Reading this now, a year and a bit after it was posted, I had a good chuckle.
Egg prices have gone up quite a bit in that time!
Of course all the other reasons to keep chickens apply regardless of what happens to egg prices. But "can buy cheap eggs" is not nearly as true now as it was when this thread was started.
Egg prices have gone up, that is true. But I also know that my feed costs are almost 50% higher than a few years ago. I built my chicken coop before wood prices went through the roof, but if I built a chicken coop today with the same materials I did 4 years ago, I would expect it would cost me hundreds of dollars, if not more, in material costs alone.
Last week I was in town and saw a prefab 4X4 foot chicken coop selling for $1,299.99! A similar prefab coop was selling for about $399.99 4 years ago, and I thought it was overpriced at that time!
The cost of tools I used to build my coop have increased by at least 30% over a few years ago. I'm sure glad I bought my stuff years ago. Not too many good deals these days.
There was a period of time, during the COVID-19 lockdown, that you could not buy eggs at our local stores. I still had fresh eggs every morning, and even enough to sell our extra eggs to friends that were buying our eggs before the lockdown. So, Dear Wife and I rode out the local egg shortages without any problems. That was nice.
Eggs are now selling for about $2.00 per dozen at the stores. My point remains that starting a backyard flock to get "cheap eggs" is still probably not a good idea for most people. I think it costs me more than $2.00 per dozen eggs to buy feed alone for my chickens. Add to that, the cost of building and maintaining a chicken coop, run, and everything else, the cost of a homegrown dozen eggs is probably way north of that $2.00 per dozen at the store.
Obviously, I find other reasons to keep a backyard flock than just "cheap eggs." I harvest hundreds of dollars worth of chicken run compost every spring, summer and fall for my food gardens. I get more value out of my chicken run compost than my eggs. But I also get personal value out of having chickens because I like raising them. There are lots of good reasons to have a backyard flock, but cheap eggs are low on my list - even though egg prices are much higher today.
I often get asked why I even bother to have a small backyard flock of laying hens when you can go to WalMart today and buy a dozen of Extra Large eggs for only 73 cents!?
