(My friend Erika is guest blogging today. She’s a freelance writer living near Deception Pass in Washington State. She writes about knitting, chickens, and knitting for chickens at her blog, Redshirt Knitting.)
I recently bought into the city chicken craze and purchased four baby chicks. Out of curiosity last weekend, I did some online research to try and figure out what each egg will end up costing. I have yet to receive an egg (my chickens won’t start ovulating until later this summer) but I have already spent almost $300 on them so far. Sheesh!
There are four major variables in the Egg Cost Equation:
Variable 1: BUILDING MATERIALS
My chicken tractor is a 4×4 foot cube, because that happened to be the length that most of the culls came in. Allow me to introduce you to the “cull box” at your local hardware store. The Home Depot in Mount Vernon has a well-maintained cull box of wood which has been splintered, warped, chipped, or otherwise received minor damage. Culls cost around 50 cents apiece.
The #1 expense in building the chicken tractor is welded wire hardware cloth. There’s no way around it: if you don’t want your chickens to be eaten, you have to use hardware cloth. This is true even in the city, where marauding cats, stray dogs, and raccoons can rip through your flock while you sleep. Chicken wire, PVC hardware cloth, wildlife netting and other (cheaper) solutions will not protect your chickens.
Welded wire hardware cloth comes in a variety of sizes and lengths. I bit the bullet, and bought a roll that was 4×25 feet, for $50. Ouch!
The #2 building expense? Screws. This surprised me. (Obviously I don’t build things very often.) Screws are expensive! I had to drop about $40 in zinc wood screws alone. And I used almost all of them, too.
Variable 2: FEED
The best information I found was “1/3rd of a pound of feed per chicken per day, for free range chickens.” Free range (and chicken tractor) chickens are able to graze, and therefore don’t eat as much feed as cooped chickens. If your chickens can’t forage, or you are feeding more than four chickens, your feed costs will be higher.
Chicken feed runs about $35 per 50lb bag. I have four chickens. Therefore I estimate a feed cost of $315 per year.
Variable 3: LAYING PERIOD
Chickens stop laying in the winter, “winter” being defined as “less than 15 hours of daylight per day.” This dormant period varies based on the breed; buff orpingtons in particular (I have two) are supposed to be good winter layers. You can of course prevent the winter dormancy by providing supplemental light. But honestly I’m not sure I can be bothered, and I think they deserve a rest every year anyway.
Chickens will also stop laying during their moult, which takes about 8 weeks per year according to the source I consulted.
For my calculations I assumed a work stoppage of 8 weeks per year for moulting, and 8 weeks per year for the winter break.
Variable 4: NUMBER OF EGGS
How many eggs will a chicken lay per laying week? This again varies by breed, and by the age of the chicken. The “average chicken” will lay 5 eggs per week for her first year, with egg production declining each year after that.
For my calculations, I assumed 5 eggs/week for the first year, 4 eggs/week for the second, and 3 eggs/week for the third. (Please note, I have essentially pulled these numbers out of my ass. Most chicken owners either don’t care about production enough to track the numbers of eggs per year, or care enough about production to cull their second-year chickens and buy more chicks.)
If you run all of these numbers, you come up with a ballpark price of 71 cents per egg. Which isn’t so great, considering eggs at the grocery store cost about 32 cents apiece!
Do you have some more input for these numbers, or a data set from your own chickens? Please share by leaving us a comment!
18 Comments
1. Don’t forget the improved taste of homegrown eggs. That *is* worth money.
2. You have to (or should) figure in antibiotics cost as well, for young chicks. But that’s a once-and-done cost.
3. You can build a perfectly suitable chicken house out of mostly scrap materials. With some effort and a little luck, you can save a lot here.
4. Finally, 16 weeks out of commission per hen per year isn’t realistic. A little basic manipulation with a couple of light bulbs and a timer will keep your hens laying through the winter.
This will wear them out sooner, of course, leading directly to another question. To wit, most hens stop laying after just a few years, so what do you do with them? Are you squeamish? Then you have a flock of very expensive pets. Otherwise, you need to learn how to slaughter and dress your own birds, or find someone/place that’ll do it for you. That’s a cost most people never consider.
For a while, my brother-in-law was a farm tech for Pilgrim’s Pride and he would get to keep “cull” eggs - eggs that have nothing wrong with them really but are deemed defective and cannot be sold - they were too big, small, more than one yolk, etc.
We used to get about 2 dozen eggs every week or so. It was awesome. Then he had to go and get a different job dangit.
My father-in-law raised chickens for a short while and had eggs. He said it was not worth the trouble plus something go into the chicken house and ate them one evening.
Also keep in mind that your costs for a second batch of birds would be substantially lower, in that you won’t have to rebuild a coop every year. Next up, holy crap, Patti! You used nearly a whole five pound box of screws on a 4 x 4 enclosure? At least it will NEVER fall apart…
I’ve always wanted a Chicken and a Duck (watched too much “Friends” as a young adult), but Cats are my first love. Unfortunately, cats do not produce tasty byproducts.
Are you comparing apples to apples on cost? What kind of eggs did you use for your cost comparison? Comparing your small home production cost to supermarket eggs (even free-range organic eggs) isn’t really fair. Any farm that is large enough to supply a grocery store will have an economy of scale that you cannot possibly hope to achieve. A more fair comparison would be to see how much eggs cost from a stall at a farmer’s market or from a farm that sells eggs to members of their CSA. (But even that is a much larger production.)
Also, how many eggs do you need per week? Will you really use 20 eggs per week? Most of the people I know who keep chickens constantly have a supply of extra eggs that they gift to friends or barter for other things they need. You may find that your expensive eggs have other monetary pay-offs in the long run.
Good luck!
Not me! This was a guest post by my friend Erika!
(I wish cats produced more than fur and purrs, too - mine is getting kind of expensive as he ages)
Kabuki, I may have gone overboard with the screws! Chicken Tractor Mark I was built of scrap lumber. Within 24 hours of launch, it was trashed by the resident dogs (4 Newfoundlands, about 120lbs apiece). I caution people against using scrap lumber that’s TOO scrap, since wood that had gone iffy was one of the reasons for collapse.
Courtney, for cost comparison I used the eggs I buy at the locally-owned grocery store. The eggs come from Steibr Farm in Yelm, about 100 miles from here. The eggs are raised by true free-range hens, and are certified humane and organic. Steibr Farm eggs are running about $4/dozen lately.
“Regular” store-brand eggs are cheaper, about $2/dozen. But they’re blecchy.
Hi Erika,
Congradulations on your guest blogspot!
I agree totally with Brian that your eggs will taste much better than store bought in general, although your certified humane local organic eggs probably taste pretty good.
I think you have to factor in ‘joy of chickens’ - the fun factor of raising your own, and the good karma you get from giving them a good life (complete with shawls for pete’s sake!)
Finally as noted by Courtney you may be able to trade or sell some eggs to offset the cost. My farmer friend supplied the local cafe on a regular basis in summer.
Good point above that your per-egg cost needs to consider that some of your initial costs should properly be spread over several years. (This is your accountant speaking.) What is the expected economic life of your chicken tractor? If it is, say, five years, and you spent, say, $100 to build it, it is only costing you $20/year, not the full $100. The question then becomes, Will you still be keeping chickens in five years? Well, duh, of course, because the eggs are so good and the chickens are so much fun. I was going to say the eggs you get are healthier, but since you buy free-range eggs anyway, that bit of information is irrelevant.
I’ve been raising chickens for about 6 years. Once you get past the initial outlay for the coop and supplies, your costs go down substantially.
Right now I have 20 chickens, I have had more and less in the past, but have always used the same large coop I originally built (or overbuilt - depending on your point of view). I go through about a bag of feed a week (my girls are allowed to free range in the yard also), and I am getting about 12-16 eggs a day right now (this will go up in the summer).
So, lets say I spend $15/week for feed x 52 weeks a year . . . $780 for feed (ouch) . . . and I do a major clean out of the coop twice a year ( I use the deep litter method), plus additional shavings to freshen things up . . . so, maybe $60 for wood shavings, I use shredded paper in the laying boxes, so that’s free . . . the coop has lasted 6 years and will likely last at least 2 more, so if I spent $200 on the coop (I have no idea what I actually spent and I don’t really want to know) the annual cost would be $25. Total annual cost of $865.
Lets say the chickens produce for 9 months of the year at 7 dozen per week . . . 273 dozen . . . cost per dozen is $3.17. Still a better price than the $8 they charge at the farmers’ market!
So what do I do with 7 dozen eggs a week, we trade 2 dozen for a gallon of raw milk every week, I sell some to my knitting friends and hubby sells some at work.
The outlay for keeping chickens is high at first but over time the cost is much lower, just like most hobbies. Now I haven’t added in the cost of water or electricity (in the winter), or the outlay for the chicks and the feed while waiting for them to start laying . . . for me raising chickens isn’t about making money. There is nothing more fun than watching the girls forage in the yard on a summer afternoon, or throwing out an apple core and watching them peck at it until it disappears, or standing in the door with some leftover oatmeal and watching them come running when you’ve called them. So, no, it is definitely not about the money.
Fantastic info about the cull box at Home Depot. I have to call about that, see if we have that here. (we’re trading Lala’s internetting skillz for construction assistance…..)
Thanks for the sort-of shout out to my site, TheCityChicken.com !
I don’t know where you’re buying feed, but you might want to shop around. We only pay $10 to $12 per 50lb bag… and that’s for the good stuff.
We’ve kept chickens for 4 years now - in rural Vermont with fisher cats, weasels, big dogs, racoons, skunks, etc in our neighborhood - and regular chicken wire has protected them. Haven’t lost a chicken to varmints, yet!
Our chickens slow down in winter, but don’t quit laying. They do quit for molting in the fall - eight weeks is about right.
We sell our eggs, which more than pays for their feed (and we could get more for the eggs if we asked, but we sell mostly to friends and friends of friends) so we get eggs for our own use essentially for free.
And entertainment value should be factored in there, somewhere! Chickens are more fun to watch than TV…
The other factors that I like are the included bug control and fertilizer. I’m inspired by Erika to build a chicken tractor next winter and buy chicks next spring. I’m also looking for Easter chicks that need a new home. Seems there should be some somewhere…? And yes, some of those will be sadly male.
Courtney,
Would we really use 20 eggs a week? You bet. With a family of 6 we can go through a dozen in one day easy.
With regard to the number of eggs produced per week….I’ve read that younger chickens make more smaller eggs, and they increase in volume as the quantity decreases. Can anyone confirm? Is the size difference very noticeable? Maybe the total volume per week is conserved, just divided by fewer shells.
The fun factor has got to be the best part. Of course, with cats you have the potential to power trains! http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Murphy%27s_law_application_for_antigravitatory_cats
Happy eggs and worm-eating entertainment!
You also forgot the thrill of naming your chickens - priceless! (If you’re not naming your chickens, let me know, and I’ll name them in absentia.)
Raising your own eggs in the midst of a heavily subsidized industrial food machine has never been about saving money. It’s about -
1) high quality
2) reducing fossil fuels in shipping
3) quality of life for the animals that feed us
4) creating a connection with our food supply… Read More
5) becoming a part of a local food economy
6) becoming more self-sufficient
I know “the real cost” to deliver $.32 eggs to my refrigerator and its not worth it if there’s another way.
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[...] in raising your own chickens? This blog New World Geek, friend of ecometro.com, takes a look at how much homegrown eggs really cost. [...]
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