Reduce: Factory Farmed Eggs
December 1, 2009 at 12:03 pm 1 comment
Treehugger included an article on urban chickens the other day. Check out these photos – they look so cute!
Chicken friends! (Photo by Todd Parsons on Good.Is)
Although I don’t eat eggs myself, Mr Teeny-bop does, and I would love to be able to get his eggs from chickens I know are free range. I buy the free range eggs in the supermarket, but you know that free range doesn’t always mean the kind of free range you think of when you imagine the chickens. Sometimes it just means they have a tiny hole in the barn they can go out of if they want to get outside – tough to do when there are hundreds of chickens in the barn. I was telling Yankee Elv last night when we were grocery shopping that you can’t fall for those ‘cage free’ eggs – unless they’re labelled free range, the chickens don’t even legally need to have access to the outside world. ‘Cage free’ just means they’re not in cages. They can still be crowded into a tiny space.
I know a lot of people say eggs aren’t vegan, and technically they’re not (that being said, technically I’m not vegan). I personally believe that eggs from pet backyard chickens are ok to eat even on a vegan diet though. I just don’t like the taste. Another bonus – the chickens can eat food scraps. This is especially good if your compost bin or worm farm tends to get a little full…
Lots of people have chickens in their backyard. The people next door used to, and the people over the back still do (I hear them clucking all the time.) Sometimes they break out and come into our courtyard, but I don’t mind. The birds are too big for the cats to want to chase them and Loodle doesn’t even notice them. In Brisbane, it’s ok to have chickens in urban areas, but you have to have a yard of a certain size to own a rooster. It’s to do with reducing the noise from them crowing.
Very occasionally I’ll get eggs from my co-worker (she has chooks), but it’s a pain in the neck to arrange and she travels a long way into work everyday, sometimes by train. It’s not the most convenient thing to have to transport eggs like that too often. I don’t know the over-the-back neighbours so we can’t share in their bounty. I wonder if there is some kind of egg-share thing going on in Brisbane. It would be cool if so, people could sign up and give away (or sell) any eggs their backyard chickens produce, after they’ve taken the ones they need.
I wish I could have chickens, but in a rental house, it’s just not possible. One day, I will.
Entry filed under: Reduce. Tags: chickens, eggs, land use, local, Reduce, urban farming, veg*nism.
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