> Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent. You will grow to love all the silly things they do. You can pet them, they are super soft, and can become quite tame. They can purr.
Chickens are ruthless and will not hesitate for a moment to kill and then cannibalize their coop mates. The best way to avoid it is to have a single breed as they tend to start by attacking anything different, literally spots or discolorations, on other birds.
Yes, chickens will eat other chickens.
> I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it because I really only eat my own eggs, but perhaps I just got used to them.
All eggs taste the same. Which is great because eggs taste great.
> Your wife may one day want a chicken to live inside the house. You may one day agree to this, and then miss it when the chicken is living outside the house again...
Chickens are filthy animals and the thought of having one indoors is disgusting.
You write in absolutes when talking about your own opinion as if it's generally accepted to be a fact, which makes even interesting looking bits look suspicious when you encounter something clearly biased.
Cannibalistic behavior in chickens is not an opinion: https://extension.psu.edu/poultry-cannibalism-prevention-and...
It’s one of the reasons factory farms clip the beaks.
And regarding egg taste, have fun reading this: https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs
I generally agree with what you are saying, however I'm quite surprised at the pushback about homegrown eggs tasting better than mass-produced.
Send me as many papers as you want, but respectfully, I have empirically tasted the difference. I have no interest on imposing my opinion on anyone, but to me it's pretty obvious and easy to understand and accept that a better fed, better cared for chicken will produce better eggs.
A bit like with Wagyu steak, no?
> I generally agree with what you are saying, however I'm quite surprised at the pushback about homegrown eggs tasting better than mass-produced.
There have been many studies on this and in true blind tests people do not prefer one over the other. The Kenji tests are interesting as he even dyes the eggs green to prevent the color from giving it away.
> Send me as many papers as you want, but respectfully, I have empirically tasted the difference.
You think it tastes better because you know the provenance of the egg. It's like a placebo effect. Try your own blind study and see if you can actually tell the difference.
> I have no interest on imposing my opinion on anyone, but to me it's pretty obvious and easy to understand and accept that a better fed, better cared for chicken will produce better eggs.
There's plenty of non-taste reasons that they're better. You might care about the welfare of the animal. And the vitamins or balance of fatty acids might be different. But they all taste the same.
> A bit like with Wagyu steak, no?
A Wagyu would be significantly more marbled than your off the shelf USDA Choice steak. So of course it would taste different. The balance of protein v.s. fats and distribution throughout the meat would be completely different.
I'm not the person you are replying to, but I have empirically not tasted the difference. The only difference between store bought eggs and farm fresh ones is that the yolk is vividly yellow on the ones from the farm. I am willing to bet that the people who taste a difference are imagining it because of the superior aesthetics, and that they wouldn't taste anything different in a double blind taste test. Which is fine, nothing wrong with the placebo effect. But I don't think there's any substance to the claim that the eggs actually taste better.