I do not understand the mathematics behind the dilemma. I’m assuming only the firts chicks cost money, because down the line they will breed.
But feeding them, housing them - vitamins and doctoring costs a lot of money.
So anyone with couple or more chickens - how much does it cost to have them on the table? And realistically how many eggs do you get?
Broilers (chickens for meat) are usually males that just hit maturity. Before they go insane on hormones and fight other males, they become food. That takes around 6-8 weeks. So, at scale like supermarkets, not a ton of food goes into them. Likely more money goes into dressing (slaughter), packaging, and shipping.
Layers (les femmes chickitas) turn out eggs until they don’t anymore, and then get turned into dog food or nuggets, or soup. They’re turning corn into eggs. My parents have layers and get a 20lb bag of food once a month and get 2-4 eggs a day, depending on the weather.
Not even just corn. Also all the ticks, ants, and other pest insects in the yard, and possibly even some of your food waste. They literally turn trash and straight up pests into food.
Eggs taste better when they do, but it depends on local predators, too.
Not entirely true anymore - both male and female chicks are raised for meat, just different breeds than for commercial egg production. The large poultry company I used to work with raised exclusively female chicks, since they grew faster. The male chicks went into the grinder, as the other poster suggested.
Well, I’m sort of splitting the large-scale industrial method and homestead method. It depends by breed also, but I’ve raised ducks in the past, and while the schedule was different, the results of who ended up dinner were about the same. Males got 90 days to live their best lives, girls 50/50 depending on how many layers we had.
Ah donc nosotros ahora estamos en mélangeant los idiomas simplemente comme ça?
Ah, je pense parlez Francais como puedo! Lo siento que oublie les correctement las/les.
Sui
Ohh so male chicks don’t go into the food grinder as soon as they are sorted? I saw the popular video years ago, where they inspect the tips of a 3 day old chick and the males went to dog food…
Thank you for your answer!
It depends on the place. In many large industrial egg-laying facilities, yes. They’re only focused on eggs to sell and to make more chicken to lay eggs. So the males don’t fit the equation. It’s easier to turn them into dog food then search for anywhere to put them.