I did some time on the end of an idiot stick clearing manure out of a chicken coop that held 5,000 chickens. This was before the "neat" days like today when they're in mesh floor cages with a conveyor or sluice to clean up after them. Then there was cow pie clean-up in the pasture and horse manure in the barn along with pig manure in the stys. Not fun by any stretch, but it does put your life into perspective pretty quickly. It also shows you just what it takes to put that food on the table.
Michigan voters decided that all birds need to be cage free by 2025. We’ve been actively taking barns down and hauling them to the landfill to build cage free. (These are 10-15 year old massive 600’ barns that still have at least 20 years of life left.
We market a bunch of our eggs to the east coast. Massachusetts voters decided Jan 1 of this year that all eggs sold there had to be cage free.... As of January 1, for some reason everyone there is shocked and pissed because their eggs jumped in price..... Well yea dumb ass’s, y’all voted for that......
Just to put into perspective on the cost of cage free eggs. A 180,000 bird conventional barn costs 3 mil to build. A barn that same size (physical size) will only house 100,000 birds, but it costs just shy of 5 mil.