In a few more weeks, we’ll get our pay off. We’ll get our reward for the labor, shite shoveling, and money. We’ll get the golden egg. Yes, our first egg will be worth about $700 by my rough calculations.
Earlier this month, we bought chickens and became “urban chicken farmers” in Berkeley (another step upon the path to radical homemaking and femivorism, destinations that I will surely never reach).
The chicks themselves, just-feathered pullets, were only $15. But you need more than just chickens to get the golden egg. (So far, the chicks had been hand-raised by my friend Karyn with her young daughters; my friend assured me that she didn’t break even on the venture either.)
Factor in that we live in an urban neighborhood without benefit of a barn or animal paddock. We bought a cool coop called the Zen Hen Pen for $450. Yeah, we coulda built one out of found lumber and mesh, but who has the time?! Plus I wanted to make sure they were secure from the neighborhood beasts (cats, rats, raccoons, prostitutes). Other comparable coops are about $600 so I felt like we were getting a deal.
What goes in the coop? Organic chick feed in the heavy metal chicken feeder served with a tall helping of fresh water in a galvanized water dispenser (called a poultry fountain!). And something absorbent to serve as “litter.” Let’s call that first batch of food and equipment a round $100. As the chickens get to their laying age, we will need to supplement their diet further. Or so I hear. We haven’t done that yet.
[side note: this is where I first feel that I was duped. The pet store guy told me NOT to get wood shavings because my chicks would eat it and it would kill them. Instead he suggested corn-cob-filler. But now won't they try to eat their litter even more because its actual food?! Since then, I found a local place where I can get free wood shavings. Thank goodness.]
Our coop requires weekly tidying. At least with the stupid corn cob litter it does. When I went to clean the coop out last week, I headed to our shed and found that some rodent ate through both the bag of chicken feed and the bag of corn litter. Ugh. Next stop for me was OSH (the hardware store for urban farmers such as myself) for small metal garbage bins with tight sealing lids for the feed and litter. Plus I got gardening gloves (really cool ones) and a shovel so I’d never have to touch any chicken poop or be scared by a rat again!! Fear makes me crazy. So I threw $76 at the problem. Ahhh, much better.
Since the beginning of this month, we’ve learned a lot about our new backyard birds. We discovered our chicks like grass seed (FREE!), snails (FREE), and clover flowers in moderation (FREE) so we’re earning their trust by doling out treats when we visit them. We also discovered they don’t like to run out of water. I nearly thirsted them to death when I couldn’t figure out their fancy water contraption.
Fancy eggs at the grocery store cost about $4 a dozen. Super fancy eggs at the farmer’s market are about $8 a dozen. At least now I won’t bawk bawk bawk cluck at those prices. Our first egg will be worth $671 (plus more for oyster shell and grit so they don’t make soft eggs – ick!) (plus some more for a nesting box with straw).
In another few weeks (months?) when we start to get eggs, we should get around 3 per day. If they all start laying at the same exact day, we’ll already knock the price per egg down to about $230. At this rate, how long will it take me to get down to fancy farmer’s market prices ($.33)? I tried to calculate it and I got 13 days and I got 700 days. Help me out here.
Besides a little help with my math challenge, I’m also open to tricks and tips from other crazy chicken people.
On the bright side, after you eat that $700 egg, your other eggs will be free, right? Or cheaper at least…
(I forgot about chicken feed for a second there)
At $700 initial investment, I calculated it would take about 236 days to get the price of each egg down to .33 dollars.
I divided $700 by the number of chickens (I assumed you have three because that’s how many I see pictured) times the number of eggs per day times .33 cents.
Wow, my parents have chickens (in the city, too!) and were not nearly so kind to them. They’ve never had any special diet to prevent soft eggs and I’ve never seen them lay a soft egg. Also, we feed them table scraps (basically, the same things you’d compost–minus eggs/egg shells!) in addition to their feed to cut down on costs. Even with these cost savers, it still takes a while to break even. That said, there’s something neat about our son learning to go gather eggs at grandma’s and the whole self-reliance piece. Good luck!
Cavale, each chicken lays one egg per day (I think) and, yes, we have three. Is your answer still the same?
oh, well, in that case I get 707 days.
=O
you can use food scraps to save on feeds. we have chickens in our backyard and we feed them food scraps, also vegetable and fruit peelings (chopped finely). sometimes overripe fruits like banana which we can’t seem to finish off in the house so the overripe ones go to the chickens. feed those (overripe fruits) in the morning and clean up what they won’t finish in the afternoon to prevent rats, ants entering the coop
My friends in Felton have a custom built chicken coop out of recycled bits (i.e. stuff found at dump). Yes that requires time, energy and picking through other peoples garbage. I’d say your lovely zen chicken coop was worth it.
They put their open compost pile IN THE COOP. Which means the chicken browse through that for extras and eat the flies and what not is attracts. I’m not really recommending this, but maybe you could put your Berkeley green bin near the coop.
Congratulations on the ladies. Now you can set up some stools and watch Chicken TV. We’ll be by to see them soon!
Jen & Dalila
Yep, if you figure 33 cents times 3 is about a buck a day, then you’ve got about 700 days until you’re back to square one. 365.25 days in a year means just under two years until you have cheaper eggs, but that will depend on how much you have to keep spending on supplies over the next two years and beyond.
How does the whole rooster-thing work? (I grew up in the city.)
No roosters inside Berkeley city limits. That’s the rule.
Also, if we’re looking at about 700 days before payoff, we’ll probably need to factor in some chicken feed. And a second pair of gloves!
I love backyard chickens! I’ve got 3 hens, plus 5 ducks – all are excellent layers (entirely dependent on the breed selected – I have Rhode Island Red chickens and Welsh Harlequin ducks). If you’re buying organic chicken feed, it’s very difficult to break even, as it is incredibly expensive (for us it’s $30/50 lb vs. $14/50 lb for a non-organic, no antibiotic feed). People that raise backyard chickens don’t tend to do it because it saves money, but for the pleasure of knowing where your eggs came from, and providing a humane home for egg layers. To save you some money, chickens love most everything composty, including melon rinds, corn on the cob, and tomatoes (the favorites in my yard). You can also give them scratch (cracked corn and wheat), or just dried corn as a supplement, which is often cheaper than the feed. Have fun!
But this undertaking was not intended to save you money on groceries, was it?
Good point! I hope not. Perhaps it was to replace “triathlon” as my new money-sucking hobby.
Congratulations on the chickens! We’ve been keeping chickens here in Berkeley for a couple years now and they’re really pretty easy and low-maintenance once things get rolling. We don’t give them supplements or food add-ins – just basic chicken feed from Mike’s Feed in Hayward and table scraps. And if you’re the only chicken owner in your group of friends be prepared to become a toddler and young child magnet. Little ones love visiting chickens!
FYI, in our experience each chicken lays 5-7 eggs per week. Which is to say generally one a day but sometimes they skip a day.
Where did you get your chickens? We’re in the market for one more and we’ve only been able to find the teeny chicks. While they’re darn cute I’m not sure I have the bandwidth to coddle another little mouth right now so I’d be happy to get teenagers like you have.
Congrats on your chickens!!! $15!!!! im sorry you paid so much for your pullets. i sell chickens in their first days of laying for $10.
I would like to have chickens but have no backyard. So I will gladly pay you top dollar for some of those eggs!
You California hippies and your city chickens.
I grew up with a large coop, roosters, and a variety of hens. (20 or so I think, less if we had varmit trouble) In the country, on an organic veggie farm. I guess that makes me a country hippie.
We fed ours table scraps or what would have been composted. We were mostly vegetarian so it worked well. We did some oyster meal if we needed to, but that was rare if I remember correctly.
I will tell you what my mom told me when I was a kid. If you go in like you own the egg, they won’t bother you when you’re trying to get it. I never believed her, but it may work for you.
We have 13 hens, 2 roosters, and 2 ducks. We buy the laying crumbles and scratch from Wal-Mart and it is around $10-11 a bag. But we are in Nevada and your Wal-Marts might not carry it. It took about 7 months from the time we bought them as chicks to the time they started laying. We have a variety of breeds so some take longer to start laying. We love it though. We get between 5 and 12 eggs a day and sell them for $2 a dozen so now we are starting to earn money rather than pay it out. Congrats! Hope you enjoy them!
woo! good job…
well, it’s cheaper than the eggloo….
I can’t wait to get my own house so that i can get chickens!!!
The $671 egg, ain’t that the truth. We started raising chicks, too. We have 6 chicks (ranging from 3.5-6 weeks old right now) in rural Lawrence, KS (The Berkeley of Kansas, really). My husband has been diligently working away on the designer coop and run… and it just keeps adding up. We *did* start with scrap lumber and other scrap stuff, but we had to buy new supplies, too. Chickens: ~$15, Food: ~$25, Lamps/Feeders/Waterers: ~$35, Home Depot Bill: $593.41. We’ll be able to switch to the less expensive chick feed in a few weeks (not medicated) so… that’ll help…. not.
Also… more of my rookie two cents, when they get to laying age, or around 18 weeks, you can feed them the laying crumbles/pellets which have calcium in them. I don’t know if you’re going organic, but some of our local chicken ladies suggested Purina Mills Layena. http://poultry.purinamills.com/OURPRODUCTS/Products/Layena/default.aspx And the husband read somewhere that if you get the pellet food, they’ll get more rounded nutrition, because they have to eat everything in the pellet and not get to pick and choose. I don’t know much about what the crumbles look like. Have you been reading the “My Pet Chicken” and “Backyard Chickens” websites?
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Thank goodness for those gardening gloves. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to have my own chickens and eggs. I am a renter. But it’s nice to have a realistic sense of the start up costs. Here from Healthy Child carnival.
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Thank you for the great info, we are going to venture into this next year!
I have urban backyard chickens in Rochester, NY. 11 hens in all (number 12 turned out to be a rooster, still trying to find him a home!)
I grow lots of my own veggies and help on a CSA farm, so I have lots of vegetable scraps and less-than-ideal produce to toss the ladies. This cuts down on the feed they eat, which is excellent because I grind my own organic grain blend (plus supplements like kelp meal and cultured yeast) for them and it’s pricey, both money-wise and labor-wise.
If you don’t have access to lots of produce like I do, often grocery stores will let you take some wilty or slightly spent vegetables for free (just ask in the back). This makes a great addition to what your hens can forage (for the most part they’re not picky), and makes their eggs better as well.
I totally hear you about that $700 egg… Mine are due to start laying any time now. It had better be delicious, that’s all I’m saying.
Love this post. And I’m more than a little in love with that chicken coop. We keep toying with the idea of a backyard flock, but I freak out at the thought of losing one to a neighborhood critter. So for now I buy the farmers’ market eggs (thankfully “only” $4/dozen here in western New York).
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I am also here from Healthy Child Healthy World. Wow! I knew raising backyard chickens could get expensive, but was not expecting that! I am considering getting them next year, but am hoping to utilize some free friend labor and advice so maybe it won’t be so bad. So… how are you going to consume that first $700 egg?
I want chickens so bad! But we rent in an apartment complex- there’s no way we’d be allowed to have them!
A local farmer here asks his patrons to return the shells to him when they’re done so that he can feed them to the chickens to strengthen the shells. So, once you start getting some eggs you’ll be able to stop the oyster shell. Probably not a huge savings there, though.
A farmer friend of ours doesn’t feed his chickens at all in the spring/summer/fall. He just lets them run around and eat all the bugs they want. Of course, because it IS a full farm, there are probably more bugs and random seeds laying around than in the average back yard.
@Brenna, I eat an egg every morning for breakfast so that seems like the most ceremonial way.
welcome to the crazy (non-cost effective) world of raising chickens! just wait until one goes broody on you and decides to stop laying, and, in her attempts to steal eggs from the other hens, breaks the eggs that are laying in the coop. that’s LOADS of fun. yes, we have 5 chickens (three adults, 2 teenagers) and still have to buy eggs from the farmer’s market. sigh. but the kids adore them!
we feed ours most of our compost scraps. chickens can’t have berries, but other that that, you’re pretty safe.
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Hmm. I have chickens in the city but it certainly didn’t cost me anywhere near that amount. I work for a charity, so if I spent that much on a chicken coop my wife would make me move in it. our current “aviary” is about 11′x6′ and it was there when I bought the house, but I pretty much rebuilt it mostly by using scrap wood and stuff like that. I paid $10 for a used metal screendoor on craigslist, and maybe $100 total for lumber. I thatched the roof with palm leaves that were free so they have some decent shade in the summer. our 7 hens have been laying for half a year now and I really don’t think it’s costing us much more than if we bought the eggs. They get a lot of our food scraps, garden waste and sometimes freerange in the backyard and eat up the crickets. That cuts down on our garbage and also on the amount of feed.
it cost me $30 to put together an automatic watering system with watering nipples (and have enough parts left over to build 5 more systems).
I doubt the hens really care if their coop looks fancy… their main interest is filling their crop and dustbathing.
What happens to the grass underneath the cage? Do you still water that lawn? In your video you said something about putting the hens back in their coop. Do you have to put them back in, or do the hens go in/out as they wish? What are the best egg layers?
@ June, So many good questions.
The grass underneath is totally crap now. We have just let it go, don’t water it either.
We do not have to put them in their coop. We were silly silly novice chicken owners then. The hens will return to the enclosure in the evening and head to the coop (raised portion) to sleep on their roosts (pole thingie) without our help.
Of our three varieties, the Rhode Island Red was the best layer. But you should do some research because there are many kinds of chickens. Also, the blue eggs are fun.
I am considering raising backyard chickens for eggs. Researching I ended up on this bog. I have gotten more info and laugh and support from reading this blog than from any other info web page out there. thank you for bringing this amazing subject to open discussion.
in any event, I used to raise pretty birds only for pretty. the feed was killing me so i decided to sell them up. Now i am considering raising chicks for eggs. We are thinking in moving into a farm away from the city. I figure if we start now in our backyard we would be experience enough when we reach the farm.
good luck and hoping you are still getting eggs.
It’s been 2 years since this post. Any updates on your chickens? Do you still have them? What are the best lessons learned now that you are no longer a chicken rookie?
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