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We're just better at abusing chickens and sell their periods cheaper. Deal with it.

Why do the French only eat one egg for breakfast?

Because one egg is un œuf

• this joke courtesy of my college French teacher.

I feel like I never see eggs in anything other than 12 over here in Alberta, but I don't eat a ton of eggs.

We're European lite.

Foxes, outdoor cats and my dog wouldn't agree to to this plan. The other day I saw a giant ass snake too. I thought it was someone's escape pet... apparently those fuckers are normal and everyone who grew up here thought I was being hysterical. Also, if I'm being 100% honest, those chickens would be neglected if they lived in my yard.

Not every town allows it, not every home has the room, not every household has the resources, etc, etc, etc.

Pretty much the same as anywhere, really.

Fwiw, depending on the number of conditions chickens you have a "small" coop isn't realistic.

You can't keep chickens in the coop 24/7. Well, I guess you can, but you'd be an asshole if you did. They need light and air and exercise and mental activity, and you don't get that in a coop.

So, you need enough space for them too. A decent sized yard can provide that.

Oh, wait, now the chickens are eaten by a neighbor's dog; oh well!

Build a chicken run. Solves the roaming problems.

But now, snakes and small predators can get to your chickens because they can't run away.

But, if you just fence in your yard, there's still predator access in different ways.

I get the impression that folks really don't know how much wild animal life there is in the US, even in cities. Like, I used to live in a fairly big city, and we still got raccoons in the garbage, and coyotes occasionally rolling through the streets.

In my town, we're on the edge of farmlands and mountains. We don't get the big critters like bear and cougars, but you better believe we have foxes and coyote, and feral dogs, and snakes and hawks, and the list can go on

Just in the last month my rooster has been in three fights with other animals that got inside our fence. And we aren't outside of town. Before we had chickens? Never saw a coyote inside the fence, or a feral dog. Foxes were rare. And easy to keep out because they only came in when the fence got damaged; they weren't trying to get in.

We also didn't have as many mice trying to move in (which you deal with on the edge of farmlands anyway, but it was less) to get their food.

Chickens ain't exactly a casual decision is what I'm getting at.

Maybe wherever you are, the towns are far enough off from that kind of stuff, and you can just let them roam all over with little or no risk, I dunno. But you can't do that everywhere here for sure.

Also, if you didn't already have chickens before the bird flu started hitting, they aren't cheap now. Even breeds that aren't considered great layers have gone up in price. Our pet hen was less than ten bucks, and she's a fancy breed. The same bird would be twice that now, from the same breeder, and that's in less than two years.

My first egg cost me $600. I'm 7 years in and if it weren't for the fact that egg prices have escalated so much I'd still be losing money on every single egg because the industrialization of eggs makes it less expensive to buying them under normal circumstances.

Now let's talk about the reason they're currently expensive. Bird flu. Imagine every yard with chickens in it. Instead of a few locations to protect, you now have hundreds of millions. Which results in billions of potential vectors for the spread of disease.

I know everyday that I could walk outside and find my birds sick with the bird flu because some bird pooped by flying overhead. I may have to cull my entire flock of a dozen or so chickens, six five ducks and seven geese. And then when I decide to replace them I'm going to be priced out of the market by everyone else replacing their birds.

What a naive comment.

It's a country the size of a continent with over 300 million citizens. Lots of Americans do what you suggested, but tell somebody in LA or NYC to "get chickens and a small coop" they'd laugh and tell you their reality is very different from yours.

Chickens need food, shelter and care.

While I think it's fun to have chickens, I'd hate to think of people getting chickens just for food and neglecting then otherwise. And there are a lot of people out there who only care about money (and not animals) sadly.

Many Americans live in apartments or condos with minimal to no personal outdoor space, and almost surely a ban on "farm" animals.

How much work is it? If there’s a war or anything, getting chickens is on the top of my list!