Cost of keeping poultry?

[tnmommy]

Even with a coop made from free materials, it gets hard to break even if you need to use layer feed. I wish my girls could free range here but I'm in the burbs and I don't have a fenced yard. Yet.

 

[kglazier]

I used scrap material form my coop. I scored an unassembled metal building and salvaged the building lumber from construction scrap. The metal was very rusty but a gallon of barn red rustoleum took care of that. i buy nails from a habitat for humanity store (restore). the chicken wire was new. Search for the chicken chapel. the concept is great. I am using that idea to enlarge my coop. I found a farmer supply that sells used pallets in good condition for 2$. they give away the broken or odd sized pallets. Chickens aren't picky.
it is tough to complete with commercial poultry and egg prices. however my hens free franc much the day . You can taste the difference in the eggs. One drawback is fresh eggs don't boil as well. My coop is built from scrap but I guarantee you it's cleaner than any commercial egg production coop out there. And the chicken manure makes a great soil supplement for the garden. I've only been doing this for about 9 months. I get for eggs a day from 6 hens. I have 11 more that will begin laying in March. And I already have people offering to buy my eggs and adding their name on the waiting list

 

[tnmommy]

Wow i know,, fresh eggs make for bad boiled eggs. My deviled eggs turned into egg salad. Not that it's a bad thing, I guess...

 

[kglazier]

when an egg is first laid it has almost no air space. As time goes buy the air space inside the shell expands. the larger the air pocket , the easy to peel. Eggs keep for a long time. I set some aside for boiling.... Egg salad sandwiches are one of my favorites....

 

[nayeli]

Thanks kglazier! Your response was very helpful and gives me hope.

 

[aart]

I spent a lot of money to build my coop/run because I wanted it to function well for me and the birds...safe from predators and easy to maintain for me the keeper with some physical limitations. My goal was/is for the hens to pay for their food with egg sales.

I kept detailed track of the costs to build and now the costs to produce the eggs. Will never recoup the building costs but after 4 months I am feeding 6-8 laying hens and 2 roosters and am more than covering my feed costs with egg sales so am now mostly eating eggs for 'free'.

That will improve once the extra rooster is soup and 1-2 of the older girls finish molting (1-2 of the older girls may be molting or just low production)....but will be offset again with some chicks in early spring that will replace the older layers in the fall. It's all about balance, reality and the cycle of life.

To answer your original question.... Yes, I think that most people on this forum keep chickens as pets rather than for food production...or they just go into it with illusions of a romantic fad before thinking it thru and end up disappointed.

 

[Mtn Laurel]

I wouldn't be so quick to judge a book by its cover or the cost of a coop by its appearance. Many recycle and reuse and that doesn't necessarily mean that the end product won't look far more expensive than it really was.

Every window in my coop was free, recycled from a friend who does home renovations. We saved them for a year before we had enough. The more free windows we used = the less lumber we had to buy. The tin roof = free, too. A roofer friend gave it to us, it has a few cosmetic dings so he couldn't use it for a home. The siding boards were from Craigslist, a steal from a local man who has a sawmill and too much inventory. They were odd sizes but we made it work. A good bit of our initial 4 x 4's and 2 x 4's were left over from decking projects that we had done. Yes, we did have to buy some stuff, batten boards, extra 2 x 4's and 4 x 4's, and hardware. The hardware was the most expensive but that's where we chose to spend our money as we didn't want to compromise on security. The end result is we have a coop that looks far more expensive than it really was.

A hobby? Yes and no. I have them primarily for our personal use of their eggs. I feel that their eggs are better for us as I know how the birds were treated and what they're eating. I personally enjoy interacting with the chickens so I guess in some ways it could be considered a hobby in the same fashion that having a dog or cat or parrot would be considered a hobby.

Cost effective? I doubt it. In my case, I can't free range due to poultry regulations in my area so I must provide them with more feed than those who can free-range. Regulations also prohibit me from selling eggs and from processing birds for meat on my property. I really enjoy gifting eggs to friends and neighbors and I also use them for barter. However, for me to eat them as meat birds I'd have to haul them to another county and pay to have them processed. So, no, not cost effective for me to do that.

Does it matter? Absolutely not. We're doing something that we enjoy and are providing our family with both the experience and knowledge of raising chickens and having fresh eggs. In our case, that experience and knowledge is now being passed down to the third generation. That's all a big plus and is worth its weight in gold. If you factored that into cost effectiveness, we'd then be way ahead.

Some things in life can't be measured in dollars and cents only. For some of us, raising chickens is one of those things and that's positively okay.

 

[nayeli]

I understand many of you feel somewhat strongly on the issue and I understand their is more to it than just monetary. I am willing to pay more for organic, free range eggs and chickens and I like to know they are treated humanely. At the same point if the costs are substantial as in $10 eggs etc then I would rather buy eggs from a local farmer and get other animals for homesteading.

 

[aart]

'Growing your own', no matter what you're 'growing', to save money has always been a fallacy.

There's a book called, 'The $64 Tomato'.....you should read it.
It's a humorous, realistic account of growing your own.

 

[nayeli]

aart, I have to respectfully disagree with you. I can get seeds for .25 each near me assuming I get cucumber seeds and grow one cucumber I have already made back my money. My aunts raise chickens and they free range them so they don't have to provide feed and their house came with a chicken coop. For them raising chickens is very economical since their only investment was the chickens themselves. My situation is different and I see many people on here that do spend a lot which is why I'm asking the costs that people on here have incrued.