Parront
Crossing the Road
X's 2 on the expensive Backyard eggs. Backyard meat is even more expensive. The cockerels of the laying breeds and even the traditional "dual purpose" breeds are just a by-product of keeping hens for eggs and hatching more hens! Chicken used to be a more expensive meal in those days, something for a nice dinner on Sunday. Cornish-X meat birds have changed chicken into the cheapest meat you can eat. Us backyarders can never compete on price! Good eating, free from any anitbiotics, fed what I wanted to feed them. I enjoy eating my young cockerels, even if they are not as feed-effeceint. I give some as gifts to my friends and neighbors, but I know I will not make money having them. They are a very entertaining hobby.Good you are asking questions and doing the math first.
I'm currently doing what you are sort of hinting at, you can see my flock below. I set 12 eggs for incubation every three weeks (plus a few days), get between 6-9 hatchings on average recently, 50% are male, so I can take two birds a week for my wife and I to eat and maintain flock numbers. More than half my flock is under laying age, so in spite of having 50+ birds, I get only 10 eggs a day or so right now. (that WILL change shortly - I hatched ducks between Feb and April, so I'm in a lull as I wait for birds to age up) We eat a dozen or so a week, allow for an "extra" dozen every third week for incubation, and suddenly you aren't generating even two flats a week for sale. Lucky to cover feed costs, certainly no profit in it - and that's before considering licensing, equipment, advertising, LLC formation, or any of the other things you might do to build a business.
This comes out of my entertainment budget, and is part of a long term investment I'm making in my acres. So as you work out your budget, you shold also consider your time scale, and the maximum size of your potential investment.
Backyard chickens are the most expensive eggs you will ever eat.