News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Why I Would Raise Chickens by Houshalter on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @04:21PM (#11865337)
Why would you think that? Larger animals are usually much more energy efficient for various reasons - less surface area to radiate heat, and economies of scale with larger organs.
Re:Why I Would Raise Chickens by ane on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @04:27PM (#11865378)
No, beef and lamb are the most energy consuming sources of meat. (A dairy producing cow is different.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio

    For cattle, a FCR range from less than 5 to more than 20 kg feed dry matter per kg gain may be encountered.[
Whereas for chickens:

    Poultry has a feed conversion ratio of 2 to 1.
Re:Why I Would Raise Chickens by Houshalter on Thursday June 09, 2016 @03:13PM (#11871579)
I believe you, but I'm very surprised. That has larger animals almost universally less efficient than smaller animals, which is the exact opposite of the expected efficiency due to Kleiber's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber%27s_law

>a cat, having a mass 100 times that of a mouse, will have a metabolism roughly 32 times greater than that of a mouse.

And yet this is saying that a mice sized animal should be expected to have the same, or perhaps even better Feed conversion ratio than a cat sized animal.

Again, I believe you, but it makes no sense.

Re:Why I Would Raise Chickens by mapt on Friday June 10, 2016 @04:08AM (#11874952)
The larger livestock will usually have a much longer lifespan. It has to keep its flesh heated above ambient for that entire lifespan. If Mouse A lives 100x longer and puts on the same weight and achieves the same stature as Mouse B, it's spent ~100x as much energy getting to the same physiological place as Mouse B.
Re:Why I Would Raise Chickens by baddox on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @07:09PM (#11866428)
Again, that's simple mass efficiency. We can also talk about other efficiencies, like cost of feed versus cost of meat.
Re:Why I Would Raise Chickens by g8oz on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @05:32PM (#11865850)
They are not more efficient in terms of how many acres are required to produce a given amount of calories.
Re:Why I Would Raise Chickens by shalmanese on Friday June 10, 2016 @12:24AM (#11874292)
Cows are slaughtered at 80 weeks while chickens are slaughtered at 6 - 8 weeks. That extra order of magnitude of basal metabolic rate is where the energy gets consumed.
Re:Why I Would Raise Chickens by thevardanian on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @04:27PM (#11865384)
Not really. There's a basic thermodynamic inefficiency as organisms get larger, and consume farther away from the energy source, in this that being the sun.
Re:Why I Would Raise Chickens by Houshalter on Wednesday June 08, 2016 @04:34PM (#11865422)
How are cattle consuming farther away from the energy source than chickens?