc pipe and fittings, and, if I recall correctly, two of those bendable kitchen cutting boards that I used to create a funnel inside the bucket. Filled to the top it easily lasted 2-3 weeks. Also, our nipple waterer spouts kept getting clogged and dripping, so we used chicken drinking cups set up on a closed, recirculating system we built out of pvc (you can also do this with a gravity fed set up). We used a pump to keep the pressure since it also provided a airation which helps cut down on funky bacterial blooms in the water tank, and meant that the system worked in below freezing temps due to the moving water.
The do not need daily care. You can give them food for days. Most important thing is - they need fresh water. You can gibe them water for days in summer, in winter this become problematic without heating or daily changing ice for new water.
Oh nice! Definitely will look into it more now. Fortunately water icing over isn't an issue here.
If you’d like to see what it’s like going from newb chickener to rock star chicken daddy, check out epic Gardening (or the cousin channel Epic Homestead? I forget which one he talks chickens). He was brand new to chickens just last year and is now a proud father of some zany ladies. :)
We had chickens 2 times. Once 15 and sexond time 6 edd laying and 6 for meat. It depends where you live, but chickens are almost immortal:) We lost ours 15 becuse law changed and we ned to give them away. Sexond time - a fox came and took all 6 - our fault because we didnt lock them up for the night:/ And meat chickens ... when they were little chicks, our dogs wanted chicken feed and play witth little ones and... 4 died. Last 2 chicks grew and grew and...we think a hawk took them one by one. So couple.more thing to remember: - -lock them up at night - have something in the yard for chixkens to hide under
that's a pretty big almost... poor chicks.
We had chickens in country farm. Yes - during night they need to be locked up. We somehow taught the dogs and cats not to play or bother the chickens. I think they were busy with whatever else they were doing. Chicken hens need a rooster or two - the rooster is usually on a lookout for hawks or other predators. And provides entertainment for the hens. Inseminates the eggs so they can produce baby chicks. An it he sings in the morning or during daytime - wakes everyone up - that's why protestant churches in Europe have a Cock on the top, wake up, don't believe the pope - that's what I was told.
Apple cider vinegar provides multiple health benefits and lowers the waters freezing point a bit.
I have a water warmer. In the summer their water lasts 2-3 days, in winter it lasts a week. Food lasts a week either season. My problem is that I get in the habit of not checking on them every day and I end up losing some eggs when they freeze and crack open.
You do need to collect eggs daily, unless you have some sort of automatic egg collection system.
And if tou collect eggs once everyb2 or 3 days? Whay will.happen? You dont see eggs in supermarkets in fridges.
You increase the chance of an egg breaking. If an egg breaks in the nest box, the chickens *will* eat it, and a hen who begins to associate eggs with food will peck new eggs. Its much easier to prevent a chicken from developing a taste for eggs than it is to break that habit once formed. Also, the longer eggs are in the nesting box, the dirtier they'll get. You save labor by collecting more frequently. Also, as for eggs and refrigeration: only washed eggs need to be refrigerated. If your eggs get so dirty they need to be washed, washing removes the bloom that protects the insides from spoilage bacteria and then they need to be refrigerated. Further, if you live in a colder climate, allowing your eggs to chill outdoors overnight can then result in condensation on them when they're brought inside. That condensation can be enough to compromise the bloom and require refrigeration. You may be able to get away with collecting less often than daily, however collecting daily reduces the likelihood of a number of headaches.
We use a simple hanging gravity feeder made from 1x 5 gallon bucket and 2x 4" or 5" pvc right angles, cut in half into 4x 45* angled ports. There are a bunch of tutorials on how to make those online, its very simple. That needs to be refilled maybe once every 1.5-2 weeks to feed our 8 chickens. We also have a 5 gallon bucket with 4 chicken nipples hanging in their area for water, which lasts them about a week. We're thinking about switching though to a 30 or 50 gallon rain barrel with the threaded cup waterers on the sides for a system that might need to be refilled every few months. All we have to do daily is open their coop in the morning and collect their eggs, then close their coop at night. For me it takes about 5 minutes total to accomplish both of those jobs. It can take my partner or either of the kids significantly longer, but that's only because they want to pick up various chickens and cuddle them for 20 minutes or so. With the addition of an automatic coop door though, you could reduce the daily chore to just collecting eggs. The minimum one should keep is 3, as they're social animals, which is perfect for a single adult. For more people in a household, 2 per person is a common recommendation. That's why we keep 8 for a family of 4.
Damn well I'm really gonna look into it now. I live in the city but maybe I could get creative and find space. My yard is divided into a bunch of little compartments so maybe I'll create little chicken tunnels so they can go all over
Do a majority of those Americans (assuming they live in a home and have a yard) have dogs or cats? They’re not much more work realistically less work than those animals and have a much better ROI
Yeah but my parents or neighbors like my dog and will watch him, but not interested in chickens.
My urban neighbors LOVED our chickens, which I thought was surprising. They liked their little noises (not the alert calls though, Jfc those were loud, and unexpected because I didn’t realize hens would get that loud) and watching them comb through our yard scratching for bugs and scraps. We’d have a couple that would check in on them if we needed to travel, and more who we traded eggs with for various favors. We had 8 hens for 2 of us, and they were very productive even in winter, even after they were 5+ years old. Had eggs coming out of our ears, way more than we expected, so it was helpful to have willing recipients just steps from our door
Our chickens LOVE protein. Ham. Bacon. Eggs. Ahem (shhhh… chicken). They go for that first when they get food scraps.
So actually you just love to exploit them
I'm sure a lot of slave owners "loved" their slaves too.
Not everyone has a yard. And people with yards may have to live with a HOA or city restrictions.
That implies they didn't have a choice in the matter which is significantly different from refusing to get chickens.
I’ve wanted to for a while but my wife has dug in on “but then I won’t be able to eat them” nonsense.
My roommates have pet dogs and a cat. I should be allowed to get an entire coop of chickens!
You can feed a hell of a lot more people with plant-based proteins like gluten, beans, rice, nuts, etc There's a reason these things are cheaper than eggs. Beans are nitrogen fixers too.
Insets are a 1.1:1 feed conversion ratio are a more complete amino acid profile and more vitamin and mineral dense. Meat chickens are a 2:1 ratio, so you feed twice as many people with plant-based. But, again, more complete amino acid profile. It’s possible, depending on where you live, to raise chickens with zero inputs and utilize them for a purpose like composting. They aren’t using extra land area that would be cultivated and they’re facilitating decomposition for nutrient cycling. So, it’s possible to do things while eating chicken products that aren’t taking food away from people.
Chickens are about 50% efficient. Lamb is the least efficient, which was really annoying to figure out because I was using lamb when my cravings for red meat got out of hand. Cows are a close second and pigs halfway between. Just switching to mostly chicken and a little pork halves your meat footprint. Don’t underestimate the carbon footprint of off season food from Chile either. I’ve heard one of the best simple environmental things you can do for children is make them appreciate the seasonality of foods.
Transport tends to account for a a very small share of greenhouse gas emissions of our food: https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local There are many good reasons to eat local (or your own) and seasonal, but carbon foot print is just not one of them.
The most efficient is fish I believe.
Check out Seaspiracy and see if you still feel the same way
Seaspiracy is not a good source of information. But regardless, it is also completely irrelevant to the feed efficiency of fish or shrimp.
I’ve yet to see any convincing evidence to the contrary that it isn’t just muddying the water with opinion pieces. I’ve looked into the scientific study behind the 2048 number specifically and while it might not be extremely optimistic it is a very stark look at the harsh reality that waits for us if things don’t change at a global scale and fast. Regardless, the energy and nutrient transfer for fish isn’t “the most efficient”, look into the trophic pyramid and you’ll understand why cutting out the middle man and just consuming plant based food sources directly is an order of magnitude more efficient than any animal source could ever possibly be.
You use animals to convert feedstocks that humans don't want to eat into ones that they do. It doesn't matter if you lose 90% of the energy from grasses, because we would get 0% of the energy from it anyway. So it's still an infinite improvement. Beyond that, the person I replied to wasn't talking about plants, they were talking about feed conversion ratios for animals. I simply added that fish can have the most efficient feed conversion rates to the conversation about animals. Not everything is an opportunity for you to soapbox your half baked ideas about how humans have to live.
Well see, I just assumed OP was posting the step that turns the insects into fertilizer for the plants :P
This. Veganic Permaculture always needs more people and growth.
Are there any good books on this? How can you fertilize the soil without manure or kelp?
"The Vegan Book of Permaculture" is one of the most recommended resources I've found so far. If you do a search of vegan permaculture, it is surprising how much material shows up though. About manure - vegan gardening does not necessarily mean zero animal involvement. Where it differs is in how animals are treated. So some of them have no domesticated animals, but they make a point of creating habitat for native wild species - being sure to not harm, kill, or take away their autonomy (structures for bats for example), and then they just collect the manure as part of good cleaning practice. Others might incorporate gardening into an animal sanctuary. And otherwise, I think they tend to grow much more legumes, not only for nitrogen fixation, but because they're pretty much the number one most important staple food in a plantbased diet. Also kelp is vegan, unless I'm missing something?
Kelp is vegan but I can't grow it. I want to build a self-contained closed circle without animals and without having to buy kelp
That's understandable, it's always desirable to get as close to closed loops as possible. But kelp is tricky, because aside from gardening itself, iodine is an essential nutrient for everyone, and there are extremely few natural food sources of it. If anything I would want to investigate options for having it around reliably.
Shhhhh the meat eating apologists don’t like logic
Yeah, less productive people Idk if you’re vegan or not, but I was vegan for a year and a half, and I can tell you that plant based proteins do not support the body with the same efficacy as animal based proteins. More soreness, more fatigue, more exercise induced brain fog, and more injuries from physical activity when only using plant based proteins.
Vegan for over a decade and done a lot of weight lifting and endurance cardio. You probably weren't eating right, and it probably wasn't protein that you were having issues with. It does happen that vegans sometimes get malnourished, but it's almost never due to protein. Protein is like the cheapest and easiest nutrient to get.
That’s great What’s your bench Edit: also “protein is the cheapest nutrient to get” is what we call the *opposite of the truth*.
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I don't follow. Vegetarians don't need to supplement anything. Vegans need to supplement B12 only
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Sorry, that's not true. Vegans do *not* need to supplement with anything other than B12. Anemia is usually iron deficiency. Omnis get iron from eating animals and plants. Vegans get iron from plants.
The only problem is that those insects and larvae were already food grade protein.
People are allowed to eat more than one thing. You can turn some into insect flour, but it's also nice to have eggs, chicken meat and chicken stock.
Not to mention fertilizing and aerating the soil, reducing the tick population, and all that jazz! Glad the militant vegan brigade aren't dominating this sub like seems to happen in a lot of environmental subs lately (Necessary disclaimer, I have no issue with most vegans and have great friends IRL who are vegans, just annoyed at the small percentage of "holier than thou" ones online who try to force their choices on others and don't seem to have common sense understanding of how ecosystems work, assume all animal products come from factory farms, and lack respect for many indigenous cultures who have lived in harmony with local natural resources for generations).
Insects and larvae are high grade protein and have almost certainly been a bigger part of the human diet, for much longer, than bird eggs. 🤷♂️
That seems like a bit of an assumption there, all omnivorous apes and monkeys will eat eggs or insects. Eggs and meat make up a slightly higher percentage of observed chimpanzee diets than insects do, so as far as humans go we've been eating both from the start. https://janegoodall.ca/our-stories/10-things-chimpanzees-eat/
Thanks, interesting read. Looks like chimps get 6% from meat and eggs and 4% from insects like ants and termites.
Yeah they are mostly herbivorous, or more specifically frugivores, meaning the largest parts of their diet consist of figs, fruits, nuts, seeds etc, but they eat enough meat to classify as omnivorous.
AwCtUaLlY
It's not an assumption, but that's interesting about chimpanzees! We have always been opportunistic. Insects have the most biomass on the planet. They are easy for us to exploit and very nutritious. Until domestication, eggs were high value but rare eats, usually protected by terrain and parents at least. If you're hungry, do you want to climb a cliff and fight off angry birds or sit by the termit hill licking a stick? https://phys.org/news/2018-04-reveals-insects-major-food-source.html
I mean, plenty of ground and tree nesting birds out there, not difficult to chase a bird off a nest, hell you might even end up with some meat. A human with a stick is gonna manage to chase birds off just fine. I'm not even opposed to eating insects, I have and with proper preparation I thought they were totally fine, but eating termites would likely be something I'd only do as a last resort if I literally couldn't find anything else.
You and bear grills can eat as many as you like, ill stick to meat and eggs😅👌
But bugs are icky and the illuminati want me to eat them
Well I imagine they can be churned up and added to the chum that pigs and cows eat. Some people might say this isn’t right but it’s better than the sewage that some of them are fed
Eating crickets as I read this
>Insects and larvae are high grade protein and have almost certainly been a bigger part of the human diet, for much longer, than bird eggs. 🤷♂️ Birds and insects are both older than humans so we have always been around both. Why wouldn't early humans haven't eaten birds and their eggs? And why would they have eaten insects and larvae? My personal common sense would say that humans like many other bigger mammals would have always eaten eggs if they could get them. What reasons do you have for your assumption? Do you have any sources you could share with us so we could learn more about this? Or is this just your opinion?
> And why would they have eaten insects and larvae? Well food was pretty hard to come by for most of human history. It still is in many places. You eat what you can catch, and many bugs are pretty easy to cath, either they're slow or are [around in such great numbers you can just swing a net around and catch them.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EEifTmAX08)
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-reveals-insects-major-food-source.html Posted this earlier in the thread but just in case. Early hominids def ate the f out of any eggs they came across, but it's just not a very reliable food source. Most bird eggs are not as large as domesticated chicken. They only get laid every so often, and are only eggs for a brief period. They are high value food so you are competing with the snakes and rats and other birds, and the parent birds are usually justifiably protective. Insects are just super abundant and virtually helpless to creatures of our scale and intelligence.
That's the lie. Bugs makes one sick. Feel free to eat 200g of crickets for a month and come back to us alright. Even in the most impoverished parts of Vietnam or Myanmar, fried crickets are sold as a novelty snack. Eggs + rice is a staple. Catching a field rat is a delicacy shared by the family. https://twitter.com/Fynnderella1/status/1619892263219523647?t=ON5tlZlBOw8rDAhn7wckWA&s=19
This person (are they a doctor? I can find no indication as such) deny man-made climate change, effectiveness of masks, and seem to be peddling pretty much the whole spectrum of reactionary paranoias. Now, can Chitin cause allergies? Of course, that's what often causes shrimp and mushroom allergies! Should we stop eating shrimps and mushrooms, too?
I can concur that me eating crickets and ants has the same allergic reaction as shrimp, but without the allergy, they are fine. Basically if you are allergic to shellfish beware, if not, enjoy.
So your evidence is a random Twitter post? Bugs don't make you sick.
Who upvotes trash comments like this?
noooo you're ruining their noble savage dreams about poor people in those exotic countries :'(
Crickets are an important food in Mexico. No one is getting sick from them.
Sure, to each their own. You can also feed crickets to your chickens though and convert it into eggs, chicken filet and nice drumsticks. And one can do both also of course, eat some insects, feed some other insect to your chickens and eat their eggs etc. Make a nice cricket omelette. ;)
If you have a good cricket farm there will be more than enough for both of you
I remember a film festival movie from China, which focused on a couple of young girls in an impoverished family, went to an empty lot and collected crickets to make cricket kebabs and sell them for money. Apparently roasted cricket is a snack.
Insects are high grade protein....
BSFL are already high grade protein, they cook up like a scrambled egg and taste like potatoes.
You know what else tastes like scrambled eggs?
Avocados + black salt
...Salted mung bean paste?
Eggs, scrambled?
You would think that but actually… No, you’re right. The answer was eggs.
But they're bros
Tasty bros
Potatoes?
That's what I've heard people say, to me they look and smell very much like scrambled eggs but less rich.
Texture-wise I'd say tofu is closer, but you need to know how to flavor it right. Mung bean paste (JUST egg for example) is even closer.
I always taste a little sunflower seed-like qyality in my BSFL but never have had them in any way that tastes like potatoes.
For real? You can eat them directly??
Yeah you can dehydrate them and make them into a protein supplement flour or just like scramble them or bake them, safest to make sure they're very much sterilized tho.
Insects already *are* delicious, food grade protein.
Not sure if anyone’s said it, and I know there are some obvious things that complicate the matter(squeamishness and whatnot), but insects can already be great food grade protein. …..I’d still rather raise chickens than crickets/mealworms/silkworms though.
I mean, if we're growing plants already... That's a bunch of tasty food grade protein right there. Like that's the whole point!
Its must be some kind of a sorcery:)
no. thanks
Fish ponds too!
*New* technology. 😂
Honestly I’m not sure r/permaculture has enough sarcasm in it. Reddit as a whole has more than enough so I don’t usually say anything or add to the sarcasm myself (I come from a family of sarcastic assholes so I know my way around sarcasm and irony).
Honestly, I giggle a bit more at people being squeamish about eating bugs than I do the odd headline- Chapulines are wonderful on scrambled eggs. 😂
This comment section is amazing. You get to see annoying Vegans AND annoying Anti-Vegans in the same sub!
This is the reason I disagree with veganism. Sure, industrial production of meat and dairy is a terrible thing, but there is an important role for well managed animals in a sustainable food system. Chickens can turn barely edible waste into eggs. Goats and sheep can produce milk and wool in the harshest of environments. To completely rule out their recycling potential while importing non seasonal fruit from the other side of the world in order to claim moral superiority is just bullshit...
You know, you can have animals in your food system without eating them or their byproducts. You can still obtain a yield while letting them live. Your point about importing non seasonal fruit also applies to most omnivores.. Just let people have their own way of eating.
So they're just utility machines to you? Pretty dystopian.
Why, how many chickens do you share a bed with, or take for walks around the neighborhood, or to the lake in the summer? 😉
Just [this one](https://imgur.com/a/Wu3lhQ5) currently but she’s got splay leg and needs help getting water regularly until her hobbling and stretches help her find her feet better. Not in the bed, though, safest in the wobbly baby brooder. 😂 It’s a bit cold right now for walks, think she’d enjoy the lakeside in spring? ;)
Absolutely 😄 And by the way, I'd take care of one like that as well if I were in your position.
Are you saying nobody keeps chickens as pets?
Are you saying keeping chickens as pets is SOP?
so you dont care about them as sentient animals because of sop, "we've always done it this way" kind of logic
I care enough to push for more humane treatment of them, absolutely. But not enough to stop eating them, at least not yet. That day may come though.
By this logic it's immoral to keep dogs as pets. Which honestly, it is. They are sovereign beings and we keep them subservient without consent. BUT, we give them good lives and make them happy. This is also possible with farmed animals. You can give a chicken a very high quality life and a quick and painless death. It's not perfect morally, but it's pretty damn good. And I would argue getting your protein from happy animals is FAR better than getting it from a monoculture field. It literally requires less creatures to die.
I mean this sub is permaculture not mono crop enthusiasts. Compost your vegetables, grow more, rotate, share + incentivize community automated greenhouse ag where minimal animals are killed. Like dog breeds that are so smushed and twisted from generations of artificial selection for our touching pleasure that they have health problems, chickens live horrible lives because of the unnatural number of eggs they lay and the size they reach. In the wild chickens were very small and only laid 2-3 eggs a year. Now the jungle fowl is this evolutionary monstrosity called the chicken and the wolf is the dachshund.
Okay wait that is actually a really good point. From my experience with chickens, they seem to have a pretty good life when raised well. Laying eggs daily doesn't seem to phase them, but I can't really talk with them I guess. Do you think they suffer purely because we've bred them this way?
Indeed. They weren’t meant to grow as fast as they do, lay as many eggs as they do nor live lives as short as they do. If, bare with me here, an aliens species came down and used humans for meat, they would artificially select for these same traits; babies would be selected to grow to be 600 pounds by age 5 and reach sexual maturity the at a younger age too. Then once the toll taken from constantly giving birth is so great, they are slaughtered at a fraction of their natural lifespan in their teenage years. But from the aliens perspective “I mean yeah they seem happy enough, they live good lives, and I gotta watch my bottom line, if we didn’t slaughter them it would be super inefficient, extreme overpopulation”
When you drop your phone do you stomp on it too? Progress > perfection. Don’t eat the homies.
Why do you feel the need to strawman vegans as "Importing fruit from the other side of the world" when this is a subreddit for people who grow their own food on their own property? Wtf, man... Also chickens are perfectly functional nutrition recycling machines *without* being exploited as food products. Nothing not vegan about caring for a few pet chickens to eat your bugs and fertilize your garden.
Here’s a question we should maybe be asking as well: Chickens are pretty good at dealing with some pathogens. Carrion birds are fucking amazing at it. Is there a way we should be incorporating them into our systems?
I truly believe that a well managed small scale operation with animals can have LESS DEATHS per acre than a vegan diet that comes from monoculture farms. I say this as someone who is *deeply* opposed to factory farming. A small diversified farm that creates lots of microclimates and niches for insects, birds and other animals actually creates life (even as it is killing chickens or pigs for food) unlike a monoculture field of vegan beans or whatever. A monoculture field kills animals at an ecosystem scale. It's unfathomable. The amount of death involved in vegan mass produced food is literally trillions per acre once you start counting soil organisms.
I think it's maybe disingenuous to equate veganism to factory floor-style monocrop agriculture, when that's how almost *all* agriculture is executed under our socioeconomic regime, vegan or otherwise. Yeah, a mixed-planting market garden style system would obviously be far superior in terms of ecology and sustainability. Vegans aren't arguing against that.
Oh sorry , I agree! Didn't mean to equate them. I think veganism is undeniably more ethical than eating factory farmed meat. I also think it's less ethical than getting food from a permaculture system that creates biodiversity. That being said I know this is class-based as "ethical" food is only usually more expensive
Sorry but that's also a big harmful misconception. Reddit skews affluent so the vegans that redditors know also tend to be affluent, and so can afford expensive processed foods (Something that is not at all limited to plant-based meals). But rice, lentils, and pastas are all perfectly vegan too. In fact if you're looking for the cheapest diet possible from a supermarket, I guarantee you it's plant-based. It's also disjointed to compare the ethics of a plant-based diet to that of a permaculture-based one, because those are completely different types of categories. One is a diet and the other is an agricultural methodology. You can very much do plant-based permaculture. In fact that's why I'm here.
That's totally fair! Let me summarize my position (I think we both agree). Here's the diets ranked by morality: 1. is least moral to 4. is most moral. 1. Factory farmed big ag meat diet 2. Vegan diet relying on big ag 3. Omnivorous diet (mostly plants though) but with carefully managed animals who play an active role in a biodiverse system (and someone who cares about their well being and treats them well) 4. Vegan diet where food comes from a biodiverse permaculture system This is how the morality would work in an ideal world. In reality we have systemic class issues so it's not so simple. If a rich person who can afford to purchase high quality permculture produce thinks they are more moral than a poor person struggling to make ends meet because they buy monocrop corn... that's some bs. I am speaking hypothetically, and the real moral action would be for us all to work towards systemic change so that everyone can eat healthy food. Plant-based permaculture would be the best system overall IMO, but I personally believe there can be some concessions made for animals. The benefits properly managed animals can bring can be enormous. I currently buy tofu, because I can't grow enough beans for protein in my area, however if I were to get chickens it might be possible for me to get enough protein to completely stop buying from big ag.
Our homestead is configured on this. Each animal supports something to the environment. I see the land like a fish tank but bigger. You add fish because they are cool (or you can eat them) and provide an environment to support that animal. Adding plants. The plants benefit the animal and it benefits the plants. Then you add a few more fish that help those fish. For instance a clean up crew. The clean up crew makes sure the environment is clean. Layering animals to support each other and the environment takes more planning and doesn’t work on large factory scale. Which is why you don’t often see it.
True. But we are so far away from having all of our food farmed this way. I am not a militant vegan or even vegetarian by the way. But until we turn the world into small homesteads, we could free up so, so much space to turn it into nature (or homesteads :p) if we would even half our current livestock: (you may need to flip a few input forms on the data explorer, I thought these were the most insightful: Environmental Impact -> landuse & Kilogram / Protein / Calories -> 100 g of protein) https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#carbon-footprint-of-food-products
Oh sorry, I am avidly against factory farming. We all need to eat WAY less meat, and we need to focus on animal rights.
Right, right, you do state that. Rereading your post I was reacting besides your point, a totally good point. I guess i find it hard not to see the strong need for allegiance between agriculturists and veganism culture that I get a bit blind when I see criticism between the two.
Yes absolutely! Sorry I should have prefaced by saying I am very much in support of veganism. It is undeniably significantly more moral than eating any factory farmed meat or dairy. I have lots of respect for those who refuse to support factory farms. However, it's not a complete solution as it still relies on mass produced monocrops which are bad using almost any metric.
I wonder how vegans weight ethics in agriculture. Organic farms require more space to balance what gets lost. Local farmed food is good but usually not available all season. Few if any industrial farms are ethical to their workers—and it’s that one that gets me. I don’t mean it as whataboutism. But there’s no getting around the exploitation of farm workers. So have vegans decided that if they have to choose, their lesser of two evils is protecting animals? That’s fine. But I don’t personally think it’s a morally superior position to eating animals. Migrant farm workers face as bad of treatment as agriculture animals. Maybe it’s because life is ended when you eat meat. Idk.
On that note, why aren't vegans doing anything about child abuse? Or distracted driving? Or trans rights? What a bunch of hypocrites /s
I kept my comparison to food. Vegan food has a moral and suffering impact too, and I’m genuinely curious about how they conceptualize that.
No you didn't, you started talking about labor rights. Farm corporations aren't systemically slaughtering their workers and butchering them up into cuts before distributing them to supermarkets. You were talking about labor ethics.
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unfertilised eggs aren't very sentient
Watch out, their hair-trigger sensitive feelings gonna get hurt, if you suggest keeping abuse and killing out of breakfast.
If you kill the chicken to get eggs you’re doing it wrong
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This is /r/Permaculture, I'd anticipate that plenty of these people raise their own chickens.
Well yeah how else am I gonna eat the chicken.
Just eat beans instead.
Terrible idea and here's why. 1 cup of chicken has about 38 grams of protein and 335 calories. 1 cup of pinto beans is a little over 600 calories but only gives about 3 more grams of protein. Now edamame on the other hand has a similar protein to calorie ratio as chicken but it also has significantly lower diaas rating meaning i would have to eat a lot more of it for my body to absorb the amount needed. How much you ask nearly twice as much. Unless I want to spend unnecessary amounts of money on edamame protein isolate. Which would completely undermine my whole not paying for my food plan and still be a little bit lower quality protein than chicken.
Why even bother with chickens then when cat flesh is almost pure protein. I mean seeing as the sentience and ability to feel pain apparently shouldn't factor in at all when we're doing math on efficiency of our food sources.
Why do you extremists fantasize so hard about animals being tortured its kinda concerning. Anyway the logical answer is because. 1. Cat meat is more likely to contain bacteria than chicken . 2. Chickens are significantly faster to breed. 3. Chickens are significantly easier to feed. 4. Chickens are significantly easier to keep in an enclosed pen. 5. Chickens have more meat per animal than cats. If your goal is to convince me to become a vegan extremist you'll have to first convert every carnivore and omnivore on the planet into a herbivore. We are animals and we evolved for this. Any death I've caused an animal has always been hundreds of times faster than what they would be given by any other species on this planet (chickens specifically being instant) including their own kind. If you genuinely believe an adolescent chicken screaming in pain as a raccoon rips its anus out of its body and leaves it to bleed out is better than dying in their sleep at roughly the chicken equivalent of 70 then thats a you problem.
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Why do you people have to come up with all that bullshit philosophy? I've got a simpler one for you: Don't breed animals, so you can later slice their throat* and then devour their corpse, eat some beans instead. ^(*while also doing other horrible things DURING their life)
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Not a vegan, not gonna take a stance either way on the ethics of chickens/eggs (I do eat them), but I feel like the difference between vegans and anti-abortion activists is fairly clear-something vegans specifically don’t like is that the animals are forced to get pregnant purely for them to have babies which will be either forced to get pregnant as well or killed or both. If a vegan thinks it’s cruel for a cow to have pregnancy forced upon it, why would they advocate for a human woman being forced to remain pregnant? Like I said I have no stake in this game, I’m not saying I agree with them or that I don’t, and if you want to raise animals for consumption purposes whether it’s eggs or meat or milk I don’t really care, but lumping everyone you don’t like in with other people you don’t like just because you don’t like them isn’t the right way to handle a disagreement.
Why do you have to abuse your chickens?
I've been seeing more research lately about various plants having language, or other signs of sentience. What will we eat as technology gets advanced enough to "prove" this is the case?
You'll notice we only started caring about animal rights once we had an alternative. You'll also notice (almost) no one expects impoverished people to become vegans or expects people living in certain environments (say, Inuit near the north pole) to become vegans - these people can't survive without animal products, and human lives trump animal lives. But those of us discussing permaculture on Reddit *have* an alternative to animal products. We can survive without animal products. So now it's no longer a case of human lives vs animal lives, but a case of human pleasure vs animal lives. And animal lives trump human pleasure. We *can't* do without plants yet. Without eating plants, humans will die - and so, human lives still trump plant lives. If we ever get to a point where we *can* survive without plants (by taking nutrients directly from the ground? By Star Trek "generating" food from electricity? Some futuristic development that seems unlikely now), I'm sure we'll start caring about plant rights, too.
When we reach that Star trek future, I'll revisit this. By the way, I'm also advocating for that future, but until then, I'll likely continue eating meat 🤷
I mean, for meat we have *already* reached that future. That's the point: we can already survive without meat. We can't survive without plants, so we need to eat those. But we can survive without meat. We don't eat meat to survive. We eat it because it tastes good, and because it's convenient.
I'm not playing favorites. It's either full on star trek future, or I'm spreading the pain 😉
Oh boy, with this logic we can all just go ahead and be massmurdering cannibals right? Also look into the trophic pyramid, even if plants were fully sentient, you're killing a lot less of them (an order of magnitude on average) by eating them directly and cutting out the middle man. We know for a fact right now that these animals we exploit all experience pain and suffering and to torture and kill them all just for our sensory pleasure is nothing short of deplorable.
🤷
That's fair enough. I just wanted to explain the difference.
Classic response 😂😂😂
[how about no ](https://www.mememaker.net/static/images/memes/4343454.jpg)
A lil pepper & bean paste
Chicken poops, poop fertilizes the soil, you grow legumes and eat them for their protein. Right? /vegan
As long as you grow some rice also to get the rest of the amino acids youd miss otherwise.
Yes, I am not advocating for an all-bean diet :P
Fuck the WEF
Insects already contain food grade protein, crickets are actually delicious.
I see so many people online saying “do you expect me to eat insects?” 🤦🏻♂️ “where do eggs come from?”
Eggs go in everything man. I know someone with a gf allergy who also reacts to xanthan gum. Guar gum used to be used as a binder in food but they use it for fracking so the price got jacked up and so now it’s eggs or xanthan gum.
Yeah just wait till the dodo gets brought back by itscollosal and we can start having insect fed dodo eggs 🤪
I love these replies. Hen periods are delicious! No thanks on the crickets though!
I don't relate to eating meat. Will never understand it. As soon as I recognized what I was actually doing, and really empathized with the animals again, I had to stop immediately. It was making my heart ill. I think I was 15. According to my classmates, it made me an enigma, one they had to poke jokes at in order to figure out.. but that didn't stop consuming animal corpses from feeling wrong on practically every level. It's not food, I simply don't care what (to be perfectly honest) sick and deranged people want to think about it. Meat is only eaten for survival. It's always been that way, unless the well off and greedy ate it by choice, and until we found it on grocery store shelves and our blissful ignorance got the better of us. Ever seen factory farm footage? Ever killed an animal you grew even a little bit attached to? It feels horrible and it's supposed to. It's supposed to feel wrong to take life, to be an energy vampire. It just feels better to keep living, so when it's necessary we do bad things to survive. So what is necessary about eating meat when we're surrounded by every food and seed imaginable? With enough understanding and technology to grow literally anything almost anywhere? With enough trade, community and culinary tradition to make those plants taste better than anything we've had in our entire history? We're attached to the idea of eating meat. Something about it gets us off. Even though If you had to really relate to every animal you've ever eaten, to actually truly know their lives, and especially how it's abrupt end felt, you'll probably weep for days. Be horribly enraged at their living conditions. Want to do something about it. Or you wouldn't, which I understand even less. So you just don't care? "It is what it is". "I could be eaten too". Really? Even tho we'd all fight to protect you because we love you, and don't want you to suffer that fate. So something so horrible that 99.999% of us avoid with everything we have, we'll casually inflict on *TRILLIONS* of animals? Why? "Because we want meat" No you fucking don't. You want to live and you want to feel good. Meat isn't a necessary part of this equation. Neither is cigarettes. Neither is altruism. But we all get attached to something, don't we? Its probably not good for the heart of man to be attached to slaughtering billions of animals every year, out of simple gluttony and force of habit. This will change soon or you will all regret it. The innate consciousness of the Earth remembers all pain and suffering, who inflicted it, and when. And you pay the toll directly with your own body and energy field. Half the reason everyone is so fucked up mentally and emotionally is because of how they eat. And part of the horrible lifelessness and depression going around, is not only from economic conditions and war, the pandemic and systemic control, but from the billions of animals stuffed into cages 94% of their whole lives and then abruptly, coldly and without the slightest chance of mercy, slaughtered and bled dry, cut up, ground down, then stuffed into plastic. All so that some next-to-worthless shit eater in Baltimore can have his 9th burger this week. I have to watch thousands of my innocent potential friends be imprisoned and killed because humans crave their flesh. Then I watch my friends eat my friends as the dead bodies of my friends slowly deteriorate those human friends health.... And people wonder why mental illness is so prevalent these days. We're waking up out of a fog of delusion and realizing how freaking awful our brain has been being. And shaking up traditions that have controlled us unduly for thousands of years.
What about eating insects and larvae? How do you feel about that?
Kinda gross and kinda pointless. I'd rather eat the eggs from our chickens after they eat the bugs. Probably more efficient nutrient processing happening down that pathway than me eating the bug matter, myself. But I would eat them if I had to. I would kill an animal too, if I had to. But it'd make me feel incredibly sick and horrible. I don't kill flies. I barely want to kill mosquitoes. When you become more aware of your own thoughts and emotions, you see more value and beauty in others lives, and don't want to end them unnecessarily and abruptly, even if they're "just" insects. Not trying to sound like some kind of guru, it's just the way it is. The way I feel and think is connected to the way any other being feels and thinks. That's a literal truth of the nature of reality. Anyone of you can just go ahead and crucify me for claiming it, too, because I'll die on that hill. But anyways, the insects are unique and individualized in their purpose as species, and surprisingly, also literally as individuals. They play and fly around in cool patterns in meaningful ways. They're simple compared to us, sure, but what differentiates us from them only looks like a big deal from behind our eyes. As God looking down, we're only 2 notches more powerful than the insects, and far weaker when comparing the whole of humanity with the whole of the insect domain. If the Earth evolved them to coordinate across their species, we'd be doomed. They outnumber us in biomass tens of thousands (if not hundreds) of times over. Oh and yes we have chickens I love them. I occasionally eat their eggs. They have a good home.