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Quote: I don't want to get too hung up on the accounting question. People correctly point out that they've already purchased their backyards, so why would you impute that cost to raising chickens in the backyard? That's a good point. My bias is to err on the side of strict fiscal accounting...

Quote: Not everyone has the luxury of pursuing the noble cause of losing money with their backyard flock. Nobody is suggesting that we should build industrial chicken batteries in our backyard. But, the OP has posed the reasonable question of whether it's possible to avoid losing money on a...

Quote: We are responding to the question of whether someone can make a profit raising chickens in the backyard. It's a legitimate question. In order to determine if a profit exists, you have to know two things: Your revenue and your costs. If you're selling eggs for the table, you're...

Quote: That is funny.

To get back to the OP's original question: Can the small backyard flock owner make money on his or her flock? My answer below is based on the assumption that 1) you have a real desire to make money rather than lose it and explain away your loss, and 2) you have the intellectual discipline to...

I don't think profitability kills a hobby. Going bankrupt pursuing a hobby kills a hobby. As for your car racing metaphor, there are many hundreds of thousands of tuners and hot rodders in America who build their own cars and take them to shows or go bracket racing.

Quote: The short answer is you can't count your labor as a cost. It is free. That being said if I am paid $10 an hour at my job and I take a day off without pay to work with my chickens I have to include a days pay in my expenses. But if I chose to work with my chickens instead of watch TV on...

Quote: Actually, as luck would have it, the leading laboratory for determining the "genetic fingerprint" of a bird is only about 15 miles from Greenfire Farms. I've talked to them about genetically fingerprinting some of the rarer Orpingtons. Here's their website...

Quote: All good points. A few thoughts: Dogs are typically more expensive to raise than chickens, but chickens aren't cheap to raise. Many of the expenses you cite for dogs; medical costs, housing, feed, etc. also apply to chickens. Dogs may cost five times as much as a chicken to raise...

That's really interesting about the $8.50 per dozen eggs. Sounds like someone actually calculated the real cost of raising organic eggs on a small scale.

Quote: If you want to do an apples to apples comparison between your egg costs and store-bought egg costs, don't forget to factor in land costs, insurance costs, labor costs, energy costs, pen costs, etc. I don't think there is a single American producing eggs in their backyard at a lower per...

It's great that people get some cash selling eggs and chicks, but my suggestion is that we don't define success as paying the feed bills. When Enzo Ferrari made his first supercar, he didn't price it to compete with Chevy Novas and he didn't sell it with the goal of recovering his sheet metal...

Quote: Your points are well taken. But, the cool thing about the internet and modern shipping methods is that they free us from being captives of local markets. Once you buy your breeding stock, it costs about the same to produce a leghorn egg (value: about 10¢ on the local market) as a red...

Quote: The primary purpose of chickens is something that can shift over time. The primary purpose of dogs a thousand years ago was to defend homesteads and herd animals. Secondarily, they were eaten as food in tough times. Those are not the primary purposes of dogs today. The vast majority...

Quote: You start the thread, and away we'll go....

Quote: Thanks for the nice comments. And, I agree with you: Most chicken buyers just want eggs. And, those buyers can go to Tractor Supply and buy their Super Red Bottle Rockets or whatever hybrid is being sold this year for $3 and they'll be happy. But, the problem is that the guy who has...

It's America and people are free to charge what they want for eggs and birds, and I understand that for many raising chickens is a hobby. But I would respectfully suggest that many people undervalue their birds, and the poultry community --and chickens themselves-- would benefit if sellers...

In determining whether you can make money, here's an important question: How do you price your own labor?