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Wow thats alot! I guess I am looking into more along the lines of people in the city/suburbs raising at max maybe 15 hens (or like me, just 4). but all info helps. Thanks!
He's right though, even with a small flock from a purely money standpoint 99% of the time it will not be cheaper than buying eggs in the store -- even the "expensive" store bought eggs. Actually, in a small flock it's probably less likely to be cost effective than in a large flock. Just generally speaking people with small flocks tend to "baby" their chickens more, see them as pets, spend more money on treats, etc. They also are less likely to be able to take advantage of cost savings by buying supplies -- feed, bedding, etc -- in bulk. The labor per chicken per day also increases. It takes the same amount of time per day, for instance, to fill one waterer for 4 chickens as it does to fill one waterer for 20 chickens.
It's an easy enough figure to come up with though, with a little math, if you want cold hard numbers to work with. And, all that said, if you stick to the bare bones and use frugal cost estimates (from cheaper areas of the country, store brand feeds, etc) you may be able to make at least a weak argument for your cause. Just playing with some numbers here...
Lets say the average hen will consume 1/4 to 1/2 cup of feed per day. I'm going to make an educated guesstimate that commercial feed will probably come out to about 2 cups per lb. So, the average hen will eat 1/8 to 1/4 of a lb of feed per day. Commercial feed in a 50 lb bag averages $11 - $16 (obviously not organic). Using those numbers the average hen would cost 2.7 to 8 cents per day to feed. Or $0.82 to $2.43 per hen, per month.
Aside from this you have bedding costs. I would figure 1-2 bales of pine shavings at 5-8 dollars per bale, per month, per flock. So $5 - $16 per month divided by the number of chicks in the theoretical flock would equal your per hen cost of bedding. For a four chicken flock that would be $1.25 - $4.00 per hen per month.
Water costs should also be included. I live rurally and don't pay for water so I had to do a quick Google but came up with an estimate of $0.27 to $0.65 cents per gallon depending on the U.S. city. I would estimate a water usage of no less than 1/2 gallon per hen, per day when you consider the water they consume, the water used for washing equipment and eggs, etc. So $0.13 - $0.33 per hen per day or $3.95 - $10.04 per hen per month for water.
These are bare minimums. Most families will also have electrical usage costs to figure in -- at the very least in the chick stage when heat lamps are used. In northern climates electricity is often used during winter for running heated waterers or heated water bases as well. I'm not going to get into those though.
So, adding the above bare minimums together you have $6.02 - 16.47 per hen per month.
Hens will usually provide 15-30 eggs monthly depending on age, breed, environment, etc. with the lower end of that range being more common for backyard flocks. Or 1.25 - 2.5 dozen eggs per hen, per month.
Now if we divide our costs by our estimated egg production you come up with $2.41 - $13.17 per dozen of eggs. And to stress one more time, at the bare minimum. The $2.41 may not seem too bad at first glance but it's important to remember that figure is an ultimate ideal and highly, HIGHLY unlikely to be accomplished by backyard chicken keepers. Keeping chickens on a small scale for the eggs and the eggs alone is just not cost effective under the grand majority of circumstances.
