hello!

[imcoryy]

hello!

i was thinking about raising 3 or 4 chickens, id have more eggs than i know what to do with. so i gave my dad a call since he has some previous experience. while talking to my dad he brought up the idea of selling eggs, so i started to think, 12 chickens. if a chicken lives for five years and they lay eggs after a year and i sell a dozen eggs for $3 thats $1,008 a year, provided i sell a dozen eggs a day. the cost of a coop would be about $100, each chicken is say $5 a bag of feed ever month is about $10 as well as wood chips to clean their pen is also about $10. thats 240 for the feed and bedding a year. so for the first year im looking at about $400 to get set up. so after the second year (remember they dont lay eggs the first year) id make $360, every year after that id make about $770. plus chicken keep bugs away from the house and their poop makes for a good fertilizer (which i would use to garden). free eggs, low maintenance birds and a profit? sounds good to me. if you raise chickens or have experience can you tell me how it is and confirm if it is like this?

also i was thinking about setting up a little coop in the back yard for them to run around in. i wouldnt get 12 right away id stick with two to see how it is. i was going to use some sort of protecting sealant to help keep the coop clean. my goal is to get my eggs for free and maybe make a little money on the side.

also, can i play with the chickens? ive never had experience with them so i dont know how friendly they are but id want to pet them. are they like owning a large bird? oh and sorry if the top paragraph is a little out of context, i posted that on another forum but it was no help, so im bringing my questions here.

thanks guys!
cory

 

[matt44644]

Your feed cost will be more than $10 a month for 12 chickens.

 

[sdm111]

IMO great you crunched the numbers and have a business plan but that's for a perfect world. If I were you since you have no experience rearing chickens don't even put the profit into the equation. See if you can sustain with absolutely no money coming in from egg sales. If that's doable then the rewards that are possible down the line are more enjoyable. If you can't sustain u may want to start with only a couple hens and grow. IMO with your numbers now you should quadruple your feed costs at least double any construction costs and reduce your profits to a quarter if not taken completely off the table. I know that sounds extreme but it's better to be over prepared than to find out later all the unforeseen expenditures that pop up.
If u start it as just a hobby the egg sales will come in time but I believe it'll take at least a couple yrs to get going. Best of luck to you and the good part is that eventually when people start buying your eggs u will have returning customers basically for as long as you keep supplying.

 

[BantamLover21]

I'm glad you joined us!

In a perfect world, your plan might work. However, raising chickens isn't usually as profitable (at least in terms of money) as might be thought, especially for a beginner chicken raiser. Still, it wouldn't hurt to give a chicken business a try. You might make money, or at least make back your money, and you'd have an entertaining flock, fertilizer, and pest control.

The best way to succeed with chickens is to do careful research before you get them. Learn about feeding, housing, disease management, and egg laying. All of that knowledge should aid you in raising a healthy flock of productive hens.

The Learning Center is an informative place to begin: Learning Center Articles

 

[Wyandottes7]

Welcome to BYC!

It's great that you want to try to make money with chickens! But, it usually doesn't work that well. Twelve hens will not lay 12 eggs every day. For part of the year, they will be molting and not laying at all. Twelve hens will probably eat more than one bag of feed in a month, and feed prices tend to vary from month to month as well. I would suspect that a coop will cost more than 100 dollars- building my coop for four hens took nearly 1,000 dollars.

That isn't to say that you shouldn't try, however! Chickens can be very rewarding, even if you don't really make a profit.

Good luck in your adventures!

 

[BantamFan4Life]

Welcome to BYC!

 

[imcoryy]

well my plan was to start with just two or three hens and go from their. i wanted to get what is it a rhode island red? that is unless you know of a better egg layer. i was planning on feeding them cracked corn and to give them crushed oyster shells for calcium and their crop, id also feed them just some table scraps if they would eat them.

what other tips could you guys give a new aspiring chicken owner? what if i bought one peep down at the store and just kinda kept it in my house lol? could i do that? i honestly dont eat that many eggs. id buy it...i guess you could call it "a long Tupperware bin/storage container" and fill that with wood shavings so it could roost in my room at night and id just let it go outside during the day. so it would be more of a pet than anything. can you do this with a chicken or is this wishful thinking?

my house is usually warm i live in fl so my house never drops below 75 (i also own a macaw so i try to keep her warm) so i was thinking if i did do this all id have to really do is supply a heat lamp for the chick until it grew. well give or take a few more things.

oh and thank you too everyone welcoming me!

thank you guys for helping me with the prices, i started thinking of this as a way to save a little money and help me pay for med school. since you guys know a little more than me what could i realistically look at making as far as money as concerned? i live in a so i was going to post up a sign in the front yard for eggs. if eggs wouldnt be too profitable to help limit the amount of eggs in my house what if i only had six hens buying two at a time spaced about 6 months apart to help with the molting cycles and such.

sorry if things are slightly out of order here, my minds a little foggy due to a lack of sleep.

 

[Book Em Danno25]

 

[Kelsie2290]

Hello and Welcome To BYC! Be sure to check out the articles in the Learning Center, it has several nice articles on general costs and what you need to raise/keep chickens https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-backyard-chickens

People do keep chickens as house pets https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/299187/people-with-house-chickens

RIR are good layers, for brown egg layers the Red or Black sex links are probably the best. People who keep birds like the sex links strictly for eggs, usually cull them when they go into their second molt... replacing 1/2 to 1/3 of their hens every year since it is cheaper to replace them raising up a new better laying pullet than to feed them through the molt and because chickens lay fewer eggs as they age.
Laying hens especially will need better feed than cracked corn to lay eggs well, corn is too low in protein and is not a balanced diet for them, most complete Layer feeds or All Age feeds will cost about twice what corn alone does in the area if that is what you were basing feed costs on.

 

[imcoryy]

Hello

and Welcome To BYC! Be sure to check out the articles in the Learning Center, it has several nice articles on general costs and what you need to raise/keep chickens https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-backyard-chickens

People do keep chickens as house pets https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/299187/people-with-house-chickens

RIR are good layers, for brown egg layers the Red or Black sex links are probably the best. People who keep birds like the sex links strictly for eggs, usually cull them when they go into their second molt... replacing 1/2 to 1/3 of their hens every year since it is cheaper to replace them raising up a new better laying pullet than to feed them through the molt and because chickens lay fewer eggs as they age.
Laying hens especially will need better feed than cracked corn to lay eggs well, corn is too low in protein and is not a balanced diet for them, most complete Layer feeds or All Age feeds will cost about twice what corn alone does in the area if that is what you were basing feed costs on.

i was also going to give it table scraps to help supplement its diet. i eat a lot of rice, veggies and chicken. would it be okay to feed them chicken? seems a little morbid. also thank you ill have to look into a higher quality of feed! it seems i have much to learn!