When venturing into the world of chicken ownership, one of the most common questions people ask is if it’s worth it financially. In this article, let’s break down some of the costs to see just how much money one can save with even a few backyard chickens.
When my wife and I decided it was finally time to get some cluckers, we originally bought 6 chicks. Upon seeing that the feed store had more variety a few weeks later than when we’d originally gone, we felt it necessary to buy 4 more, bringing our total to 10. One egg bound chicken passed away later and we were gifted 4 more from our friends with a 10 acre farm. Our grand total had reached 13. Then, most recently, we found some Ameraucanas at the feed store. Who doesn’t want blue eggs? 3 more were added to the flock for a total of 16 hens.
Let’s break down the math. Initial investment was, on average, $2.50 per chick. Some were $4, some were on sale for $1. 16 chickens at $2.50 each is $40. Let’s throw another $200 for initial supplies (brooder, heat lamps and bulbs, start/grow feed, bedding, water/feed dishes, etc). And finally, the most expensive aspect by far of owning chickens, the coop. As a builder, I wanted to build a modular coop where I could easily remove the roof, take each wall down as a single piece, and be left with the floor. Giving a total of 6 pieces to move and quickly reassemble whenever we get onto acreage. I built my coop by hand, included 2 large vinyl sliding windows, nice hardware, a melamine floor. Entire cost of the coop build, during the peak lumber price bubble, was just over $700. This coop is large enough to easily fit our 16 hens, and we could fit another 6-8 if we wanted to. But you don’t need something this large or elaborate. Cost can easily be cut into 1/4 of what I paid, even with today’s prices, if you’re planning on having less chickens.
So, to date we’ve spent roughly $940 on our chicken setup, minus the monthly feed and treats. The 16% layer feed we buy runs about $200 for 3 months worth for our 16 hens. That’s $800 a year. Throw in a few bags of grubs and 50lb bags of cracked corn, and we’ll round it to a smooth $1,000 a year to feed them.
This all might seem like an entirely unnecessary expense and not worth it, but here’s where the math starts working in our favor.
We get, on average, 12 eggs a day from our 13 laying hens. In a few months, the 3 Ameraucanas will begin laying, bringing our average to somewhere around 16 eggs a day. 16 a day is 486 dozen eggs a year, or 40.5 dozen a month. Depending on where you live, organic free-range eggs can get expensive. Here in Portland, OR, your top of the line farm eggs will run you $8 a dozen at the grocery store. So, in order to buy the 486 dozen eggs we will get in a year, we would have to spend $3,888. Our initial investment of $940, plus an entire year’s cost of feed, runs us $1,940 for year 1, and $1,000 every year thereafter. We are getting $2,888 worth of free eggs every year once you subtract the cost of feed.
The savings don’t just stop there though. Chickens eat bugs. That’s literally all they do. They eat bugs, poop on everything, and eat more bugs. Those bugs can wreak havoc on your garden. But they don’t. Because they get eaten. You get a larger harvest each year. More money saved.
Chickens, as mentioned above, poop everywhere. Chicken manure is like gold to plants/gardens/lawns. It is loaded with nutrients, and it’s extremely soft. Every day I go outside in our small backyard and blast the lawn with the hose on “shower” setting and the chicken poop just melts away into the soil. Our grass has never been greener than it was last year. You can scoop this manure as well, throw it into your compost, and have the richest fertilizer imaginable. Now you don’t have to buy fertilizer from the store. More money saved.
If you have children, you’re in luck. Chicken watching is one of the most fun things in the world. We have 2 daughters and our oldest loves our chickens. Every day we come outside to play, and she laughs hysterically every time one of the hens flaps their wings, jumps up on a chair, flies down, etc. She loves helping throw handfuls of grubs and mealworms to them, and smiles and laughs when they all come running. It is quite literally free entertainment for children. More money saved simply by letting your children interact with and watch the chickens instead of constantly trying to buy them new and unnecessary things to keep them busy.
As you can see, the financial aspect of becoming a certified chicken bard is well worth the initial investment and upkeep. We eat a ton of eggs in our household (they’re our oldest daughter’s favorite), and we give many eggs to my Mother-in-law who lives a couple houses down from us. so we don’t currently sell any of the eggs we get. But if we wanted to, we could easily make money just from the 16 hens in our small backyard. If we doubled the amount of chickens we had, a cool $4-5k a year from fresh chicken eggs would be easily attainable. Not only are chickens worth it, there is very real money to be made by raising them for either eggs or meat. They are the lowest maintenance animal you can own (just give them food, water, throw some treats and produce scraps in the yard every day, and change their coop bedding regularly), they’re endless entertainment to watch, they provide you with more nutrients than you’ll ever find in store bought eggs, they help your garden. If you’re apprehensive about getting chickens, just do it. It’s worth it in every capacity.
-Woodshop Bear
