Decreasing Costs

[Chicken_overlord]

Hello!
I wanted to ask all of the seasoned chicken keepers out there if they had any suggestions on lowering costs? I don't necessarily want to make money, but I would like to keep the amount of money I'm spending per dozen eggs that my chickens produce less than what I would spend for a dozen at the grocery store, if possible. I'm not counting costs of coop and run build. Those were my own personal hobby projects, haha.

Currently, I have 7 pullets (2 buff orpington, schijndelaar, easter egger, welsummer, deathlayer, and speckled sussex). Only my speckled sussex has not begun laying. I also have a buff orpington rooster. I'm averaging about 3 eggs a day right now.

They're in a 4x8 coop with a 140 square foot run. They get free range time in the late afternoon when I'm home to supervise, but with it being winter there's not much for them to eat in the fields. They're on Hearty Hen 18% with free choice oyster shells and I give them some scratch in the mornings

Any help would be appreciated!.

 

[DobieLover]

Because you have a cockerel in your flock, you shouldn't be feeding a layer mix. You could feed them a good quality chick starter crumble or All Flock or a combination of what you might be able to find at your local feed store. Do you have a feed mill nearby? I stopped buying from TSC and purchase exclusively from my local feed mill. I get a bag of broiler mash at 22% protein and a bag of starter grower crumble at 18% protein. I ferment the broiler mash and feed it to them in a heated dog bowl. By purchasing from the feed mill I have reduced my feed cost by about 40%

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi, welcome to the forum! Glad you joined!

One traditional way to reduce costs is to allow them to forage for a significant part of their food. You mention they free range later is the day. The better the quality of that range the better. Different grasses and other plants, any seeds are great, and whatever creepy crawlies they can catch. Your limiting them to a certain time of the day reduces this benefit.

Can you grow food for them? That may be certain grains, greens, or other garden type foods.

Kitchen or garden wastes are often a good source for extra food. Some people make arrangements to pick up food wastes from restaurants or such. That may be more volume that you could handle.

In all of this you want them to have a balanced diet. Many people think they have to have an artificially high protein diet to do well. I don't agree. They thrived for thousands of years before they were domesticated by foraging. After they were domesticated they thrived on small farms on what they could forage. You can't raise chickens that are going to win a chicken show on a forage diet, that does require a special diet. But they can thrive on a lower protein diet. Since mine forage for a lot of their food I can't micromanage their protein intake anyway.

 

[K0k0shka]

You need egg production breeds if you want maximum output for minimum input. Orpingtons and other heritage breeds don't lay as much, so you'll get fewer eggs and each egg will be proportionately more expensive. If you want to pay less per egg produced, get yourself high yield breeds that were created specifically for this job, and replace them every 2 years or so.

 

[Chicken_overlord]

Thank you all for the advice and welcome! I didn't even think of trying a feed mill. There's one an hour and a half away from where I live, so I'm not sure that would end up saving me much money because of the drive. I'll have to to ask around and see if there's somewhere else closer.

I can also start setting aside my kitchen scraps to feed them. I'm sure the girls would enjoy it. I would like to free-range more often, but we have a pair of hawks that frequent our backyard and the fields around us so I worry about the chickens. My rooster is a gentle giant and not at all a fighter and I can't imagine him taking on a predator. He'd be the first to run for it, haha. We also have weasels, fox, coyote, skunk, and racoon so I really only let them out when I'm around to kinda keep an eye on them.

I know the breeds I chose weren't high production breeds, but I chose them for their docile personalities, broodiness (I want to be able to sustain my own flock), and dual-purpose (orpington and sussex). I have minimal bullying in my flock and that's been very, very enjoyable. Any suggestions for docile high production breeds? My past experiences have usually been negative with them (aggressive and flighty).

Eventually, I also would like to sell orpington and colored layer hatching eggs/chicks which I'm hoping will help lower costs. I know I won't ever make money off my flock, I was just hoping to keep the cost lower than the supermarkets. It would also help the hubby get a little more excited about the chickens

Thank you again for the advice!

 

[K0k0shka]

I was just hoping to keep the cost lower than the supermarkets

The way things are going... That may not be very hard to do!

 

[Mrs. K]

The easiest way to reduce your costs, is to reduce the size of your flock. Less chickens take less feed.

As for foraging, it will depend on where you are. I am a rancher, mine have a huge number of acres available to them, BUT in western SD prairie, I really only see a change in feed consumption in the months of May, June and July - really by the end of July, they need more commercial feed. That time of year here, our insects are really in their adult form, not near enough protein.

Different climates, different rain, different plants, freeze dates all will affect foraging. If your option of free range is a backyard, planted to Kentucky blue grass, it is going to be even less.

I have sprouted grain making fodder, once things green up, this is a waste of time, but in the dead of winter, pretty good. I have always fed all kitchen waste to the chickens except potato and onion peelings, or coffee grinds and citrus peels.

However, I just saw eggs for $8.75 a dozen...Kokoshaka is right.

Mrs k

 

[FrostRanger]

However, I just saw eggs for $8.75 a dozen...Kokoshaka is right.

Yikes! I thought eggs here were expensive at almost 5 bucks a dozen here for the cheapest brand. Ignoring costs of my coop and birds, even with production being low on my eggs are still coming at 3 something a dozen. At their peak over the summer my costs worked out to maybe a buck and a half per dozen. Again, I am only really accounting for food costs. If I took into account the costs for buying chicks last year (100 bucks) and expanding my setup (maybe 400 bucks) and other odds and ends my actual costs would be higher

Best ways I can think of to cut down on recurring costs (which is what you seem to be most concerned about) is to prevent your birds from wasting food, grit and oyster shell. How I cut down waste with my own birds is by switching to pelleted feed which I found with my birds at least, is even if some gets wasted it usually ends up getting eaten by someone eventually anyways. Depending on your individual birds, you might have to play around with feeders, mine do fine with bucket port feeders which absolutely don't work for everyone especially if rodents are an issue. Thankfully the local cat population keeps the rodents away here but if I didn't have them I'd probably be looking at other options. I also found that taking those tiny cheap dollar store pails and attaching them to a post works great for preventing them from wasting grit and oyster shell. If you have a garden, you can toss your birds your weeds (provided of course you aren't using anything toxic in your garden) which will in addition to giving them something to eat in addition to their feed will give them some entertainment too

 

[Mrs. K]

Not wasting feed is a very good point. I take down the days feed. I check it at night, if a lot left over, I feed less, all gone, I feed a bit more the next day. I use big flat rubber bins to feed in.

If you don’t over feed, they will clean it up. If you overfeed, they will tread it into the dirt and often times this is a big contributor to smell.

 

[NatJ]

They're on Hearty Hen 18% with free choice oyster shells and I give them some scratch in the mornings

Check how much the scratch costs compared to the other feed, and how much nutrition is provides (usually carbohydrates with little protein). You might save money by completely skipping the scratch.

I agree with other posters about giving kitchen scraps. You can also poke around in the back corners of your cupboards and see if there is any food you never will eat. Expired food is usually still safe to feed to chickens. Scraps and pantry clean-outs are not likely to provide a balanced diet by themselves, but they could easily replace the calories the chickens are currently getting from scratch. Depending on what scraps come from your kitchen, they might provide useful amounts of other nutrients as well, or they might not. But if the chickens eat about the same amount of their main feed as they did before, and you no longer buy scratch, you will be saving a little money on a regular basis.