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'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.
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.