Not An Egg-spert, But-by Foxfier

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I know enough about agriculture to get some idea, and to be very alarmed by narratives that I see forming up.

I grew up helping my parents manage a ranch, reading Capital Press https://capitalpress.com/ and Range Magazine https://rangemagazine.com/ for fun, and with my mom being strongly involved in weedboard and less formal support networks for ag ranging from literally some grandma’s part-time hobby up through big money makers, and that makes it so that I notice some things when they’re around me, and so I understand them differently than a lot of… well, town-kids seem to be understanding them as.  Since getting out of the Navy, I have dragged our horde of very curious kids through “ranch stuff” in at least a dozen different states, most recently playing “are they actually happy to talk or are they just polite?” for the wonderful lady at the McMurray Hatchery.

For an idea of how farm-geeky my family is, we’re bemusing my husband and sister in law because there rest of us are incredibly excited that I actually went to the McMurray Hatchery https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/availableview.html  that we’ve been getting chicks and keets from since before I was born. (For fellow geeks: I am still debating testing her tolerance by sending a chick catalog; my daughter was quoting from it on the drive up from Des Moines, and they’re so fluffffffyyyy!)

So it’s been… “interesting,” we’ll go with that… to watch a flood of saviors-of-the-farmers who are under the impression that we get chicken meat from the same individuals we get eggs from, or who think that every single farmer would be fine with mass slaughter of their animals.  Because farmers are so very good about following government orders, right?  We’re either helpless little hicks that aren’t so sure about them thar city folks, or we’re “enormous agri-buisness” type villains who only pause to remove the cigar from our mouths before laughing at the surge in egg prices triggered by killing off chickens from a minor illness that they would totally just recover from given a week and then they’d never catch the chicken flu again!

…sounds really silly when you lay the assumptions out there in the open, doesn’t it?

It gets even sillier when you find out that my rural Iowa awesome internet bogs down at harvest season, because all the little farmers are part of a “big agribusiness” some-legal-organization which means they own the fancy new tractors which use lots of internet.

Even just going to the Iowa State Fair, there’s the Egg Booth.

You get a hard boiled egg.

Onna stick, of course.

For free, with a bunch of recipes and similar promo material.  There’s some seasonings there, too, and it’s usually manned by older guys in Iowa Egg Council shirts, and a bunch of kids in smaller farm shirts running around doing upkeep, or occasionally with stuff branded in one of the co-op logos.

 Usually really obviously related, too, because most farms are still what a normal person would call a family farm.  They are just legally organized in a different way because the legal system is designed to deal with more city-styled orgs.  See also, why so many indy authors are set up as LLCs.

And you know what family farms aren’t super happy to do?

Answer a bunch of naggy surveys for unknown folks to dig through, after it’s been the Cool Kid thing for generations to declare anything that actually functions with animals as some form of abuse.

Such as keeping chickens in cages.

Neveryoumind that every study done, even those aimed at proving that chickens yearn to run free, found that the prey animal known for pecking flock-mates to death in too large of groups, has the lowest stress in a reasonably small cage with lots of food and water, and no sky for chicken-eating-monsters to swoop out of.

This method also means that the pecking order doesn’t result in the chickens being eaten alive by other chickens, and prevents disease spread.  So if, say, chicken flu is tracked in on someone’s boot, and infects some chickens– you don’t lose even the entire barn, much less all the barns that shared an outdoor area for cage-free purposes.

This is stuff that was pointed out by farmers before cage free laws were put in place– it has a higher cost, because of the chickens tortured to death by the pecking order, and is more fragile, because you have more chickens exposed to more infection vectors, both wild birds and other chickens.  Including when they eat the chickens that are dead of bird flu, which can have a 100% fatality rate without contributing factors.  (There are actually quarantine guidelines for dealing with bird flu; the return on investment is usually not very good with chickens.  Ducks can be asymptomatic, so they are more often quarantined– unfortunately, this has also resulted in people who decide their hobby-farm birds are “fine,” and they do not quarantine, resulting in massive spreading to birds that do mostly just die.)

Some of the stuff I’ve seen I can see why the writer doesn’t understand what he doesn’t see– he’s looking at reports as if they are from a standard big company that will report every bit and bob that they do.  Partly because the people giving that kind of information don’t mention things like “Yeah, we…uh, got a one in six response rate.  And about a third of those were the pre-paid survey envelope loaded with fishing weights and a note saying ‘leave me alone’.”

Animal rights activists have been videoing themselves throwing baby chicks into grinders and posting it online, to “prove” how horrible their targets are, since there was an online– there are very few chicken farmers who are going to give you details on where they get chicks and how they’re raised, not without very careful control.

However, there are folks who recognized that outreach is important.

 And they will give you information, and answer questions.

 That’s why the Iowa Egg Council https://iowaegg.org/, the Cattlemen’s http://www.beef.org/, various state’s Cow Belles https://www.arizonacowbelles.org/about-us/our-history, the guys who did those old “behold, the power of Cheese” videos, plus the individually guided folks like the Peterson Farm Brothers https://petersonfarmbrothers.com/about-us/ and Honest Farming https://tdfhonestfarming.com/ exist. 

I’m sure that folks know others– these type of ag-geeks are common, folks who love what they’re doing, and are honestly interested, even when it’s really dirty and hard labor.  If folks have an information source they want to brag on, please post it in the comments.

All of these are besides there being state level resources for information– both the state governments themselves, like the Iowa DoA&LS https://iowaagriculture.gov/about and the colleges’ ag extension https://www.extension.iastate.edu/ag/livestock-and-poultry-production , and the various professional councils like the Cattlemen’s and Egg Council I mentioned above.  (Happy Cows come from California! https://www.realcaliforniamilk.com/ )

As with all weird surges of Sudden Internet Expert, when something sounds amazing and outrageous– try seeing if perhaps there’s missing information that makes it more rational.

This fall and winter, my kids hatched chicks.  The first batch came out about Halloween.

They went to the coop at about 9 weeks, and we are just now getting a couple of eggs from them, which is about right.  Roughly six months from hatching to starting to lay.

…a meat chicken would have been going into the freezer at about the time our chicks went outside, 8-12 weeks, with some varieties ready as soon as a month and a half after hatching. That is why the prices of chicken meat aren’t surging at the same speed as the prices of eggs.

This information is really easy to find.

If the folks you’re listening to didn’t find it, then please recognize they haven’t gone investigating, they are just theorizing without data.

211 thoughts on “Not An Egg-spert, But-by Foxfier”

  1. I haven’t been so much concerned about meat chickens (I hatch my own) but about availability of hatching eggs, which massively affected hatcheries, and also produce the eggs needed to hatch the meat birds.

    If the breeding flocks for the hybrid meat birds are decimated, the availability of Cx would be affected.

    Judging by the relative numbers of Cx chicks to layer chicks in the stores, the Cx flocks weren’t affected. I’m not sure why the difference.

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    1. My guess would be that the hatcheries aren’t forced to be “Cage Free” like the egg sellers are, so if they do get infected, it takes out far fewer chickens.

      For how many cornish crosses there are, going off of our tiny sample of four stores in Iowa (FleetFarm delivers Thursday, TSC gets them on Tuesday, I visit two of each), there’s just a lot of folks who say to heck with this and are getting their own laying chickens– and ducks, and anything else to avoid this kind of lunacy.

      The place with the smallest selection has eight troughs for their chicks, and in hours of delivery they are down to six of the meat-birds, which are usually no more than two of the troughs. (Depends on if they have ducks or not, since the breed-note above that trough said they were dual purpose.)

      That’s the two times I’ve managed to catch them with anything in stock, in three weeks of checking.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I was in Tractor Supply a few weeks ago. They had 5 bins, 3 of layers, 1 of meat birds, one of ducks. She said that might be the end of it for the season because of bird flu.

        They didn’t receive their full order for the week, except for the meat birds.

        Maybe 50 or so meat birds in the bin, a small handful of layers of each variety. When I went back all they had left was ducks, and the lamps have been off ever since.

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        1. I’m technically at the low end of the addiction spectrum, with only 34 birds (11 of them chicks) and an incubator so I can feed my addiction. The fact that I have a purpose (or an obsession, lets be honest) and they’re not just pets pushes me farther down the addiction spectrum.

          Hopefully the birds coming this spring will be the last I ever have to purchase.

          I know people who have hundreds of birds that are just pets, and that baffles me almost as much as my friend’s shoe addiction.

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        2. You just say that because you’ve listened to me gush about eldest daughter having taken to reading in the chicken room with the fluffy nuggets up top nesting on her torso.

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          1. (I just had to drag her out of the room again, for lunch. Yeah, these peeps are going to be very nicely gentled for our layer flock.)

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        4. The vicious little dinosaurs can be fascinating.

          I can’t have them anymore. My wife is still cross about the time the warming light shorted out and burnt down the shed. (It’s been over fifteen years, and somehow the grudge remains strong.)

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  2. It’s practice. When they release the gain of function engineered flu on the human population they are going to apply the same solution to stop it by culling all the infected. It will just be a little more expensive for humans. After all, chickens don’t have retirement accounts to wind down while their are kept on a vent.

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    1. If they manage something where an amazingly good survival rate is 15% don’t die, and “everyone dies” is entirely inside of the normal range, they won’t have to cull the human population.

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      1. I’ve seen too much speculation that bird flu was an earlier “gain of function” lab escapee to laugh at that.

        I’m not an internet expert, but I do notice that the media started freaking out about bird flu about the same time Obama banned gain of function. I think it was also around the same time all the cage regulations kicked in, though. So maybe there’s an innocent explanation. (For unusual parameters of innocent.)

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            2. The genetic editing tools add distinctive sequences to DNA/RNA, that would take multiple ages of the Universe to occur naturally.

              Toolmarks.

              Covid-19 had a bunch of these. The current bird fnord supposedly does also.

              Makes it much easier to “find” a vaccine if you created the Frankenvirus yourself.

              At some point, something much nastier than “covid” will get loose. Much of the world is effed. We likely will be unusually resistant, because genetics, fatbodies, saturated with whoknowswhat, Deity just wants us around for Reasons. Then maybe the monkeys learn not to play stupid with fire.

              Maybe.

              Liked by 1 person

                1. I was going to add that we also go crazy for being clean– and then I realized why.

                  Because the assumption is that EVERYBODY might be working with something dirty, but you don’t want to look dirty– so abnormal levels of hand-washing and such goes on.

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  3. “Theorize without data”. I believe you misspelled it. Should be “Asspull”.

    Great article, thanks.

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    1. :laughing: But, but, but…that can be part of an investigation! You just have to make sure you actually show that it wasn’t investigated yet, so you can go look and see if it matches the “maybe!”

      Thank you.

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  4. What’s a reasonable explanation for the egg spike? Not trying to be a snot, just really curious.

    Though I will note that the previous administration had squandered so much good will (if any) it became very easy to believe the worst of it automatically.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Before, chickens were in cages where you had a big group being 9 chickens. If they somehow got infected, you had that cage, and those near it, to remove. A hundred would be a really big infection.

      Now, you have thousands in a barn, and often they go outside– where there are wild birds, and thus more infection vectors. If one gets sick, they are all exposed, besides the issue of eating the sick-enough-to-die chickens. And it will likely infect every other barn sharing the field, as well as the issues of workers tracking poop between locations.

      So your small side infection is hundreds to thousands, and they are going to be happening more often.

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      1. IIRC a lot of those farms just scrape up the feces, sell it to crop farmers who liquify it, and then spray it on crop fields. Which would spread the virus to the wild birds. Don’t know how much treatment the feces get to kill the virus, if any.

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        1. If you read the news stories that mention the decontamination of areas the chickens are in– that would cover it.

          You’d have to manage to get chicken poop from a farm that was infected but hadn’t been detected yet, which is a pretty fast turn around.

          Exactly because you’re totally correct, that would be an insanely effective infection vector.

          (So much ag stuff takes the safety measures and puts them where the consumer or hobby-farmer doesn’t have to deal with it. She says with great gratitude.)

          Liked by 2 people

        1. Welcome.
          I hope it gives folks tools to use…. another “fun” thing I heard was someone insisting that Canada isn’t culling chickens.

          Because I knew where to go digging, I quickly found out that Canada lists only “affected flocks” and animals, and doesn’t tell you how many are “humanely depopulated.”

          I then told this to my husband, who has been making cracks about “humanely depopulating” enemy mobs.

          “Time to humanely depopulate the opposing forces!”

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            1. A couple more euphemisms: In aerospace “flight anomaly” (cause usually difficult to determine because pieces of the vehicle are scattered over several square miles). In nuclear engineering “prompt critical” and “excursion”. At Chernobyl, the first “excursion” peaked at twice the reactor design thermal output.

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              1. Don’t forget CFT — Controlled Flight into Terrain. Otherwise known as ‘encountering a Cumulo-Granitii formation’. :-P

                The second Chernobyl ‘excursion’ exceeded the 30 GWT limit of the measuring equipment. “Why would we ever need to measure more than 30 GWT? That’s 10 times the design power!”

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                1. (An emoji smile). There was a old airline commercial DC3 in heavy cloud that suddenly pulled to one side. Emerging into the clear they saw that they had shed six feet of wing on a mountainside. Landed just a few minutes behind schedule…

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                    1. Half a wing and one engine. And the door probably wouldn’t blow out, even if held on with duct tape…😉

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                    2. There was a DC3 in the CBI theatre during WW2 credited with downing a Japanese Zero fighter. By midair collision. The Zero went into a mountainside. The DC3 just kept flying

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                    3. Like running inot that pesky rhino with your Smart Car? Guess who wins!

                      Zeros were not noted for toughness; DC3’s (or C-47’s) were.

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                    3. I think my favorite aviation one is, “If you have to use full power to taxi, you forgot to deploy your landing gear”.

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                    4. There as another DC3 during the Berlin Airlift carrying pierced aluminum runway planking ((PAP) that was real sluggish taxiing. She used every inch of runway and didn’t want to fly. The pilots couldn’t get above 500 feet. She landed hard at Berlin and blew the rear tire as the tail slammed down. The pilot looked at the cargo as he disembarked. It was stamped PSP (pierced steel planking. She had lifted and flown twice her maximum rated cargo load weight.

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        1. Yep.

          It’s even nastier when you find out that, just like banning farrowing cages, part of the increased cost is that you have animals killed in very nasty ways by other animals.

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          1. I expect the activists also ignore all the responsible owners out there who ensure the chicken cages are clean and comfortable, and the birds are well fed and warm, and only focus on the outliers with the chicken equivalent of a puppy mill?

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            1. They couldn’t find any.

              So they started getting activists hired on farms where they did horrific and illegal things and posted the videos, to “raise awareness.”

              Plus the lying, of course.

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        3. This is the essence of “progressivism” and leftist policies. The end result of EVERYTHING they do runs counter to their claims for it.

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      3. You know…

        “Cage free only” passed in California as a ballot measure. If the cannabalism stuff got publicized in TV spots, it might not be that hard to get the voters to overturn that law…

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        1. I know they tried the same route with pigs– because piglets are a lot cuter,and smashed by mom rolling over is unpleasant but not as gorey– and the response was to try to enforce groups small enough you can monitor them to avoid it, and screaming that they were unnatural beasts.

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        2. Never underestimate the stupidity or susceptibility to sappy animation-based “logic” of the urban core LA + SF + SAC voters that are needed to pass any ballot initiative in the formerly golden, now more sooty Bear Flag Peoples Republic.

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          1. As a Sacramento native, I have to protest that all the crazies were people *they* sent, while yelling that Sacramento has no culture. (It does. But Farm-to-Fork and doing activities outdoors while the temperature is over 100º don’t count as a “culture” to them, because it doesn’t involve clubs or touring acts.)

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        3. Oregon’s cage-free law was enacted (by “our betters” in Salem) in 2019, but took effect on 1/1/24. Prices went up some, and then the Fauci-flu started hitting the birds. The bit independent (Willamette) dropped off the shelves late in ’24 (with a handful of smaller places taking up the slack), but reentered a couple months ago. Something got wonky; Willamette’s eggs are $2.00 a dozen more expensive (give or take a couple dimes) than the smaller outfits. OTOH, they were getting consistent, white eggs, while the small outfits have brown eggs, and a) the yolks are smaller, and b) the eggs are more inconsistent. I think some birds eat better than others…

          As of last week, the smaller places were $4.58 a dozen. Willamette was “merely” $6.29. Some advantage for 18 count ($8.79), but we’ve already cut back, so a dozen works. (Ener-g egg replacer is gluten free, unlike Bob’s Red Mill. Yes, it’s important. Critically so.)

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      4. I would have guessed that cage free was more expensive, but fatalities from other birds didn’t occur to me nor did wild birds vectoring in diseases, although that one should have.

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        1. We live in hawk, eagle, and owl* country, so barring some brave souls, chickens tend to get covered.

          ((*)) Great Horned among others**. $SPOUSE once found a headless jackrabbit. The shriek was impressive. An acquaintance tried growing emus, AKA owl-chow.

          ((**)) When all the varieties get going (middle of the night), the hootenanny is really loud.

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          1. Oh, the productions records section requires “Numbers of ill or injured birds (with reasons stated, if known);”

            That would be the place to write “Eaten by the rest of the flock because the birds are cage -free”

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              1. Interestingly enough, local Costco has had 0 eggs for the last two weeks (could have missed them and they sold out, went 4x’s, normally just make the rounds on Friday). Not the dozen or multi-dozen pack, whether the eggs are white or brown. Fred Meyer (Kroger) has eggs. Cost is down $2.00/18 pkg from the high.

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    3. I may be wrong, but I don’t think there’s been an egg spike as such (if you’re referring to the sudden drop in egg prices, because “spike” could easily go the other way) but a decrease in bureaucratic interference which allows more of the eggs to get to the stores.

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  5. Up here in socialist Canada we have an Egg Marketing Board, and a Chicken Marketing Board, which set prices and quotas for the farmers around here. And because of that, we have some -expensive- eggs and chickens. Socialism: Everyone shall be equally miserable.

    One interesting thing is the way egg quota is decided. They go by how many acres of tillage you have, or so I am told. More acres, bigger quota. The reason is manure. Apparently (or so I was told, anyway) it was decided that the farmer must spread the chicken poo on his own land, and that because farmers are so stupid (and venal, and eeeeevile) they could not be allowed too many chickens or the land would suffer.

    Because no one ever SOLD chicken manure for fertilizer, or burned it in an incinerator, or any of about a million things people do with manure. Right?

    This has, of course, meant the destruction of the family farm in Southern Ontario as egg producers (whose income is guaranteed by the government egg board) buy up every acre they can get so they can have more quota. Leading to HUGE fricking farms with -HUGE- corporate debt and of course tenants living in all those farm houses. You drive around out here you can tell who’s still farmin’ and who is a tenant as you go by at 60 mph.

    But it’s funny, Perdue Farms can sell a chicken for $3.00 a pound, where our HUGE freaking corporate monsters are double that or more. Americans are still not experiencing Canadian chicken prices, even with the current uproar.

    Why? Well, here’s a guy selling chicks for $25 a piece, so that’s a reason. https://www.gradeehfarms.ca/price-list.html

    Not to mention there’s a Carbon Tax where the government charges a levy on heating fuel. And equipment fuel. And transport fuel. You know how much propane it takes to heat a chicken barn in Canada? More than your house.

    And the quota, of course. Not to mention the financing costs on all that land…

    See if you can imagine what they do to pig farmers and cattle farmers. And dairy.

    All that, plus a 200+% tariff on American chicken, pork, dairy and beef. Because otherwise there wouldn’t BE any farmers in Canada, they’d all have gone broke.

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    1. But, but, nobody but the Evil Fascist Trump charges tariffs!

      That’s something I wish got more attention: it’s not a matter of Trump unilaterally applying tarries, it’s that sort many others applied tariffs on the US.

      Though I have mixed feelings on the subject.

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      1. Almost everything we see in Canada on the subject of Trump and tariffs is propaganda. I’ve seen all the BNN commentators swear up and down that tariffs are Bad, and they’ll destroy the USA, and holy moley Mable that Trump boi is a deeeeeemon!”

        But then I think about that 200% dairy tariff, which protects the big fat dairy cartel in Quebec, which makes the milk in my cappuccino cost -double- here what it does in Arizona, and I think maybe they’re all lying.

        Not to put too fine a point on it, I strongly think #TheDonald is 100% right. Socialism is bad. If a socialist nation is taking advantage of the USA based on ancient Cold War strategies, and Canada most certainly is, then some tariffs are appropriate.

        If Canada gets its back up and starts [God forbid!] having its own army and making its own cars and guns and aircraft and so forth, that’s not the worst thing that could happen.

        Sweden has 10 million people, and yet they have their own military, their own war production, their own cars, aircraft, guns, etc. Canada has four times the population and spans an entire continent. We used to have all that too, and our leaders sold it all to the Chinese Communists for a bag of magic beans.

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    2. “…about a million things people do with manure…”

      As I recall , a while ago some farmers in…France?…found a rather creative use, involving government buildings.🤣

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  6. For those interesting the bird mortality rates from avian flu, What birds are most affected by avian flu? – Birdful is a pretty decent site.

    I suspect the high rates of bird mortality for chickens and turkeys is linked to the inbreeding/purebred of the variety. A lot of those commercially farmed birds have never been exposed to flu, and have no immunity to it; whereas your small home farmer’s birds usually get exposed to the milder strains in the wild just running around your yard. You may lose 8 out of 10 birds, but the 2 survivors should pass down their immunity (if you’re breeding at home.)

    I did notice that the McMurray site did not mention disease resistance at all (as far as I could see.) Is that an implication that farmers are expected to clear cull their flocks and just do a 100% replacement when infected?

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    1. Giving a disease resistance rate would be inviting lawsuits, especially since the flu does change so quickly– you can’t give assurances of what the survival rate of a disease that doesn’t exist yet is, especially when there’s so many variables.

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      1. Yas, especially when virulence always -decreases- over time while resistance always increases.

        Nobody mentions that, because it interferes with the very lucrative business of making farmers kill all their stock to “protect the industry and public health!!!” and then buy new ones. Especially convenient when only -you- know the timetable for those new purchases, because you are the government and you make the rules.

        Imagine the fortunes to be made in the futures markets with that kind of secret knowledge…

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        1. Please stop trying to tell me how the poor, stupid little farmers don’t understand diseases.

          Seriously.

          We don’t need you to “save” us.

          There are options for quarantining. When a 100% fatality rate for infections is on the table, and has been for years, it frequently does not pencil out.

          We are now several years into there being folks who quarantined their animals, in a manner that didn’t put everyone around them in danger.

          We’re years into the wild birds having no quarantine at all.

          And the death rates are still outrageous.

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          1. I was thinking more that the Ag authorities are corrupt, playing the futures markets and sticking farmers with the bill. Like with Covid, but for Ag.

            But then I am not an expert in bird diseases nor in farming, so it could be that I’m wrong and the authorities are only idiot socialists, going through the motions because Muh Regulations!

            It does beg the question though, if the science indicates cages are advantageous for birds, who is paying the Greenies to demand free range? Same people who ran US-AID? Greenies don’t work the AstroTurf for free.

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            1. I was thinking more that the Ag authorities are corrupt, playing the futures markets and sticking farmers with the bill. 

              And none of us say a word?

              The same folks who were screaming to the skies when the “essential worker” nonsense meant they couldn’t get parts are fine with entire flocks being wiped out and the living areas being very expensively cleaned?

              The folks who won’t shut up about everything else including the weather– decide “yeah, this is fine”?

              With the only folks the recent onset of sob stories for this new programing can get are folks who run sanctuaries for former pets and show animals? And even those are mostly sad that the animals are dead, or you can see where the reporter edited out them talking about the animals in quarantine?

              There is a big propaganda push going on.

              Which is part of why I wrote this thing- I saw people putting out claims that were at best ignorant, but would honestly be better explained by being active attempts to destroy basic bio security, with a side of trying to shift the blame so they don’t get smacked, hard, for the damage this has done to national food security.

              There is seriously NO FREAKING WAY that all of these guys would completely miss the cage-free laws, except for NPR declaring that there was no connection.

              And folks who care about the truth, who recognize there’s something going on, can take these resources and do more digging, as well.

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              1. The question will be does the “cage free” totes-not-centrally-directed-and-organized campaign suffer a similar puzzling drop off in activity post USAID-cutoff as all of those lefty mass demonstrations which nobody showed up to did.

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                1. I am curious.
                  My figuring is that it was largely Russian funded, much like the anti-nuke stuff, in as much as I thought about it at all.

                  It’s food. The last place you can get really good morality abusing hits in. There’s a lot of stupid available.

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              2. I assume as a starting point that no professional, not even a stupid one, would willingly have an arrangement where he has to cull -all- his birds if one catches the flu. That’s the type of thing you only see when bureaucrats get involved.

                “And none of us say a word?”

                We haven’t heard much from the medical profession about Covid yet, have we? There’s a reason for that, and I know what it is. Doctors as a group have -all- shut up for fear of losing their licenses. Even more in Canada than the USA. They don’t even talk to each other here. Just say “covid” and watch them all start talking about hockey.

                I assumed something similar at work in US agriculture. So many regulations, so many certifications, right? Easy to make everybody shut up, Foxfier. In Canada the feral Greenies will physically come and trespass on your farm if you become unpopular. It has been done.

                https://www.realagriculture.com/2019/03/is-your-farm-ready-for-activists/

                Farmers don’t say much in Canada. They don’t even advertise their products, really, marketing boards do that. Lately they’ve been speaking up about the Carbon Tax, as that’s basically life-or-death. But other things? Radio silence. My neighbors don’t even have election signs.

                No election signs? In Ontario? Land of hockey and hotel bar fights on Friday nights?

                Shenanigans.

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                1. And we are reminded at the head of the Comments sections (of the few online news site that haven’t yet given those up entirely): “Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach.”

                  And they want your email address first, to which they’ll send a Confirmation Code before you can post…if you can post.

                  Samizdat isn’t “impossible”, but the Anticipated Cost of producing and distributing and consuming has risen even faster than inflation.

                  Paraphrasing Fred Reed: “The Government was a great champion of the free press until the internet went and made one.”

                  Liked by 1 person

                2. I assumed something similar at work in US agriculture. So many regulations, so many certifications, right? Easy to make everybody shut up, Foxfier.

                  Phantom… if you seriously think that American farmers are as locked down as the medical profession, you seriously need to re-evaluate your assumptions.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. Are American farmers less subject to shadowbanning than other groups? They can talk among themselves, but by what route does their talk “go viral” enough that it becomes part of the national conversation? How many people are going to see, hidden in all the googlechaff, anything that Google (et al) would prefer not be found, and that the MSM would rather not mention?

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                    1. We’ve had folks trying to shut us up for longer than I’ve been alive.

                      That’s why I was able to provide multiple professional outlets including newspaper and magazine formats in the post, besides the organizations and even youtube channels.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    2. Of course there are publications online. Aside from chicken farmers and their peeps, how many people would even think to look for them? TPTB don’t have to memory-hole every last word, they just have to keep it from reaching the critical masses.

                      Consider that pig-kills-thug story a few years ago in Minneapolis. (“What was the thug’s name, again?” he asked with rhetorical obtuseness.) Now consider Ashley Guindon. (“Who???”)

                      Ashley’s story has EVERYTHING needed for virality plus a Lifetime Channel movie, but Inconvenient Demographic Details encouraged the MSM not to dwell on it. I’d bet a mortgage payment you had to $SEARCH_ENGINE her name. Yes, it does pop right up. Would it have, if Big Engine had decided it was “hate-information” worth suppressing? If it hadn’t, how long would you have kept looking? Would you have looked at all if I hadn’t mentioned her?

                      They don’t have to shut anybody up. They just have to keep most people talking about other stuff–bigger, flashier, more viscerally compelling, less-nerdy other stuff–and those few “unwashed chicken-pluckin’ flyover hicks” who know the story already can talk about it all they want. Amongst themselves.

                      Like

                    3. Memory holing… like you’re doing right now, in favor of the poooooor helpless little hicks theory?

                      Including the two decades long running dead tree sources I posted up top being dumped in favor of “ok, so there are sources, but they’re just online”?

                      Like

                    4. Foxfier, have you ever noticed your habit of misstating–of mal-characterizing beyond all recognition–statements you don’t want to agree with?

                      I don’t know what information you think I tried to overwrite, hide, or otherwise suppress. OR, I don’t know what you think “memory holing” is.

                      Re: “unwashed chicken-pluckin’ flyover hicks” (note the scare quotes in the original)–I give you, in exchange for “xanthophyll”, the word “prosopopoeia”.

                      Like

                    5. Foxfier, have you ever noticed your habit of misstating–of mal-characterizing beyond all recognition–statements you don’t want to agree with?

                      I am aware you are unaccustomed to defending your claims, rather than going through a series of attacks.

                      Especially when you make claims which are easily shown to be factually incorrect, often on the same page.

                      It would probably be more effective if the vast majority of us hadn’t spent our lives dealing with it from Progressives.

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                    6. Foxfier, it can’t be him, rather than you, because you do this to all sorts of people. The only constant is you.

                      Like

                    7. Thank you for giving an example of going after the person, rather than the argument; I couldn’t have organized that better if I’d done it on purpose.

                      I do, indeed, make statements of fact, back them up with evidence that others can verify, and then point out when people attempt to shift the argument in order to get a “win,” or when they mis-state the evidence, or when they declare the opposite of the objective evidence which is on hand. I will, indeed, point out that their declared conclusion has issues, especially when it is supposedly in response to a statement I made, but manages to reach bad AI levels of skim and jump off on assertions.

                      That does, indeed, upset many people.

                      Like

                    8. Like that. Just like that.

                      Your behavior is the matter of discussion. To declare it off limits is exactly the problem.

                      Like

                    9. And there you go again, illustrating the point of attempting to shift the argument. Fen’s going to think that you’re a sockpuppet, too.

                      The original matter of discussion was eggs, and how to get decent information instead of unsupported theories that happen to flatter one’s worldview.

                      Then it was the question of if American ranchers could be silenced like doctors.

                      Then it was that things happening in Canada not being evidence of gov’t actions in the united states.

                      Then it was a question of if Ag can be shadow banned, do they have any experience dealing with folks trying to silence them.
                      Then it was multiple cycles of ignoring the answer that yes, we’ve got experience with folks trying to silence us, that’s why I gave multiple examples of resources that aren’t online.

                      Which shifted over to various attacks on my person, and attempts to treat the given evidence as not existing.

                      Which then shifted over to your current cycle of answering arguments not made, and ignoring those which were, trying to find a ‘win’ condition.

                      Since you’re clearly not interested in actually reading the discussion, I can see no reason to continue to wall-respond as you go hunting.

                      Like

                    11. …wow

                      I wrote “Of course there are publications online. Aside from chicken farmers and their peeps, how many people would even think to look for them?”

                      You, with transcendent absurdity and truly impressive missing-of-point, misstated that as “ok, so there are sources, but they’re just online”

                      I “claim” that you misstate assertions you don’t like. I defend that claim, Easily Showing It To Be Factually Correct by providing an example FROM THE SAME PAGE! …which would probably be more effective if I weren’t dealing with someone as impervious to such examples as any Progressive.

                      If you’re doing a trolling bit, it’s a museum-quality bit indeed. Well done! If not, I apologize for pushing your poor face even deeper into your bowl of cognitive dissonance. I’ll stop. You win. I can only hope you’ll be gracious and merciful in your victory.

                      Like

                    12. I wrote “Of course there are publications online. Aside from chicken farmers and their peeps, how many people would even think to look for them?”

                      You literally just have to click on the first two links to recognize they are the websites for long running dead tree publicans.
                      You know, in the article that you supposedly read and are responding to, though you got an answer you didn’t want to hear.

                      Neither Capital Press nor Range Magazine are “chicken farmers.”

                      Both of them exist because Ag producers have generations of practice dealing with what you appear to believe is a new issue.

                      You are quite obviously engaging in IMAX level projection.

                      Like

                    2. Unless, of course, you want to become an adoptive parent. Then you need Official Approval, and have ot jump through multiple expensive hoops and may still be refused if Reasons.

                      Yeah, yeah; it’s “to Protect the Child”. Which somehow doesn’t apply other than retroactively (and frequently not even then, unless misapplied to non-problems by incompetents) for “natural” children (as if adoptees are unnatural).

                      Sorry, hot button; too many orphans and abandoned children not being matched with prospective parents because of idiot bureaucrats and stupid rules. :-x

                      Liked by 1 person

                  3. Heh. Over half the farmers I’ve known would subscribe to the three S method of problem solving. And they’re all usually experienced in disposing of dead bodies.

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                  4. https://x.com/DonaldBestCA/status/1904527453349106174

                    Yes I seriously do, and things like the above are the reason why. Ottawa Police detective Helen Grus, found guilty today of discreditable conduct by police tribunal, for daring to investigate criminal negligence claims against Ottawa officials regarding Covid.

                    Similar decisions against a nurse in BC for daring to put up a billboard supporting J.K. Rowling, completely unrelated subject, exact same process. I only get one link, otherwise I’d add that one. Hell of a story.

                    Farmers in Canada are real quiet. Coincidence?

                    Yes, I could be wrong, and in this case US Big Government hasn’t tried to squash all the egg producers by threat of force and bankruptcy.

                    But no, I do not think I am wrong to be suspicious and propose the idea, given everything else that’s going on these days.

                    Didn’t they find #OrangeManBad guilty of 28 hundred crimes last year? And then shot the guy in the ear, missing his head by a quarter inch? Isn’t Elon openly saying in interviews that he’s taking it easy with DOGE because he’s pretty sure they’ll kill him if he goes hard? I’ve heard him say that. Didn’t they call in a freaking SWAT raid on a guy for having a pet squirrel?

                    Are they going to hold back against an egg farmer if they’ll do that to a multi-zillionaire real estate developer AND to one of the richest men in the world? And a guy with a squirrel?

                    I’m thinking no, but it is Just My Opinion. That and ten bucks gets you a coffee at Starbucks.

                    Like

            2. Somehow, I suspect PETA got in the act. After all, they had the animal shelter that killed most of the strays they got their grubby hands on, so a bit of collateral damage doesn’t bother them.

              Liked by 1 person

          2. Related, Not the Bee was reporting a gathering of bald eagles on a lake in Wisconsin. Are eagles vulnerable to bird flu?

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            1. I don’t know if anybody has tested the survival rate in controlled situations, although I did hear about one of the counties being called out for a dead eagle they were going to test for bird flu… I’ll see if I can find it.

              …

              I couldn’t find the results (not super shocked, since I don’t even remember which county), but I did find this:

              https://www.thegazette.com/community/iowas-bald-eagle-counts-return-to-normal-in-2023-after-bird-flu-outbreaks-in-2022/

              Quote:
              “The 2022 nesting season was unprecedented, at least in the history of this survey (since 2010) in how bad it was and there was a lot of uncertainty about whether the flu mainly impacted the eaglets or if we lost a lot of breeding adults,” said Stephanie Shepherd, a wildlife diversity biologist with the Iowa DNR. “So it was a huge relief for things to return to normal, indicating that it either didn’t kill too many adult birds or if it did, there were at least enough ‘unattached’ adults in the population to fill in.”

              Liked by 1 person

            2. Article I posted a link to (way up above in the thread) indicated that avian flu has been found in or killed an unspecified percentage of raptors, which would include Bald Eagles.

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          1. I have had experience with all these critters and can picture the scene vividly in my minds eye.

            Including the trauma of the small children.

            “I’ll take you to the fish hatchery and leave with the swans!” Was a parental threat that ceased all shenanigans when I was a wee lass.

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          3. OMG, It is – I am giggling so hard I have tears in my eyes.

            Yeah – coin-op dispensers for corn/food/whatever. They used to have one at Descanso Gardens for the tame ducks in the pond there. I always thought it was pretty clever of the management: make the visitors pay for feeding the feathered freeloaders.

            When I get my back garden back into reasonable shape, I will install some laying chickens again. Our rooster died of old age, and three of the four hens were slaughtered by something vicious, before I got the back fence fixed.

            I liked having chickens – the way that they horked down kitchen waste was marvelous to behold.

            Liked by 1 person

  7. When I was a kid I used to like watching The Farm Report (maybe it was The Ag Report) with Al Gustin when I had to be up early in the mornings, just because I thought it was a hoot seeing a relative on TV.

    A lot of people don’t realize the long lead time needed for ag products to get to the store shelves. It can be anywhere from several weeks to several years before it gets sold at Piggly Wiggly from when the farmer/rancher was deciding what to plant/raise.

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  9. A few years ago I was walking around a farm with a friend’s sister who was definitely not a country girl. They had a few chickens that could come out of their coop into a fenced in area outside. She was shocked when she saw some of the chickens pecking one of their number. I mentioned that that’s were the term “pecking order” came from. She was totally unaware of that.

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    1. City girl friend was given a tour of another friend’s homestead. She was telling me about the metal cones that were “probably where she gives her birds their vaccinstions.”

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  10. Interesting. Was not aware it was being driven by the cage free mandates.

    Honestly, to me it seemed entirely in character for a bureaucracy to swoop in full SWAT team, nuke a whole bunch of birds who didn’t have it or were resistant to it because Muh Protocol!

    On eggs in general, I have heard that pasture fed eggs are better than pretty much all the other types of egg. Basically because they’re, in theory, living off of bugs instead of feed. Is that actually true?

    Liked by 1 person

      1. There was a farm video showing a farm cat stalking a mouse.

        Then a rooster shows up and gobbles down the mouse. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

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    2. In a sense. Birds eating a “balanced” chicken feed are technically getting all the nutrients they need, to the point where there are people who are entirely against free ranging.

      Birds on free range have a varied diet, which includes about 90% plants and about 10% protein. Their egg yolks are darker, and they don’t pick on each other nearly as much.Their eggs have more healthy fats, nbetter nutrient balance

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Apologies, that reply was meant for HarryVoyager but WP hates me and decided that not only could I not type any longer but that it should be a standalone comment.

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      2. There’s feeds you can get to boost various egg outputs, too– the brighter yellow to orange color is from beta carotene. You know, like carrots. I don’t know if anybody has done tests to figure out if they taste better or not, most folks don’t care so long as the customer is happy.

        My favorite way to get the brighter yokes is marigolds– fresh is an option, but there’s also feed that has it added in.

        (But I like marigolds anyways.)

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            1. Did you know it is completely legal to give cows dihydrogen monoxide even though it appears in the milk, and it’s illegal to put the dihydrogen monoxide in the milk itself?

              Liked by 1 person

              2. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

                👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

                But dihydrogen monoxide is toxic. Cows could drown!

                Liked by 1 person

    3. Actually, I’ve found our home-raised eggs taste better than most storebought because we feed our chickens more corn than most commercial growers (in addition to the bugs and stuff that wander into their pen, as well as scraps, etc from fridge cleanouts and the like). Our flock is surprisingly well behaved, given that it’s about a dozen hens and two–count ’em, TWO–roosters. (Last roosters were awful, and got removed. This pair is incredibly well behaved, polite, and the girls got their feathers back. I was at the point of seriously considering shelling out money for hen sweaters…)

      Liked by 1 person

  11. Every single person I have ever met who is professionally in Agriculture, from strangers to the majority of my cousins back in southern Indiana who continued in that vocation, have a passion for it. It is too much hard work to continue in if you don’t.

    And what my cousins who continued mostly did was get college degrees in Agriculture (Purdue, naturally), which these days is heavy on Business and Accounting and Technology, plus all the how plants or critters get to marketable value stuff. When the total value of all that internet-connected farm equipment is so blindingly huge, that just makes sense. So not hicks, and also not transnationals. Family farms.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I spent half my childhood on various farms since half the family was and still is farming to one extent or another. That’s the primary reason I made a career of “city” jobs when I grew up. I don’t even like helping the spouse in the garden, but I still do.

      Passion is key and the best farmers usually are the smartest and most dedicated. It’s more than just long days and physical work, managment and technology are key factors along with a little luck and a lot of faith.

      98% of the US population knows nothing about ag, let alone few if any politicians except those that are from rural districts. I have to laugh when idiots like Jasmine Crockett pretends to be ghetto and complain that “We need slaves to pick cotton”.

      No one has picked cotton by hand in the US for over 50 years. Farmers use expensive machines called “strippers” to harvest the crop. Likewise there are machines for seeding, weed control, sandfighting etc… Even watering is automated. Instead of moving pipes around by trailer, pivots and underground drip irrigation have been used for over 40 years.

      If Ms. Crockett had grown up on or near farms instead of going to private school to be a “poverty pimp” for power and dirty money, she would realize the last thing farmers would want for skilled labor are her urban slacker voters conditioned to handouts.

      Bye Felicia!

      Like

      2. Are there ANY crops that are picked by hand anymore?

        Any at all.

        I live in a very rural area and I’ve never seen a single immigrant in any field.

        But the Dakotas and Wyoming might have different crops than the ones they supposedly toil in.

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        1. Strawberries apparently are still handpicked, though there are machines/tools to make it easier on legs/backs and prevent problems related to getting hot while picking. There are machines for picking but the machines do not differentiate between ripe and not ripe, and damage a high percentage of the fruit being picked. Latter is fine for jams and jelly’s, not for the table eating big lush strawberries seen at Costco for the kitchen table. (Might have looked up the information before posting the Blueberry comment.)

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          1. Yep – pickers are still hired to hand-pick strawberries just south of SF in the major Salinas-Watsonville berry growing area. Those fields look weird along the freeway with the white plastic they put down around the long mounds they are planted in. Every strawberry season you can still find roadside stands, both semi-permanent and popup, with the best strawberries you will taste, way better than the stuff in the stores. I assume the good ones are not as transportable.

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            1. “good ones are not as transportable.“

              –

              More ripe when picked. The store ones are red, but not fully ripe or they do not make it through the distribution system before going bad. Strawberries will still go bad after picking, but are not like banana, apricot, peaches, avacado, etc., that continue to ripen and sweeten after harvested.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Sigh. The last time I bought pears–probably the very last time–from Big-Box-MembershipCo, they were still hard and tasteless. “No problem,” said I, “they’ll be good in a few days.”

                Wrong.

                It seems there’s new tech–nano-particulate NaCl, IIRC–incorporated into those li’l stickers they put on fruit, that keeps them “fresh” (i.e. unripe) for “improved” transportability and in-store shelf-“life”. It works. They never ripened, they eventually just rotted.

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                1. We had backyard apple trees (HAD, finally got rid of them) that never ripened (suspect we weren’t properly taking care of them). PIA. Cherry trees we had we got some cherries off of but we had to be fast between the birds and the rain – Ripen and rain = mold quickly, sometimes during the day when we were at work. Again, not worth the trouble!

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        2. After the late 1970s, the Government unleashed a slew of (expensive) requirements about the care and welfare of migrant farm workers. In the Dakotas, they still raise sugar beets, but it quickly became cheaper to use herbicides and mechanically thin beets rather than employ migrants (the law of unexpected consequences). It was sad because they came to the same farms year after year and they and the farmers knew each other.

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        3. I understand that plants like cucumbers and zucchini need human pickers, since the plants continue to produce over an extended period. Tomatoes are generally determinate varieties so they can be harvested by machine.

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          1. Given what zucchini produce in an average small backyard garden bed, I am surprised farmed zucchini don’t just take over the world when planted in numbers.

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        4. White asparagus. Not nearly as common in the US as in Europe, but there are a few places that grow it, and it has to be done by hand.

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        6. I believe grapes are still harvested (mostly) by hand, as are bananas. Probably others. Peaches? Mechanical harvesters tend to be hard on tender crops.

          And if you include coffee beans, I have it on good authority (’60s coffee commercial) that Juan Valdez picks each bean by hand “at the peak of ripeness”.😉

          Liked by 1 person

    2. A few years back some famous person was disparaging farmers, basically saying they didn’t require much education and that farming was a low skilled occupation because anyone could poke a hole in the ground and plant a seed. Anyone remember who that was?

      Liked by 1 person

          1. See, Michael Bloomberg is smart, because he made partner at Salomon Brothers in only 15 years and got rich, so you can assess the value of his views of all things other than becoming a partner at Salomon Brothers at…zero.

            Liked by 1 person

          3. Yep. Farming is as easy as playing the flute:
            “Just blow into this end here and move your fingers up and down like this.“
            –Monty Python

            Liked by 1 person

    3. This is why I greatly respect ALL of our local farmers and ranchers. Most of them are better educated than the city folks who look down their noses at them. A bunch of them manage robots and apps way better than I can – not to mention drones. Add to that they can usually weld, fix heavy machinery, and understand crop cycles and animal management, disease vectors and marketing.

      Basically, they do a little bit of everything, and they work longer hours than I could ever manage in order to keep their farms going.

      Here in my area, a farmer’s likely to have a PhD in soil management or animal husbandry – we have a really good ag university. So it gets my hackles up when the transplants from California or New York talk smack about the country rubes who live out past town.

      Like, have YOU ever put in 30 hours of overtime during calving season for your award-winning Hereford herd during the worst weather in half a century while your husband’s recovering from a broken back after getting hit with a literal ton of hay? No? Then shut up and be grateful for those who can – and will.

      Liked by 1 person

  12. Thank you for this.

    The ignorance of how life works is one of the prices we pay for our increasingly urban culture. Unfortunately ignorance never impedes the regulators who live in some ideal world that exists only in their heads.

    Last summer I visited Cooperstown, to see the Hall of Fame of course, but also visited their Farm Museum. That museum featured a lot of old farm equipment and a 19th century doctor’s office (town doctors were only doctors part time back then, usually as a side gig). Surprisingly to me, a big hit for the city folk was the pig pen with live pigs (not full grown of course). People had never seen live pigs before. Farm animals are not exotic enough for zoos of course. My own farm experience is decades old and very out of date, but at least I had that chance.

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    1. In today’s day and age, Ignorance is now a choice. There are those who are ignorant of one thing and not another. But with the internet, there is no way you can remain ignorant without it being a choice. Now, respecting the source of information is important.
      A lot of Regulators got that position because of who and what they are not what they know. Nepotism has always been a problem, you hire my idiot kid and I’ll hire yours, for certain families, elites shall we say, marry was also a valid happenstance. Look at Europe’s elites and what has happened to them.

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  13. I just realized what was missing from my favorite rifle range: the usual flock of Guinea Fowl.

    For decades, the place has had 10-25 of the things running loose on the road to the club. One of the neighbors raises them, hobby/semi-serious. You always see a flock of the things running about or otherwise doing their thing. Gone.

    Like

    1. Early 60s my dad rented a house outside of Panama City, Florida. Said house was on a couple of acres carved out of the owner’s dad’s farm, which was still just the other side of the fence.

      Farmer Smith (pretty sure that was his name) told us we could have eggs from his chickens, but should prefer the ones in the henhouse, as no telling how old the eggs in the outside nests might be. Sometimes chickens would come over the fence to peck around. Some of those stayed for dinner (with the blessing for Farmer Smith).

      And the property came with a flock of Guineas, that roosted in the trees over the road coming in. Best watch-birds you could imagine. Pretty, in a subdued, polka-dot way.

      I got good at tossing the goats back over the fence.

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      1. I really, really, really want to get some keets, see if we can establish them out back.

        We don’t have much of a snake problem here in Iowa, but they do eat ticks, and Guineas just sound like home to me, and the feathers are pretty, too.

        Liked by 1 person

  14. I got a huge kick out of the Yellowstone ending and people posting “But Montana does not have inheritance tax!” Reeeeeee

    No. But the Federal Government does.

    Inheritance tax, among other reasons, is the reasons why farms and ranches have to be incorporated. Even those only ran by family, no matter how small. Even homesteads, if they are being smart about it.

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    1. I remember how many Nebraska farms were bought by Japanese and other buyers in the late 1970s-early 1980s because the death taxes were so high. Between state and federal, and the prices for commodities at the time, very, very few families could pay the lump-sum amount needed.

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      1. Oregon is almost as bad.

        Be interesting to see what cousin does when her parents pass on. They have 40 acres west of Baker Oregon. All, and I mean All, the neighboring properties, formally large ranches and farms, are 10 acre housing “ranchettes”. Aunt and Uncle haven’t ran stock (cows and horses) now for decades (they are 87 and 90). Never ran it for profit family business, just self, family, and friends, for garden, milk products (butter/milk), and meat (calves and pigs).

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        1. I kind of wonder if it would just work to put an heir on the title, rather than making a corporation.

          In my family, one side incorporated their ancestral property, and we have great fun pretending to have board meetings every year. I still need to designate my niece and nephew as the heirs for my shares, since the likelihood that I will have any heirs of my body becomes ever more vanishingly unlikely every year.

          The other side incorporated the family ranch for a while, and then decided it wasn’t worth it. The eldest son was the only on interested in ranching it, so mom and her other siblings gave up their shares… or whatever… to him, and we all just gather for reunions in the summer.

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  15. “The Science” May Have Miscalculated The Number Of People On Earth…By Billions
    https://shorturl.at/6U64b
    ZeroHedge
    They argue that rural population has been drastically undercounted, and the assumption is that means the population as a whole has as well, but …

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Here in the U.S. the rural population makes up maybe 6%-8% of the total. So, even if the numbers are wrong because half of the rural population was not counted, correcting that would raise the total by…6%-8%. I seriously doubt the census is missing half of the rural population. Most rural folks don’t live in dirt-floor log cabins with outhouses, 20 miles from the nearest paved road.

      The 9 biggest U.S. cities contain over half of the population.

      Worldwide, I don’t know what the numbers are. I do know there are a whole lot of huge ‘third world’ cities, most surrounded by even more gigantic shantytowns. I don’t think ‘undercounting the rural population’ would have any great effect, even if it’s happening.

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      1. No, no it doesn’t. Yes, I saw that survey too. it was bullshit. It counted people in “cities” of 5k as urban.
        At a guess? Rural is about half if not more of the population. The cities are much smaller than they appear though.

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        1. OK maybe.

          I can argue that both ways and it’s complicated.

          In fact I’m a perfect example of someone who could be counted rural or urban. I literally live in a house that is basically surrounded by fields in that if you go a maximum of a quarter mile or so in any direction you will find a field. But in one particular direction before you get to the field there’s a factory that makes taiyaki sweets and if you continue heading in that direction past the fields you hit an industrial park that makes LED lights and all sorts of other things before you’ve traveled a mile as the drone flies. Go a mile and a half in almost the same direction and you hit an egg farm FWIW (on the other side of the river from the industrial area, past more rice fields and a few greenhouses)

          The “city” I live in is defined in wikipedia as follows:

          As of 31 July 2023, the city had an estimated population of 172,841 in 69,435 households and a population density of 280 persons per km 2. The total area of the city is 624.36 square kilometers

          The urban core(s) of the city are pretty densely populated, but the “city” area includes significant forested mountains that have maybe a couple of houses every sq km. Where I live the density is higher than that and we’re only a couple of miles from even denser population (heck we’re 3 miles from the middle of the main core) so where do you draw the line? How do you define rural? urban?

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            1. Many small cities/towns have a lot of incorporated-but-uninhabited land. The one I live in has a core less than 2 miles wide (mostly shopping), but surrounding housing developments are at least 10 times the area, and from the edge of the developments to the city limits is at least 5 miles in 3 directions (the fourth is tribal land). So am I urban, suburban, or something else?

              FWIW, I’d prefer rural, with the nearest neighbor outside maximum 30-06 range, but I was outvoted.😉

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              1. Or our property. We are within Eugene’s urban growth boundary, which is recent (for all that all new builds fill ins, or new neighborhoods, have to join the city, for a few decades) but unincorporated. Definitely not rural. Definitely urban. But absolutely NOT city.

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              2. Been driving around Des Moines a good chunk lately, so eyeballing to try to figure out a pattern…

                Maybe retrofit the definition so it’s something like what the majority of the housing is?

                If most of the housing is multi-family, it’s urban. If most of the housing is single family, lots less than half an acre, it’s suburban. Higher land-to-house ratio, it’s rural.

                This gets odd results like towns that have like two blocks that are urban, and neighborhoods of Des Moines that are rural, oh and fields that have an apartment complex on them two miles outside of town that are technically urban, but….

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                1. That seems to be becoming the standard pattern for small-to-medium-size towns (ours is around 80k). We started getting our first apartment complexes a few years ago, and they’re all in the “traditionally suburban” belt (the existing residences are not thrilled by this, at least partly because we have one major corridor (north-south, zero east-west), and everything has to use it. Rush hour is looking more like “city” every year.

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                  1. ” first apartment complexes a few years ago, and they’re all in the “traditionally suburban” belt (the existing residences are not thrilled by this …)”
                    …………..

                    Tell me about this. Our neighborhood, and other traditional single resident neighborhoods, are now seeing multiplex buildings go up as part of “infilling”. Cannot go more than two levels, or more than six units per infill lot, but that is way more than those who bought in these long term suburban areas believed would ever be there. Traditionally these neighborhoods were single residence, with corner lots and certain streets on blocks (busy street for a reason) could be duplexes. Haven’t had any single residences homes bulldozed, yet, but that is coming. We have an infilling going in on a lot now where there will be 6-plex two bedroom, each. Two buildings are duplexes, a third is a 4-plex, no garages. This lot was split from an acre lot. Worse? The lot getting the 6-plex will be city now. The change in neighborhood designations had to do with either the State or the Feds forcing multiplexes on single residence neighborhoods because of “equity” to neighborhood resources (there are none). Supposedly will be low rent. (Sure they will be.)

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                    2. Thank you President Trump! Now if only the front two duplexes are the only ones to be completed! That remaining 4 haven’t been funded yet, and now no federal funds. Better 4 than the 8. Street in question is mostly duplexes, anyway. But 8 is a bit excessive. Last major lot slated for infilling. Remaining infilled lots got (very nice) single family homes, including the lot right next door to this mess (and they couldn’t have been happy about what happened next to them).

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      2. I would like to know which 9 largest cities these would be. Because I added up the 2020 census data for the 9 largest US cities (NYC, LA, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, and Dallas), and they are nowhere nearly 150 million people. It’s actually around 25 million, all added together. Last I checked, 25 million is nowhere nearly half the US population.

        i could tear further into your definitions but, with a major supporting statement of your thesis so confidently and blatantly WRONG, I don’t feel the need.

        (However, if I were to continue the arguement, it would be for the notion that the global population is rather overestimated, not under…)

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          1. And by “close cities” think like “several states near New York City become the greater metro area.”

            Same trick with Seattle’s blob… which is in no way shape or form realistic, they still count folks who were stationed at McChord in the 70s.

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    2. Shocked, shocked, shocked…. And are they stupid or crazy? No. Urban populations have been DRASTICALLY OVERCOUNTED.
      As has every “developing country.”
      MORONS. They’re morons, I swear. And not the good kind.

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        2. The kind who’s good-natured, who enjoys doing–and being good at–a necessary job that’s challenging enough to keep his attention without exceeding his ability. There are lots of jobs like that; indispensable jobs that don’t yet (and might never) lend themselves to automation.

          Not that “any moron could be a $Job_Title”, but there are $Job_Titular tasks–in janitorial, hospitality, healthcare settings–that are perfect for well-trained, well-supervised, friendly morons, but would be stultifying for anyone else.

          And the pretty ones can be TV news-readers.

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          1. I remember reading, quite a while ago, that long-haul trucking companies preferred lower-intelligence drivers with excellent driving skills, the hypothesis being that the more intelligent ones would tend to get bored too easily and “zone out”, causing problems.

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  16. I just had an evil thought;
    If Trump can’t fire them, I.E. Federal workers, Transfer them all to Alaska. “Sorry Alaska, but most won’t go so you’ll be cool” Then Transfer the Activist Judges to another territory, Like Guam, or Diego Garcia or suitably unlikable place, far away from their beloved social scenes. Or maybe it’s a little more justice than evil.

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  17. Stress is not good for chickens. Puts hens ‘off their lay’ — egg production decreases. To zero, if the stress is bad enough. Thus, the chicken farmer has a strong incentive to keep the chickens calm and contented. If ‘Free Range!’ chickens really were ‘happier’, that would show in egg production and farmers would convert their operations en masse.

    But they’re not. 5,000 chickens in a giant barnyard mob are STRESSED. They kill each other. Diseases and parasites spread from wild birds to the chickens, and then from chicken to chicken, with terrifying speed, wiping out whole flocks.

    Those facts should be immediately obvious to anybody with more brains than a chicken. Then again, these are Liberal Activists; best not to make any unfounded assumptions. :-P

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  19. Also not on topic, but I just saw an interview with Schumer (spit!) announcing that the new Democrat plan to ‘reduce Trump’s popularity’ is a massive voter intimidation campaign. Didn’t they get in trouble for that around 150 years ago? And then again about 60 years ago?

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    1. It’s Schumer. When you’re being ostracized from a group which is itself being ostracized, and you have zero chance of rejoining the mainstream, you tend to panic and do weird sh!t.

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