Fried egg. (2023, January 31). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_egg
#1 Good — All about eggs, Paul Newman & Cool Hand Luke
#2 Very Good — Write, Advice, Refine — Improving my writing might be a positive feedback loop (some subscribers are SMILING)
Chickens & Eggs
A while back I wrote a post titled “Gallus Gallus Domesticus”. That happens to be the scientific name for Chickens. If you click on the link, the picture that is featured in the post will leave little doubt about what the story is about. Chickens were the half of the story I decided to write about but for most of us, the chickens we raise to lay eggs are the other part of the story. All in all, chickens are an interesting story and the egg part of the tale is front and center for many of us because of the recent price increases and shortages.
My chicken story came at a time as I examined how to continue this writing adventure. I reached out to my creative writing group and asked for some advice and feedback. As usual, they did not disappoint and I always appreciate their point of view. For those of you that write on Substack, you are aware of the limited statistics Substack provides. I try to avoid looking at the statistics as I am trying hard to limit the OVERALL time I give this hobby to include ideas (10%), research (15%), writing (50%), publishing (5%), checking statistics and trends for readership (10%), and responding to questions and comments (10%). Even amongst my fellow members, it is easy to see who looks at my writing and at what frequency. I genuinely encourage people to find what they like to read. I know in my case, I limit myself to ten subscriptions, and the rest I just save bookmarks for when time avails. All I know is whether people open the post and whether they ever liked anything I wrote or ever bothered to share a comment. Everything else is behind the curtain. Sometimes I will take a peek at who is my most ENGAGED readers (and least). This gives me some insight into subscribers and where my efforts are best spent. One piece of advice shared by one of my writing club members was shorter and more obvious titles. Today’s title is just Eggs:) One of the wisest bits of advice I’ve gotten in my life is to be an active listener. The most important part of listening however is “take what you like and leave the rest”. I liked the simpler title advice, I left the rest! A recent post was about recency bias. Accepting the last thing you heard without some critical thinking is a bad road. Here’s a video IF YOU WISH to learn more about what it takes to sustain our levels of chicken and egg consumption.
The Road to Today’s Topic
When I started writing it was mostly to discover whether I could. Nowadays I am satisfied to write for those that enjoy my writing and are engaged. While I suppose I could adjust further (I try lots of different things), it makes the most sense to write for those that enjoy the reading rather than adapting to those that do not!!! Change is hard for everyone.
If this were my only hobby and interest, I think my progress would have been greater so far! Some of the comments I got on the chicken story focused on the old days of how chickens were raised as broilers and layers. The story I drafted had elements of the 1/2/3 process I describe next. I often choose my topics based upon (1) work from my past (things I have experience with) (2) research on topics that interest me and (3) surprising things that are DIFFERENT in this modern world while many of us remain stuck with OLD MISCONCEPTIONS. Number three is my favorite. Nostalgia and righteousness are parts of all of us. I get why people enjoy cueing up and playing old vinyl records. There is a peacefulness to the process. However, when someone “jumps the shark” and assures me it is a cleaner sound than even a compact disc, I shake my head internally and try to let it go.
When I wrote the chicken story, I considered some context of what the reality of chicken is today, not how it was done forty years ago. Only 1% of beef is grass-fed while the rest are gorged on corn in a feedlot). The poultry business has little in common with the way things were done only forty years ago! Part of my work career was focused on the business of poultry processing and farm management. This had little to do with Old McDonald's and more to do with Tyson Chicken Nugget factories :)
Today’s Chicken and Egg is Nothing Like the Old Days
Back in the “good old days”, chickens were born, and that much has not changed. The males were raised for meat and the females were raised as layers. Nowadays, those broilers we love as rotisserie chickens are males and females and a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT species. As for the layers, for every chick born, half are raised as egg layers and the others are euthanized. That comes to about seven billion euthanized male chicks per year. You see, while people call them chickens they are different species, purpose-built for meat or egg-laying! This is our modern world and has little to do with the chickens we remember, ie. the nostalgia of our youth. I would imagine the difference would be stark for people like my Dad who grew up in the transition to chicken as protein in America.
When I adopted plant-based eating the challenging gap is where the protein comes from. In the beginning, I counted on eggs to supplement my protein needs. As time progressed, I eliminated dairy in most forms. I started by changing to almond milk. I sharply cut back on butter and now have backed off on the cheese. Eggs remained a staple for a while but now I am methodically cutting back. I hope none of this is preachy, it just happens to be the path I have chosen. I don’t try to convert anyone, just telling my story. The recent egg shortages have been interesting. While I still buy them occasionally, the recent pricing has been amazing to observe.
The business of eggs is difficult with low margins. Whenever a new wild bird virus emerges, the word cull reenters our vocabulary. You see wild birds carry a new virus and are almost always asymptomatic. The egg-laying hens get exposed to the virus. Since they live in such tight quarters “for efficiency” the farmers often need to cull ALL OF THE BIRDS and start all over again. In the intervening period, if it happens enough, we end up with egg shortages.
Starting fresh means we hatch new chicks and start again. Half of the chicks (the males) are euthanized since we haven’t yet figured out how to make the males lay eggs. So it begins. What has made the last year of egg prices so challenging is the amazing power of nature “to find a way”. The latest bird virus emergence has shown resistance to the cold. In the past, a bird virus visited some layers, they were culled and we started over. As winter approached, the virus died off. This time the virus (creatively named Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI)) has emerged as a pretty robust version of the flu.
Life on this planet is an amazing dance. The most ingenious of its inhabitants, humankind brings a different approach than other creatures. We attempt to bend nature to our needs. It only seems natural that nature pushes back. Until the most recent small declines in HPAI amongst layer flocks, the next step foreseen for keeping the eggs coming was the vaccination of the hens! I’m glad there is no Facebook and Instagram for hens. An anti-vax movement would have made omelets hard to keep in our diets. At least frying the egg would presumably consume the microchip in the vaccine we all know is there to monitor us:)
So why did I mention Cool Hand Luke? I was recently at Costco and my favorite warehouse was offering their eggs in a new convenient size. Five dozen at a time for $13.39. It reminded me of the movie Cool Hand Luke as Paul Newman eats fifty hardboiled eggs as part of a betting scene in a prison. “No one can eat 50 eggs!”
What I KNOW from my time at Ecolab is the idyllic local raising of chickens and eggs from previous generations is long gone. In the same way that a New Zealand-raised lamb might yield 40-60 pounds (pasture raised), an Americanized “super-sized” lamb fed at the all-you-can-eat corn trough might end up twice its size. It would be foolish to believe there is no difference in terms of animal welfare, what you are eating, and the relative health it might impart. One of my favored factoids about the raising of cattle (and likely lamb now) is how challenging this diet is for them. While perhaps this will seem FAR-FETCHED, the dairy industry consumes more Pepto Bismol than humans. By coating their stomachs, the animals can more quickly return to the corn trough. I am sure Proctor and Gamble have happily embraced this new market opportunity to move more SKUs of Pepto!
For the record, the best part of that trip to Costco was the absurd and overfilled cart of a suburban mom and dad that included two boxes of eggs (120 in all). It is hard to imagine how a family could need so many eggs unless there is some sort of TikTok challenge I am unaware of. I can only conclude they grabbed a couple of four-pound packs of butter. Honestly, they had at least six gallons of milk on the lower rack of the cart. My mind revels at what people do with food in such volumes! It is NO WONDER Americans waste about 40% of the food raised.
In deference to one more tangent. Tonight as we ride out a mid-February snowstorm we will make some air popper popcorn. What does a guy who is easing himself away from dairy do in this case? In another old post, we talked about the most satisfying of all taste sensations, umami. The dog and I don’t mind nutritional yeast. It’s a bit buttery and cheesy and my fingers don’t get so messy. Before you decide to counsel my tastes, remember variety is the spice of life.
Here’s the old umami post for those that are interested. If you just want another way to get that umami feeling, you might be surprised by nutritional yeast.
I am sure, only five years ago, I didn’t know what the hell this was nor how I might use it. I’m sure some of you are thinking that looks like an easy way to ruin perfectly good popcorn.
For the record, based on my posting order, the chicken (Gallus Gallus Domesticus) came before the egg :)
The Poll & Music
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In the comments today, I hope to grasp who is eating all the eggs and are any of them reading this Newsletter! If anyone is buying five dozen packs, I would love to hear about it!!! There were no good songs about eggs so my mind traveled to “The Byrds”. This is widely considered the first psychedelic song.
What’s Next
Next Monday will be here before you know it. I return with “My Toes are Warm”. The link is not live till next Monday so no opening presents early. Have you ever heard the expression ‘hold your feet to the fire’? We start with the absurdity of the expression and explore prior posts that have continued to blossom as well as those posts that return unexpectedly. A bit of fun, hope, and ‘damn humans’.
I love eggs and I wish I hadn't read this post! I did not know that male chickens are euthanized and that we've created different species for eggs and meat. One day, I hope to have space to raise chickens of my own. But for now, I suppose I'll just try to consume less eggs. Thanks, as always for your insights!
Mr. Dolan, I was super eggcited when I read the subject of this post and then eggstremely distressed when it turned out to be far more about chickens than about eggs.
You redeemed yourself, however, with this eggdition's egghilerating poll.
I chose option one, of course. I eat four eggs a day, almost every day. It probably averages out to three a day, which is 1,100 a year—91 dozen eggs!
Wow I have never calculated this, but that's a lot of eggs, isn't it. Feeling proud, I am.
The reason of course is that eggs are DELICIOUS and also cheap protein although as you pointed out and everyone knows, not so much these days thanks to eggflation. I probably spend $1000 a year on eggs.
My friend Aharon who you may recognize from my newsletter is always sending my the latest USDA Shell Egg Index Price reports. Are you familiar? It is the far most intriguing reading on the planet.
I love eggs and I wish I hadn't read this post! I did not know that male chickens are euthanized and that we've created different species for eggs and meat. One day, I hope to have space to raise chickens of my own. But for now, I suppose I'll just try to consume less eggs. Thanks, as always for your insights!
Mr. Dolan, I was super eggcited when I read the subject of this post and then eggstremely distressed when it turned out to be far more about chickens than about eggs.
You redeemed yourself, however, with this eggdition's egghilerating poll.
I chose option one, of course. I eat four eggs a day, almost every day. It probably averages out to three a day, which is 1,100 a year—91 dozen eggs!
Wow I have never calculated this, but that's a lot of eggs, isn't it. Feeling proud, I am.
The reason of course is that eggs are DELICIOUS and also cheap protein although as you pointed out and everyone knows, not so much these days thanks to eggflation. I probably spend $1000 a year on eggs.
My friend Aharon who you may recognize from my newsletter is always sending my the latest USDA Shell Egg Index Price reports. Are you familiar? It is the far most intriguing reading on the planet.