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?
Before doing this, you may want to checkout the Farming while Beige youtube channel (blackbirdcoop).
In some of his videos he provides a very honest description of the work involved.
It was more of a curious question. I have no energy to take on this amount of responsibility - but I might in the future. :)
Seriously go follow him, though. He talks a little about chickens. He talks a lot about politics and race. He talks also a lot about other videos. He is absolutely hilarious. Especially note the, uh, discrepancies between what he says and the subtitles. It’s an extra layer of humour.
Basically, dude is half black and half native and all bad-ass. He’s started a farm in the Richmond, VA area and sells chicken, eggs, and some other stuff, which his staff helps proces and deliver around eastern Virginia. He talks about this, and is quite hilarious.
Not everyone will appreciate him, but I feel like a lot of progressives will. He’s a lot of fun.
I will definitely check him out, thank you!
I checked him out, and he is definitely an acquired taste!
And he again reminded me of how different is the US kitchen to central European one. “And now we have the back part and we will make dog food out of it”.
We even had chicken head in regular soups (without the eyes) - and gizzards, liver and even other edible parts should go into the soup. I guess the only part you throw away is the digestion track - everything else is just too yummy…Well, the offal is not considered awful by probably more “rural” people, as well as soul food. People who traditionally have been more poor and so make use of more of their resources. heh.
I don’t particularly like chewy gizzards, but I ate them growing up - mom would fry a chicken and out of love fry up the heart, liver, gizzard, and neck and that would be a snack for me. And I love fried chicken livers… it pains me that I can’t find a good local source (because I try not to fry - it stinks up the apartment for days - and I’ve found that fried chicken and livers and certain other fries foods are often better in commercial operations/kitchens). heh.
Dammit, now I’m craving fried livers! lol
But… while you can find chicken feet for sure, and chicken necks, I’m not so sure about chicken heads. I’ll grant you that that one goes to my “squick” factor. heh.
I know, chicken head is now an ick factor to me also. This is just a core memory for me - seeing it getting cracked open and being offered to me to eat… And if your chicks are your pets that’s even worse :D
And fried liver - haven’t had those for a long while - tho it is really easy to mess up and turn it into a un-chewable piece of leather. You can always just cook it with onions tho - that’s definitely doable.Ah, well, I never ate animals I raised, only vegetables/fruit we grew :) But I knwo the rule: Do not give a name to what you’re planning to eat. lol
Ah, I dunno, chicken liver is alright to fry. I don’t mind if they’re medium well to very well done, they’re tasty to me. hehe.
And I can’t do onions, so no liver-and-onion for me (especially because in the US, fried liver usually means chicken (tasty) and liver and onions usually means calf (eww). lol
Yeah I was really disappointed when my grandma decided it is time to butcher my bunny when I was away for summer camp…
Have you tried liver just in the soup? Same with the cleaned up gizzard. Just put it with everything and it is a nice bite while eating the soup. There are hundreds of way enjoying it - you can even make home made pate with it - yummm.
What is it now?
Fucking love that guy.
“you just going to throw all that into the dirty ass oil, aren’t you?”
that’s right.
DOUBLE-U DOUBLE-U DOUBLE-U DOT
Looney Tunes theme song plays at full volume
What is it now?
:slow grin:
1 egg per day could be worth 20-30c/day to you. Maybe more for freshness and convenience value. 100 days at 6c profit or 200 days at 3c, would pay for the $6 back. End food value is bonus.
Alternatively, the chickens are pets, eggs are 100% profit 😅
They’re referred to as Hen Fruit for a reason 😂
Backyard chicken wranglers hatch lots of males they don’t want.
Post in fb chicken groups saying you’ll have them.
Go to chicken auctions and buy 6 for $1.
Good to know, thank you!
WHAT IS IT NOW?
A real gem in a sea of slop.
THAT’S RIGHT.
Chris Newman did a computer science degree at U of Maryland, then worked at Lockheed Martin, then TerpSys, then Counterpointe before quitting IT and starting a farm which he has been running for 13 years, very successfully.
I recommend the book Make the Bread, Buy the Butter. Author Jennifer Reese talks about the costs and hassles associated with raising chickens for the eggs, among other food subjects.
thank you for the recommendation!
Really hates canning though, or at least found it not worth it. I personally enjoy canning because I get to choose what is in them.
Canning is great if you find yourself with a windfall of free produce. Otherwise I’m kinda inclined to agree: canning isn’t worth it unless you enjoy the process and consider it a hobby.
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.
Yes
You’re not ready for Chicken Math, buddy.
Chicken math:
You have a couple of hens and a rooster. They’re pretty chill and everything’s cool. But you can’t eat the birds you have, then you wouldn’t get any eggs… Maybe you should get more birds? You wonder what it will cost you to hatch and rear some chickens. Before you’re done guestimating, one of your hens is broody, so you let it do its business.
You starting building a secondary run for momma hen and her chicks. You forget the material price, but you do notice the text message half way through the month. It’s from the bank, you’re getting close to insufficient funds on your debit card. Anyway you move some funds around and head off to the feed store. Chickens need special feed and different feeders/water dispensers.
The chicks grow and you start to see something akin to personality. You want to optimize for size, so you wait with the harvesting. Suddenly some start presenting male characteristics. But the rest? They’re too cute and you could do with a few more eggs.
While picking up considerably more feed, you notice the text message from the bank, you ignore it and start looking at that incubator that’s on sale. It doea look neat. Next spring then hens start laying eggs again, you decide to not wait for a broody hen, and you start collecting an incubator’s worth of eggs.
When the eggs are about to hatch, finally a hen has become broody, so when most egg have hatched momma gets her eggs switched with a load of chicks. You don’t have any chicks to loom at indoors now, so maybe you should hatch a few more. You’ve heard about a different breed that you want to try out, so you find eggs on facebook marketplace and drive for 2hours each way to pay 50€ for the 24 eggs your incubator can hold. Of the 24 eggs 15 are fertilized and as you miss a single critical water refill only 10 hatch. You do note that that’s 5€ per chick. But you think to your self “hey, it’s an investment, now I have this breed and can hatch more down the road”
You keep this up, and second year you are worrying that the authorities will discover that you have more than the 30 chickens you can have without registering. You’re also on a first name basis with the clerks in two feed stores and you ask about their kids ball games when you get your weekly 80kg of feed. You try to recoup some of the money by selling eggs. You have no idea what an egg costs to produce, but you can’t get yourself to charge more than about 50 cents per egg. You don’t piece it together, but your income doesn’t match your feed budget. Your bank loves you, because even though you should be able to save money for a car and a holiday, you end up getting financing for all major purchases and going on holiday is overrated anyhow. You like to stay home, who would take care of your birds?
Anyway ⬆️that’s chicken math…
Let’s see here now licks pencil
Raised. Fed. Butchered, Feathers Plucked/Removed. Meat Inspected, Cooked, Inspected again, Flash Frozen, Inspected Again, Packaged, Inspected Again, Paackaged again, put in controlled refrigerated cargo trucks to be dispersed across a controlled amount of grocery stores, placed on shelves by workers and is now under surveillance by a security department within that grocery store.
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.
It is much cheaper to brew beer than buy it in Australia. A carton of 24 is about $50, a $18 kit will make 60 cans worth.
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.Oh totally. But not economical.
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.
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
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/
Thank you for your answer!
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)
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.
In my very limited experience that chickens can be really chicken brained. I saw owners showing off their permanent scars when a chicken had a random idea to pick at them… I bet it is depends on the breed and the owner also.
Very true. A fox got ours and it was really traumatic. They all had names and were so sweet.
$5 is selling at a loss at this point.
Yeah, that’s why I wanted to know the real cost.
How much actual loss we are talking about?Idk I’d estimate a dollar or two. If they sold it at not a loss it would be $10 but they likely pay near $5 per chicken. The storefront usually doubles prices due to costs associated with the building, employees, food waste, etc.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for the answer!
I think the US government subsidizes meat for food at a rate of like 80-90%, for some perspective on the cost of mass produced store chicken
That’s a crazy high number, i don’t know if it’s that high. Volume really reduces cost, but that whole “chicken in every pot” thing was a promise. The US highly subsidizes like feed and shit making bulk production super cheap.
But the volume producers like Tyson are also growing chickens under truly horrifying conditions. Basically if they can make a breathing body fat enough to kill and strip of its disgusting feathers, that’s fine. Even if a third of them die or have to be culled because they’re covered in chemical burns from the ammonia of living in a layer of their own filth.
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.
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?
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.
I mean, what kind of chicken?
The old breeds you just release around your home, that’s it.
I was vauge, but the ones I was referencing don’t even use coops, they have their nests up in trees. And they’re quick to go to tree when they see a predator. Hawks also can’t see thru trees to know chickens are under them. I can’t stress enough how important trees are in this scenario…
Some may get eaten by predators, but that’s also one of the main reasons they stay by your property.
A hawk/eagle will 100% go to town on fenced in modern chickens. It’ll just look like a chicken exploded, some feathers and blood and that’s it.
Those chicks at the supply store are for small hobby farms. The rotisserie chicken comes from a big factory farm. That factory farm either doesn’t have to pay for chicks at all (they just breed their own), or they buy them for a fraction of the retail cost by buying them in bulk directly from suppliers.
So you’ve never heard of … eggs?
