Do Our Backyard Chickens Still Pay for Themselves?

Keeping chickens over the past few years has been quite the adventure in both the actual keeping of chickens and in the human response to the fact that we keep chickens.  Conversations are either based around confusion or excitement!  I get questions all the time like;

• You can keep chickens in the city?
• Is it expensive to keep chickens?
• I've always wanted to keep chickens!  Can I come see them?
• Do you have lots of mice?!
• Is it hard to take care of them?
• What do you feed them?
• Do you neighbors get mad?
• Do you have a rooster?
• How to have eggs if you don't have a rooster?
• Can I buy some eggs?

The question that, until now, has made me cringe a little bit at is the question of money.  We've looked at our Urban Farm Economics, have amortized the costs and are hopeful we can have everything we've put into our 1/8 acre "paid off" by the end of 2014.  These totals do not, however, take into consideration, the costs of chicken feed right now because of the following:

• In August of 2011, I posed this question: Do our chickens pay themselves?
• The resulting math showed that our chickens were indeed paying for themselves at the time.

This was very exciting for us at the time, but a lot has changed in the past two years, including the size of our flock, the variety of birds we are keeping and the type of feed we are giving the Ladies.
Let's look at the numbers again...

We are, on average, purchasing:

• two bags of Organic, non-GMO Layer every two weeks
• one bag of Organic, non-GMO Scratch every four weeks

This gives us a cost of ~$158 each month

We sell our eggs to friends, co-workers and acquaintances for $4.00/dozen (although we could sell them for $6/dozen if we were participating in the Farmer's Market).

We sell ~5 dozen eggs every two weeks for a total income of ~$40 each month.

 $158 Organic, non-GMO feed
- $40 egg sales
- $36 eggs we eat each month 
______
 $80 remaining cost to us each month

OUCH!

So, let's talk about how expensive our laying hens have become...

First, with the increase of our flock and low laying of the Ladies (due to our five current pullets, several molting Ladies and the broodiness of one stubborn Australorp), our costs have gone up while production has gone down a bit.

Second, the cost of feed keeps rising and we've moved to all organic and non-GMO feed all the time.  In the beginning we would get organic feed every once in a while.  Then, we switched to half and half.  Now, we don't use "regular" feed at all.

Why the switch to organic, despite the costs?  

My body was a wreck.  I went in to see my doctor (an Applied Kinesiologist who does muscle testing to find out the roots of ailments instead of simply treating symptoms, the same one that fixed my migraines) and my body aches, kidney issues and all around sluggishness were attributed to the GMOs in the chicken feed I was giving the Ladies.  Their bodies process food so quickly while creating their eggs that all of the nastiness from the GMOs was going directly into the eggs I was eating daily and my body responded quickly and quite violently.

We are, truly, what we eat. 

So, we switched their food to all Organic/non-GMO, all the time.  The Ladies are happier and so are we, knowing that what we get from them is truly healthier for our bodies.

What are some of the other benefits of raising our own laying hens?

Organic bug control/disposal

The Ladies happily eat hornworms, aphids, grasshoppers and any other protein packed treat we can throw their way or they can hunt out on their own.  Anyone who tells you chickens are vegetarians is very confused.

Tomato Hornworm - What vile creatures they are!

Weed control

Give them a patch of anything green and they will consume it.  This goes for free-ranging during the cooler months (when the garden is not in full production mode) or for the pulled weeds from the property that would go in the trash or in the compost (depending on whether or not they've gone to seed yet).

Happiness factor

You simply cannot sit in the presence of a chicken and not smile at their personalities and silliness.  I promise you it is impossible to ignore the joy a chicken can bring into your life.

Organic Egg Shells

There are a variety of uses for eggs shells on our little Urban Farm, but my favorites are:

1. Feeding them back to the chickens to strengthen the future egg shells or help through a molting period.  Calcium works wonders for chickens!
2. Grinding them up to place in the hole of a transplanted tomato or pepper.  Calcium works wonders for plants, too.

Eggs shells - crushed, not ground (yet)

Compost

Chicken poop is like gold.  We fill our compost pile with the Ladies droppings, top them off with kitchen scraps and yard waste and what forms beneath the surface (with the help of thousands of worms) is pure magic.

So, do our chickens still pay for themselves?

When you add it all up, the black and white of it might not quite make sense to an Economist, but it surely makes sense to us!  So, yes, I do believe the Ladies continue to earn their keep!

xoxo,
M

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