Hi, I escaped from r/solarpunk. Content Warning, this post is about raising animals for their meat, so may be upsetting to some. I'm putting this under farming because I couldn't identify a better community (maybe food?) but I'd be happy to move this topic into a new, specific community if that can be done.
Something that's been going in my mind for a bit is the role of backyard farming and homesteading in solarpunk. First caveat, I think vegetarianism/veganism for 99-100% of the diet of 99% of the population is a fantastic goal, but I think we need to have solutions for the interim where society is still coming around to the idea. Even people who want the best for the planet and animals might be intimidated by the prospect of veganism or even vegetarianism, whether or not they have sound reason for this.
While we're still reliant on animal meat, I think that moving our animal raising from big factory farms into local smallholdings or even our backyards would help immensely. On one hand, the welfare of a factory-farmed chicken pales in comparison to that of a chicken who grew up knowing love and foraging. Also, each meat-based meal that is grown at home or on a well-run smallholding diverts business from the factory farms that are killing our planet.
Quite frankly, I'm hoping to own chickens soon, mostly so I can have fresh/ethical eggs and share the same eggs with my community. But I'm not averse to raising chickens for meat either. In fact, my goal would be to stop eating meat entirely unless it came from my flock or a flock that I knew first hand was cared for to the same standards.
In my eyes, meat should be something you eat as a treat, and only if you can psychologically grapple with how it got to your plate and give due respect to the animal who provided it.
There's a lot I'd like to discuss about this, and I think it's important to discuss. I know the subject of veganism or lack thereof can get heated, but I think we need to have these hard conversations if we want to come together as a community with proper solutions for the future.
So tl:dr; does discussion of home-reared meat belong here? If so, does this align with anyone else's goals?
I think its an interesting topic. Sometimes I wish there was a term for someone who critically thinks about what they consume/eat. Maybe there is and I just know the term?
Full disclaimer: I've been vegan for 20+ years now, but I'm not going to make the assertion that everyone who critically thinks about what they eat and the ethics of what they eat, are going to come to the same conclusion as I have and decide to be vegan. IMHO critically thinking about things is the most important part.
I think your goal of raising chickens for eggs *and * meat is a realistic one. IMHO including meat as a part of the egg process is necessary. I often see people trying to raise chickens for eggs but not meat and it seems complicated. You have to buy sexed chicks which generally is a part of the industrial meat complex (the very thing people are often raising chickens to avoid) and inevitably your going to end up with roosters even with sexed chicks. Then your spending all these resources on food for the rooster just because keeping it alive is more "humane". To me meat/death is just a part of the process, so why try and remove it.
I'm really curious if there is a term for it, I don't think there is, at least I've never heard it! It seems like a lot of the homesteading/home-reared food community is strangely at odds with solarpunk, more reactionary and doomsday-preppy than hopeful for a good future, so I'd love to find a term to build this kind of caring, critical food community around.
Also I really agree about how we need to include meat as part of the egg process, for the reasons you list. It is very complicated to raise chickens for "just eggs" ethically. Most chicks can't even be sexed until quite a few weeks have passed, and even those that can be sexed on day 1, well you need a plan for the male chicks. It's one thing to say "well I just buy the female chicks from my supplier" but then I feel you need to grapple with what's happening to the male counterparts. And personally, I'd rather grapple with them myself so I know they're treated well.
There's a huge phenomenon around this time of year when everyone's posting on facebook to "please rehome my lovely rooster, free to good home". They simply hatch a half dozen chicks and let someone else deal with the roosters, which no matter how often they say "good/pet homes only" realistically most people only have room for a rooster if they plan to eat him. So basically they get to feel good about not killing their roosters... because someone else, whom they have no governance over, is doing it.
But yeah, my opinion is that death is inevitable, and therefor so is meat (much like you say). In the cases where it needs to be at human hands, I'd rather they were mine.
Hi, I get what you mean on practically everything you're saying here. I raise chickens for meat and eggs.
Most people who keep backyard chickens are banned from having roosters at all, so I think that explains a lot of the male surplus. That's mostly HOA ridiculousness. Roosters aren't that loud imo.
Sexing chicks can be a little more reliable than that, though. For sexing chicks, there's autosexing breeds and sexlink hybrids that take advantage of the ZW male chicken chromosomes and WW of the females. For sex links, a solid color male mates a barred colored female. The males inherit one W from the females, resulting in a barred chick (white dot on head). The females have solid coloring. But, those males are subject to the various disposal methods of male chicks, as you say.
And the female chicks, having heterozygous coloration genes, can't produce reliably sexed chicks. So for my purposes I don't consider them sustainable, as I would like to be able to subsequently hatch chickens from orginal stock. I don't want to rely on hatcheries. Idk if you had seen this, but hatcheries were SLAMMED this year, with many orders of cornish cross (meat bird hybrids) being cancelled from many different hatcheries.
For autosexing breeds, it can be a bit more hit and miss. Typically they also take advantage of solid / barred genetics. Some of these include California Grey, Creme Legbar, Crele Penedesenca, Welsummers, Bielefelders, and Dorkings. But these must be very purebred (inbred) to maintain the autosexing. So... Idk. I like many of those breeds and plan on bringing some into my flock, but I also plan on eating surplus roosters.
Seeing the rooster rehoming also an irritation of mine. I feel like if people insist on not having their roosters eaten, they need to provide that home for them, themselves. Bachelor flocks are a possibility. But it's also very possible to just... allow people to eat them? But I see people rehoming roosters for $50 to prevent someone "just eating them" as though feeding someone could possibly be an ignoble end for a rooster.
Anyway for the wider discussion, I think domestic animals have a large role to play in solarpunk. Even raised for meat. I think there can definitely be a better collaborative, symbiotic relationship with animals and the earth with homereared animals.
Thank you for this response, I'm admittedly a chicken noob still so I really appreciate this deeper dive. (And just, full agree on it being HOA nonsense. I'm fortunate enough to be in the UK where we don't seem to have HOAs and have better protection for backyard chicken keepers. But even then the NIMBYs of the world will unite against a rooster...)
I had no idea about the issue with female chicks not being reliable for sex-linking down generational lines, but it makes a lot of sense. And I feel the same about not wanting to rely on hatcheries, but then that's more because I do want to get into the breeding crossbreeding side of things in its own right.
Yeah I feel like I wouldn't be bothered if they were coming at rooster "rehoming" through the lens of "Well I have enough birds for my family, maybe someone else needs some" (after all sharing is very solarpunk!) but it's always as you say, "please don't eat him" like its shameful to nourish another living creature.
Anyways I think you've summed up how I feel about it in general, I want to collaborate with animals and live with them the way we would if we hadn't tried to separate ourselves from "the beasts" philosophically. We're not intrinsically better creatures, we're just really, REALLY good at tools and words, and I think we should stay in sync with nature.
Whoops, I screwed up some info in that post so lemme try and redeem myself.
I screwed up the chicken chromosomes... The Rooster has ZZ and the hen has ZW. When I was typing it up, I was like... "hey is this right? This is right, right?" I should have just checked...
Anyway, it's only relevant to sex link chicken breed hybrids and has practically nothing to do with a typical breed. I was just trying to demonstrate that sex links (which can be sexed reliably at day one) don't solve anything about the surplus male chicks, and only results in one generation of chicks which can be reliably sexed.
Here's a quick punnett square, I guess. The barred gene is located on the Z chromosome.
So a barred hen has ZW in this example and a solid non barred rooster has zz, just for legibility. So the males resulting from the breeding of a solid rooster to a barred hen would inherit one barred Z from the hen and one solid z from the rooster.
However, the resulting chicks cannot be used to produce more sex linked chickens. The female chicks have no barred Z, and the males have only one solid z. Barred to solid doesn't work as it results in all chicks being barred.
But yeah... I mean, if it doesn't matter if you have female or male chicks, because you have purposes for both, then you don't need to sex them so quick, so you can just have a normal, sustainable breeding population.
Meat birds like cornish cross have this same problem. You can't reliably have a cornish cross through breeding cornish crosses. I mean, there's more problems with cornish crosses than that, as typically they're not able to reach breeding age, anyway. When they live much longer than their intended slaughter date, they usually have heart attacks or break their legs. It's also possible to overfeed them to weights that will crush their organs.
I got my rooster for free, and didn't end up eating him. I'm allowed to keep roosters and he does a good job looking after his flock. And, I want fertile eggs. So, not every free rooster finds himself in a cookpot.
In general, I really enjoy having chickens, and they're fun to have around. They do an excellent job keeping my property free of ticks, and they also eat maggots out of cow patties, which keeps the flies down.
Some hatcheries will sell the male chicks (cockerels) as meat birds instead of just culling them. But supply vastly outstrips demand...