At that rate, you could easily buy a dozen eggs every two days from an organic chicken farm… and keep your time. We needed a power washer for the porch anyway so I’m not counting that cost. Cuz they will. No, you need hardware cloth, impregnable walls and roof and maybe even a concrete floor. She wants the experience of fluffy little chicks and she wants hens to weed for her and she wants her daughter to have that mini-backyard-petting-zoo experience. In 200 days, you’ll need to buy another bag. Because, generally, older chicken coops are made so well, renovating them for modern chicken keeping is much much easier than purchasing and assembling a modern chicken coop. It not only provides you with fresh as well as high-quality eggs and meat but also brings you close to nature. But what is the reality of keeping chickens and is it worth it? It works out to about $0.08 cents of feed per bird, per day. RAISING MEAT CHICKENS IS WORTH IT. A chicken egg takes 3.5 days to hatch. That works out to 1.75 hours per week, or $26.25 of your time at $15 per hour. The last thing you want is to invest time and money into preparing for chickens and then find out that you can’t even keep them! Average processing of hung weight is around 400.00. you stand to make $3200.00. Frankly, I am going to leave the coop open and hope that nature takes its course – foxes have to eat too Thanks again for the confirmation!!!!! Today we take a look at that question - the answer may surprise you! Many families make chicken keeping a 4H activity which teaches children about keeping and caring for livestock. There are too many factors otherwise to make a blanket statement that chickens are worth it for everyone's situation. Thank you, JohnMc. That’s disappointing. They’re delicious if I can keep the rodents out of them. * They till the garden for me in the spring and fall. Make sure you have the space for a henhouse or a full-size chicken coop. He is able to spread the cost, as a homeowner, you are not. The correct food will need to be bought, as well as some stable drinking containers for fresh water, but chickens themselves can be acquired fairly cheaply. I really got ticked at the birds for getting into the garden and destroying my seedlings recently, too. View Basket People have been known to fry them up and eat them in for a meal. Chickens can also make quite a lot of mess in a garden, so it is important to keep on top of cleaning out their house and mucking out the surrounding area where they spend their time. Be aware that chickens are most productive in laying eggs during the first two years of their life, so you will need to decide early on whether you want to have the commitment of caring for them once they cease to lay. If you are buying feed from someone else to support them then they will never pay for themselves (unless industrialised agriculture is running so cheap that the grain to feed is worth almost nothing….and how likely is that looking in the future?). Food: $15/month. You might decide keeping chickens makes sense for you even after these numbers… but what about deaths from predators? What is an alternative? Food: $15/month. Got great manure and learned to kill them ourselves, until I became vegan. That’s not so bad. Why onearth is someone making a business with egfs if it is so bad in $$$? So at 10 eggs per day, it will take me 192 days or roughly 6 months to get back on my money on at a value of 5$ per dozen. Also did anyone here ever think if shtf ever happend how would you feed your chickens?????? We want a relationship with where the eggs come from. Saw this on Yahoo Finance page Is it worth keeping chickens?- Yahoo! Legal regulations you should check before keeping chickens Having backyard chickens allows you to bring your family closer to the process of growing and producing their own food. Hi David, thank-you for this realistic article which helps support my inclination to “let them go”!!! As long as you provide this, they should prove no trouble to raise for eggs. . Of course there is the benefit of having fresh eggs within easy reach every morning, whether to enjoy in the comfort of your own home or to sell to others. LOL. If I box them up in a Gallus gallus gulag, they need more feed and produce lower quality eggs. There are no laws preventing you keeping hens, providing they are looked after properly and their welfare is taken seriously. However, the real plus side of keeping your own chickens is that the quality of the eggs you get is much better. Joel Salatin would disagree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgVFmfibjeE. I can’t wait to expand into meat Chickens in the country. Do you know what the monthly upkeep cost is on a chicken coop? I’ve never had to buy soil amendments (besides lime), new potting soil, or costly herbicides to treat my gardens. So who wants to get rid of their coop. The birds comb through all the soil picking out bugs and their eggs. As mentioned previously, it might be that you need to arrange someone to do this for you if you're planning a holiday. It is absolutely worth raising chickens. Two Ameraucanas and one RI Red/Delware cross. But keeping hens for eggs for your own consumption will reward you in more than monetary terms. With trivial child labor, plus the kids need to be working household chores like feeding chickens anyway, it is definitely worth it for me to have my 5 hens, even if our 4 year old didn’t carry them around and love on them. Chickens free range in a backyard, and sleep where they want, usually on top of the never closed coop. We tried plenty of ways, Doug. Here’s how the numbers shake out: Chicken coop: $500. Sorry to ramble yet again, when I read your posts, my mind rattles off a bunch of questions and thoughts, and I spew some words into your comment section, not really knowing if that is what you have intended it for. I think what would be a better waste management tool in your present location though, are having worms. The repetitive pecking at the ground looking for food can also take it's toll on the surface appearance. If your end goal is cheap eggs, keeping chickens might not necessarily be the best goal for you. . The winter can be a hard time to perform these tasks as it can be so cold and wet, so be sure that you are willing to make that commitment. -compost- I take the old straw from nest boxes and use it in our composting systems. And then there is that poop on the porch scenario . And its been years since my initail investment of about 650 dollars on a coop. That’s a good use. Plants don’t gaze up at you with quite the same stimulating glance. The value in chickens in not just in meat and eggs but also the manure and in some cases you can sell feathers for a small amount. Even the idea of feeding them supplements year round to lay year round is a very recent idea. Chickens will produce eggs if they feel they are protected and are in a healthy and spacious environment. I am interested in growing my own peanuts. She wants them bad. Burds will happily pick worms out of a manure pile or go through used produce. They are incredibly relaxing to watch and are known to be therapeutic in terms of coping with … Glad to hear it is a smaller time investment than the gardening, that is music to my ears! Tuula October 28, 2013 at 9:37 am. We spent $1,000 on building a very sturdy coop with hardware cloth under the ground to discourage predators. As a family of foodies, we really appreciate good food. They shut down during the cold months. It kept their food free of contaminated mold. RAISING MEAT CHICKENS IS WORTH IT. They will require a good sized house for laying their eggs and for sleeping in, as it is important to shut them away each evening, again to keep them safe from predators. I have been raising chickens for all my life and, although the resulting answer is the same as I would give, it isn’t reflective of real numbers. Keeping chickens really does depend on many things and sometimes the economics just are not there. Knowing where your food comes from is never a bad thing. Damn chickens won’t lay every day. My birds get non “organic” feed. Top 4 reasons to consider a backyard chicken flock. Keeping chickens can be a relatively low cost pet, but unlike lots of other pets they produce food for you! All Right Reserved. Here we are discussing the pros & cons along with several other factors you should consider before starting your chicken farm. Keeping chickens can be a relatively low cost pet, but unlike lots of other pets they produce food for you! The chicken coop (I won’t tell you how much we spent on that!) What is your time worth? How much do chickens cost? They breed every 8 hours. Ended up making a profit on it too, but with rising feed costs it's getting very hard. If you don’t produce your own excess grain or milk and have room to range them then it isnt worthwhile. More money to spend! I need better garden protection. Also chicken feed is something that goes bad so you cant stock pile it. If you wish to start making some money from your chickens, depending on how many you have, you could sell fresh eggs each day. We built a cattle panel greenhouse as a rain shelter for them. If you can wall off a farm that big then It could be worth it. We raised meat birds a couple of times and they were worth it. I have no chickens, one day maybe, but right now it is just not feasible. Chickens lay 1 egg every 1.7 days. They are designed to absorb excess or low quality grain and milk, leverage that nutrition through free ranging to increase the return, and produce a different and more marketable form of protein than meat (easier to transport). The Cost of Keeping Chickens We purchased our hens from local farmers as … Yes – there is a good case to be made for raising your own eggs from happy birds. Hi David Very good post, Liz – thank you. 4 birds added. That leaves me with 2-3 dozen eggs for personal use, plus lots of manure for the compost bin. However, the real plus side of keeping your own chickens is that the quality of the eggs you get is much better. You can always get cheaper, but you sacrifice so much for that lower cost. For one thing, they provide food! As mentioned before, you will need to invest in some good fencing and a secure home for your chickens to live in. Those beds will go on to be much more productive after a few years of chickens. There are ongoing costs associated with keeping a flock of hens, whether you’re keeping them for meat or eggs. We are planning to scale up to 75 for an egg coop. You are right – there are many functions birds serve that can be taken into account. Keeping Guard Geese to protect against Predators. Let’s say it’s worth $15 per hour. Plus he’s a genius. If you have a flock of over 50 birds, you must notify DEFRA, they … The bread soaks up the roasting pan fats from our dinner, the night before. We have friends who have chickens and they really enjoy keeping them as well. Chickens you can stick in a barn and forget about and if you have hay being delivered to their barn and sort out their egg collection you can get a lot of meal sources from their eggs and due to how fast they reproduce you can farm meat from chickens although it's much less per animal than say a boar. * Alarm system, when they are awake they detect everything before you will even know it. I like “professional debugging” as a description. If you don't think you can afford to do this straightaway, then you should wait for a while and save until you can. Predators ate my returns. To me, that’s the big question. My husband disagrees ( he enjoys having them around.) Chickens are a great way of teaching children how to care for animals and can be very educational. I miss her dearly. I bought my peanuts from Bakers Creek. Dogs love to chase things and chickens are no exception. At our place rats dug into the coop and killed our chicks: A lot of people suggested building a stronger coop, poisoning the rats, raising the chicks off the ground, etc. The scale really helps and good design is paramount. Designed and Developed by PenciDesign, A chicken tractor design with rotating garden beds. *note-my birds are fed a USDA Organic loose grain mix, the cheaper pellet grain is cooked, and will not have the rich nutrients you want for your soil. I’m no Joel Salatin and we don’t even own our homestead here, so… considering tractors, coops, chicken runs, hardware cloth, feed, time… the numbers don’t add up. $15? Definitely interested in Chickens though, but we have no room for them, when we get a house with a small garden I am going to try it. Roman farming expert Columella wrote a comprehensive guide to chicken-keeping in the first century AD, while across the Mediterranean, the Egyptians fondly called them ‘the birds that give birth every day’. When considering keeping chickens most people wonder what the law says about keeping them at home, well, you’ll be pleased to find out that there are no laws or regulations in the UK which prevent you keeping small numbers of chickens, however, there are some regulations you must check first. That kind of time expenditure is no fun. What kills me the most is going out to the coop twice a week in ankle deep mud here in lovely W.V. I had many ducks on my .27 acre and it was great. 1. We have options that are with or without coops, in case you are planning to build your own, as well as an option to include a chicken run, if you would like some extra security in place for them to roam safely. What is different in these decades is that I am a serious grower of herbs, veggies and flowers. It would still deal with what the chickens provided, only more portable (can move with you) and more affordable. Meat obtained from chickens. OK So I've read Mrs Fiddlesticks article on eggonomics but I'm still none the wiser as to how much backyard chickens will actually cost me per egg produced. and at least right now feed is not too costly. @2017 - PenciDesign. However, after that she quickly came to the conclusion that chickens were not a profitable venture…. We sell 4-5 dozens per week at 5$ and keep the rest for ourselves, so let be conservative, let’s say 20$ per week. 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