Here is another great example of Organic/Go Green activists gone wrong. The Eglu made by Omlet USA. My friend Carl showed me this bizarre housing for chickens a couple weeks ago. I thought I'd share my take on it.

First of all, I'm just going to throw this out there, the Eglu is a grand total of $665.00, shipped with love, straight from Omlet USA. Don't get me wrong, click around demo on their website about it, it's a real slick chicken house. It's easy to clean and retrieve eggs... But I absolutely cannot get over the steep price. Convieniently, you can also buy chickens, which if you do, they suggest you buy their 50lb bag of Organic feed. My jaw dropped when I saw the additional price tag on these. I added three chickens, since that should tide a small family over for the week and have a few left over for neighbors. I come to find that they are charging $10.00 per chicken!!!!! Holy Mackerel!!! If you must know, the 50lb bag of feed was a whopping $50, not to mention the additional 50lb shipping charge. Grand total for chicken operation: a staggering $811.00.

If you don't find that steep for roughly 18-21 eggs a week, then I'd like for you to sit through a short math lesson. The night before, I bought 18 eggs for 2.08. Rounded up, that is $0.12 an egg. Definitely more than I'd like to spend on store eggs, but that's besides the point. Lets say I totally love eggs (and I do) and end up buying 18 eggs a week for a year, with no egg price fluctuation, for 52 weeks, I am going to spend $108.16 on eggs in a year.

$108.16 is my number. Now lets do the math on Eglu. Up front, you are spending 811.00 on the whole kit and caboodle, chickens and all. It'll take roughly 4-5 months for a chicken to start laying eggs (if they were purchased as chicks.) and will have about a year of prime egg laying in them before they get the axe. So while waiting for them to become of age, you will probably end up buying $40 worth of eggs from the store. Also, you will need another bag or two of feed for the year (we'll say you wised up and started buying 50lb bags from a farm store for $12 each). 811.00 (eglu) + $40.00 (eggs) + $24.00 (chicken feed) equals a whopping $875 for a Chicken operation. This equals roughly $.93 an egg or $11.16 a dozen. This is a modest guesstimate.

Don't get me wrong, I do understand the fun, enjoyment and satisfaction of running your own egg operation. I have raised chickens before and I am going to give it a shot again this spring. However, there are much more cost effective ways of doing so, and it requires a little handy-work and time compared to the Eglu. I am betting I will be able to house 3-4 chickens for about $50. From there, I will be paying $1.25 for the same chickens eglu offers and I will be buying feed for $12.00 a bag.

I believe this is what happens to the customers of Omlet USA. They are the same people that fall for the organic trap as well as the Go Green trap. It's something you buy to prevent eating the fertilized sludge in the grocery store and something you buy to reduce the use of containers and reduce consumption of oh so precious petroleum. The eglu is a status symbol to let people know that you are more conscientious about mother earth than anyone else. It's flashy, sterile, green, organic, attractive and eye catching so that people will notice it. If raising chickens was truly the primary objective, these people would allow themselves to realise they can run the same egg operation for as little as $100 total. Unfortunately, the cheaper route will not be noticed nearly as much and it wouldn't be cute enough to house their farm animals.

That's my beef... or egg.

   Since my family moved back to Willmar eight years ago, I've been exposed to the wonderful life of maintaining a hobby farm. Sure, at the time it was quite bittersweet, I was in my teen years, so of course I was at times a little resentful having to do a decent amount of the chores with the sole payback of being able to eat a healthy proportion of eggs and poultry. Unlike most kids, however, I oftenly enjoyed the time I had with the animals as well as watching them grow to become tasty tasty meat. Alas, I am now twenty-two, my parents no longer live in the boonies and I seemed to have rooted myself, along with my wife, in middle of town. No more farm fresh eggs or poultry for this guy.

 

   A year ago, just to make sure, I double-checked our city's laws on keeping livestock, poultry and other farm animals within the city. I was a little suprised to see that our town isn't necessarily against raising chickens in town, per-say, for as long as they find favor in you. Meaning you must apply for a permit (cha-ching) and pass their inspection (cha-ching)[1]. I haven't applied for this yet. 100% of me wants to, though I feel my fate is totally at the hands of whoever issues the permit and whoever is going to be inspecting my property. I'm quite positive, based on the fact that I haven't seen anyone else raise poultry in town, that I will be denied. I could be wrong, however.

 

   So what respawns my interest in raising chicken in town today? This has been an on going idea of mine since a pro-Urban Chicken group started in Duluth back in November. They share similar views on the subject with  me: Chickens are cleaner than most other pets, they aren't loud, they are natural, they are far less suseptable to salmonella and other diseases carried by birds and they prove to aid a self-sufficient lifestyle (as well as fits some interpretations of "Going Green"). Cities such as Seattle and New York allow Urban Chickens, so why can't a city the size of Willmar do so as well?

 

[1] Municode Willmar, Mn Sec. 4-1. Keeping of livestock, fowl or swine.