I do not understand the mathematics behind the dilemma. I’m assuming only the firts chicks cost money, because down the line they will breed.
But feeding them, housing them - vitamins and doctoring costs a lot of money.
So anyone with couple or more chickens - how much does it cost to have them on the table? And realistically how many eggs do you get?
I have two chickens and I get approximately two eggs a day. Their food is like, I dunno, $20 a month? Probably not saving money on eggs but they’re my pets so that’s why I have them. (not eating them, obviously. Or any chickens for that matter.)
Ask them for a bulk purchase of 100 baby chicks and they’ll reduce the price to maybe $4. Bulk at 10,000 will probably get you to $3. Order several million per year and you’ll get $1 or even lower. Maybe even few cents per chick.
So your rotisserie at $5 still includes a modest to large profit, even including cooking, materials, shipping and handling.
I’ve kept chickens for eggs and once for meat. Meat wasn’t worth it, just too much trouble and the butchering cost don’t make it very economical. They were massive though and tasty.
It’s worth it for eggs. Get less chickens than what you think you need. Just two gives you a dozen eggs a week. Building a coop can be done really easily with some scrap wood. Upkeep was mostly opening the coop door in the morning, closing it at dusk and refilling water and food every three days. They herd and manage themselves for the most part.
The cost of owning chickens is a really flexible number. My wife wanted to try and loved it so we have put more money in. Our first setup was a small coop for 3 birds for around $200, the birds were cheap enough not to matter in the equation, another $100 or so in food and water things, feed, grit, calcium, etc…
She liked it so we upgraded to a $1000 coop and more birds. Not calculating the monthly payments on the coop we probably spend $20-30 a month on maintenance (feed, grit, shell, straw)
One reason those cooked rotisserie chickens are so cheap is because they are used to get people in the store to buy other things. So the store takes a hit on them but they end up making money from other stuff that may not have sold.
Also, scaling up a chicken farm, especially one focused on either eggs or meat, reduces the cost per animal by a lot. If you’re buying a single chick to raise, it’s gonna be 3 to 50 dollars depending on breed. If you’re buying 30,000 they are gonna be a hell of a lot cheaper.
bulk raising chickens in the millions is a totally different cost per animal ( is bulk slaughter and roasting them), than what you pay at a supply store
Yep, that’s why I am asking of how much they cost for a regular backyard chicken coop.
Had some friends that tried doing that about three years ago. They finally gave up (and moved) recently.
Gave away their 15-20 chickens, coop, fence, etc. IMHO, they are much happier now.
The cost of feed, mite treatment, lice treatment, bedding, vaccinations, etc were much higher than anything they claimed to “save”. And that’s not counting all the time and labor they put into it.
Found this with a simple web search: https://coopeduplife.com/backyard-chicken-egg-production-cost-statistics/.
You forgot the biggest impediment. Foxes and or coyotes. Doesn’t matter if you are in the middle of suburbia they’ll find you.
The husband of a couple we know have a few chickens in a coop in their back yard. Definitely pets, but they do get eggs.
The major difference between them and a “normal” person is the wife is a veterinarian, so he pretty much has the healthcare of his birds covered.
Glad it worked out for them! I think the main reason “normal” people have trouble is that they don’t understand all the issues involved.
For example, my friends didn’t realize they had to de-lice and do other things for them. Also didn’t know to buy “laying feed” for them to be able to lay eggs.
If people want to do it as a hobby/pets/know where their food comes from/etc that’s great. Just realize what you are buying into.
Yeah, I couldn’t do it myself. The closest we got was our guinea pigs, but they are friends not food.
Yes. Friends. Until a hard winter sets in. Then can always reevaluate.
It’s called a loss leader.
Yah thats part of the real answer here. The $6 rotisserie chicken at Costco is sold at a loss to bring in customers and the store makes profits off their other items.
The Costco rotisserie chicken is phenomenal, though. Tastes better than other chickens, too. I make it into chicken salads frequently, after the bf claims the wings
It’s simply not economical to raise chickens. It’s like brewing beer: very labor-intensive, expensive, and heart breaking when they die, which they are very good at. It’s not a hobby to save money, despite what people tell you. The eggs are great though.
They’re also extremely sweet creatures when hand raised. They’ll come running and want to be picked up and everything. Eating them or having them die is awful.
Very true. A fox got ours and it was really traumatic. They all had names and were so sweet.
It sounds like a hobby with big benefits. You get meat and eggs hhat you know where they come from.
Probably a way lot healthier than anything from even organic food.I mean, killing, plucking, and gutting a chicken is a huge pita. Depending on where you live, a few chickens for eggs can be done pretty cheaply. Not as easy or cheap as buying eggs.
I grew up in a village, and it was definitely economical. But village math is not city math.
You feed them grain and seeds that your neighbours grew literally right next door, in exchange for eggs laid right at your home. You let the chickens scratch around for food, and they mostly care for themselves. You bring in a rooster from the next town over occasionally to incubate the next generation. Once the hen stops laying eggs, you butcher it, and invite your neighbours for dinner.
If you try trucking in formulated commercial chicken feed and straw and such, it gets expensive fast. But in a village, it all just kind of works, and it’s basically free food. I imagine it’s a similar situation on a bigger farm. Maybe more independent, you grow your own grain and have a silo and such. But basically you don’t buy feed or chicks at all, unless it’s an emergency like a poor growing season or you need supplements.
I can attest that fresh free range eggs are better than any other eggs I’ve had since. Can’t get more organic than literally laid this morning. I will mention though some realities you may not be aware of that catch people off guard.
If you live in the city or suburbs, having chickens is more like having an exotic pet. It would take so much effort and expenses that it becomes a hobby.
- Buying food from the pet store.
- No roosters so you have to keep buying replacement chicks when they die.
- Neighbours wrinkle their noses at butchery.
- Gangs of bored cats fucking everywhere that will terrorize your animals.
- Half your yard and lawn torn up and reserved by a chicken run (they need a lot of space).
- The smell and feces buildup from too many chickens in a small space.
You can make it work, but you’re rowing uphill. The eggs will still be great, though.
The shell will be “sticky” and warm, and sometimes got a bit of poop on it. This is normal, you just wash the egg if eating today, or gently wipe if storing. Don’t wash them if you’re storing them, they have a natural barrier that prevents bacteria that doesn’t survive washing. That’s why some countries refrigerate eggs; they wash them as part of the processing stage but naturally they don’t need the fridge. They will last longer than you think in a carton, about 1 month unrefrigerated, or 4 months refrigerated.
More reading: https://coopeduplife.com/how-long-do-fresh-laid-eggs-last/
Oh totally. But not economical.
Dude fresh eggs are so good, I don’t have chickens but my wife’s coworker has some and we get a dozen eggs every so often. The best store bought eggs are a pale comparison. Like a good store egg has a nice yellow orange yolk but the orange yolk of healthy home hens is just amazing
To me, these seem like marginal benefits. If knowing where your food comes from is important to you for some reason, by all means, carry on.
However, every scientific discussion I’ve ever seen on organic food has found the same thing - there is no significant difference in nutritional value between certified organic food and nonorganic food. Of course, “certified” organic food is still industrially produced - just according to arcane regulations that make it more expensive. You could make a case that “organic in spirit” food is more nutrient dense in some way or other - but the lack of a real scientific definition of “organic in spirit” will make it harder to study, and I have not heard any scientific discussion of this. And improved health in people who eat organic foods are corrolational, and can be chalked up to these people caring more about their health in general, and being wealthier. All the most robust science on diet and health points to the same thing - the big factor is simply avoiding junk food. Getting farm fresh eggs is just a way to show off how much money you can throw away if you use them to make french toast covered in locally tapped mapel syrup.
All that to say, I really doubt you would find any noticeable health difference.
The benefit of keeping chickens and eating their eggs is that you get to enjoy the process. You get to watch your chicks grow into chickens, feel pride when you get the first batch of eggs, and enjoy eating those eggs (which I find are tastier than the cheapest ones at the store that I buy - though I think the taste is comparable to the fancy high price eggs my friends sometimes feed me). Do it to enjoy the process. But don’t do it under the illusion that you are saving money, saving the world, or saving your health.
You could save money with brewing your own beer, you would just need a good source of barley and malt it yourself. The malt is too expensive to save much if anything on making beer.
The mormans or latter day saints forget which are all about stockpiling, and they operate bulk stores to prepare for the end of times or whatever, and they sell 50 lb sacks for a decent price I hear, but there aren’t any near me.
Malt is the absolute cheapest part of brewing beer, I buy 55lb bags of it for $80 CAD (so like 40-60 USD), and there are multiple shops near me I can buy from. You only need a pot, a big ass mesh bag, a carboy/airlock, and a bottle capper if you don’t have swing top bottles.
To make 5 gallons of basic ass beer (yields like 48-54 bottles) you need 8-10lbs of grain (1lb of which is the fancy $2/lb malt; and 2lbs of which can be subbed for minute rice if you are doing an adjunct ale). You need 1, maybe 2oz of hops (hallertau is $2.50/oz). Yeast is $4-8 but is a 1 time cost because it’s reusable. To make an IPA your malt cost is 25% higher and your hop cost is like 4x
The economics are actually great, but that’s fully contingent on you 1) placing no value on your time, and 2) not getting hooked and spending thousands on a stainless steel, PID controlled electronic brewing system, or a 4 tap home draught system (I did both)
Loss leaders. They sell you the chicken at or below cost but make sure is at the end of the store so you spend $500 on crap you did not think you needed.
Except we go there for $500 of crap and then… $6 chicken? Hell yeah!
My last group of chicks (18) I got free from a neighbor who got them free from the Grange when the bought their dog food. They had some special going on, spend x and chicks free.
Hens are sweet and have a great personalities, some more than others but they’re fun and provide great nutrients for my compost plus I’m getting the best possible eggs. If you’ve only eaten store bought eggs, even if organic free range, you’ve never had outstanding eggs.
I’m not sure if I’m saving money or it’s costing more per egg than buying but it’s a process that’s totally worth it.
Supposedly there is a big problem with supply chains for chicks, they ship them in the mail but delivery times have gotten worse so survival rates have gotten much worse.
My siblings have chickens, but I wouldn’t call them a money saver so much as a hobby. If anything the eggs are more useful for bartering/giving to friends, since even a family that eats a lot of eggs typically has trouble going through the eggs laid by a small flock. Take into account too that they’re not going to be laying as much or at all during the late autumn and winter months. So you’ll be drowning in eggs in the spring and summer, and then not really any. Historically people dealt with this by preserving eggs in lime (mineral, not fruit) water, but most people don’t bother today since you can get them at the store.
You may still need to buy chickens down the line, because sometimes an illness can go through a flock and knock all (or most of them) down without there really being much to do about it. Letting them just breed for too long without introducing new blood can also cause incest issues. The vitamins and feed aren’t really that expensive. You may be able to get a better deal at a local feed store than online or through a pet store.
Correct answer right here. They are a hobby, and can be quite an elaborate one depending on your location, space, local ordinances, and budget.
Cheap eggs are cool and meat is cool too if you can stand to kill them. But if you’re going into that for those reasons then you’ll be sorely disappointed.
As to preserving the eggs, I think just vinegar works as well no? Like Moe’s on the simpsons with the jar of pickled eggs.
Preserving in lime is just weird, like that ludafisk stuff. It is super caustic I wouldn’t want to eat any.
That only works for hard boiled eggs, lime water works for raw eggs. Allegedly they don’t taste off and can be used as normal eggs.
Baby chicks are cuter than a rotisserie chicken. You pay for the cuteness.
How are you raising them and what breed?
The old breeds you just release around your home, that’s it. A coop helps if you want eggs, but the goal here is to eat chickens not eggs. And it costs zero upkeep. The chickens are too stupid to realize you’re a predator, but capable enough to avoid natural predators. They’ll just hang around your property, because you keep normal predators away most of the time.
That’s how the arrangement with chickens is supposed to work.
If you’re in a city or even a town and can’t let them loose and just want eggs, then you still don’t need vitamins, just raise mealworms and feed them that with chicken feed.
But you’re going to need to make sure you buy the right kinds of chickens for what you want them to do.
It’s worth noting that their ability to avoid predators depends heavily on the predators where you live.
Coyotes and bobcats decimated my chickens regularly when I had them. They’d tear right through chicken wire in the winter time. I’m also not unconvinced that a few of the smaller adults didn’t die to some of the larger hawks in my area, but I have no evidence to back that up.
So it all comes down to what the chicken’s eat.
I’m assuming with mealworms added to corn / legumes / other seeds should be a balanced diet. And if they are relatively free they can go hunting too.
Do meat chickens still lay eggs, just not as many?“Chicken feed” is enough, but whether you want them for eggs or meat, protein increase yield and quality.
If they’re free range, they’ll find protein on their own.
There’s a shit ton of different breeds, but you have to research on your own to find the right ones for your climate, living conditions, and desired outcomes.
If you’re rural and get old-school chickens, they’re going to keep laying eggs in trees even if you build a coop, especially once they quickly realize you keep stealing eggs from the coop. But also they’re going to be at most half the size of the chickens you buy in a grocery store for $5
Like, if cost is your main factor, $5 is worth your time cooking a whole chicken, let alone killing and slaughtering one.
Like, what’s even you’re goal here?
I’ve heard that raising the hybrid layer/meat birds for a season usually ends up slightly to significantly over the cost of premium eggs and chicken. Exact amounts vary widely depending on accounting etc.
A poultry farm egg accountant is someone who counts their chickens before they hatch.
But how many baskets do they put their eggs in?
None, they put them into a carton.
Be more fun if they put them in a cartoon
Yes
