Can someone expand upon whether or not raising chickens for eggs is cheaper than going to the store?
If I buy a dozen eggs once a week at a store, that’s about $10 a month for eggs.
It costs less than $10 a month to raise 2 chickens (including initial outlay)?
Basically, no. It’s not cheaper to raise chickens at home than to purchase factory farmed eggs. How could it be? You have to buy/build a hutch and protect them from predators and feed them and clean up after them and maybe call the chicken vet a few times. You’ll lose them to raccoons or snakes or coyotes or foxes or local dogs or hawks and need to replace them. They get old and you need to replace them. They’ll lay less in the winter, the little clucking freeloaders, and you might need to buy eggs anyway. (note that only two chickens is cutting it close if you want a doz/week. You might get it, and you might not.)
If you were already buying free-range organic eggs @ $5/doz, you might consider it economical though. Because bear in mind, that’s what you’re actually producing. Some people sell a few to neighbors, if they have extra.
People do it because they consider it fun and like the idea of being a little more self-sustaining. Buying canned tomatoes is also cheaper than growing your own (especially when you’re a beginner and suck at it), but people still garden.
That’s fine, I’m not asking about the fun of raising your own chickens, or the joy people get from it. Just some posters above said that store-bought being “cheaper” was debatable. Just curious on what was “debatable” about it.
It debateable because it depends
a. Whether or not you already pay ~$5/doz for free range organic eggs, as I stated in my reply. Comparing like product to like product, its somewhat economical if you can sell your extras.
This is related to
b. Whether you put any monetary value on ethics of production. Some people do, some people don’t.
I wouldn’t say it’s cheaper. In the summer, my hens cost almost nothing to feed, as they free-range around the property eating grasshoppers and spiders and dandelions (even the occasional mouse). There aren’t enough bugs to sustain them in the winter, though, and I probably spend $20/month for chicken feed dec-march. I have 6 hens.
If we didn’t keep chickens, I’d buy eggs from my neighbors, where I know the hens are kept in humane conditions. Factory egg are just unacceptable. I won’t support that. My neighbors charge $3/dozen for eggs. I get an average of 4 eggs a day in summer, 3 in winter. Call it 9 dozen eggs a month. So, $27 dollars worth of eggs for almost free in summer, about about $20/mo in winter. This doesn’t include coop construction, for which we used mostly scrap lumber. We have maybe $75 in the coop, a one time cost.
It’s financially worth it for us, but I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t like having chickens around. They’re great though, wouldn’t be without them.
Sounds like a pretty good deal. Also, I didn’t know chickens ate mice?!
Either you’re mis-using "ipso facto"or you lack a suitable amount of appreciation for human ingenuity and creativity.
Moreover, city councils that have allowed limited backyard chicken-keeping generally are reflecting the fact that more people in their jurisdiction want to keep chickens than want to prevent their neighbors from doing so.
I didn’t know Silkies come in a bantam version! Does it have the extra toe like regular Silkies? Does it have the docile Silkie temperament, or the bantam Napoleon complex? 
Could you enliven this thread with pics of your new acquisitions, please?
I don’t know about how incapacitated rabbits are from myxo (their sense of hearing & smell and their whiskers should at least partially make up for the lack of eyesight) but I imagine sleeping, caged animals make super-easy prey compared to even blinded creatures who are otherwise still awake, alert, and free to take off running at any moment.
Do you mind posting a pic of how you’ve arranged this, please?
The reasons I keep chickens;
1; they help keep the tick population down, they’re not as effective as guinea fowl, but they’re also quieter
2; they eat other undesirable insects and bugs
3; they keep the ornamental shrubbery free of leaf litter
4; they clean up lawn clippings
5; they till/turn over the garden in the fall while looking for food
6; they dispose of kitchen scraps
7; they have all the fresh grass, clover, and other lawn/hay field greenery they can cram down their crop
Look at all the free food they get!
8; their old bedding produces excellent compost
9; shed/molted feathers are great for tying fishing flies with
10; they provide entertainment watching their antics
And finally;
11; they provide me with the most phenomenally delicious and healthy eggs I’ve ever had, and I know exactly what went into them, more importantly, what DIDN’T go into them, and that the flock is raised humanely and they are happy
Forgot to add;
Commercial feed for my flock is about $35 for a 50# bag of cracked corn and a 50# bag of layer pellets, and these will last 3-4 months or more, as the flock prefers to free range and browse
And since I have two bantam roosters, both hatched from the same clutch of eggs and fathered by the same rooster, my flock should be self sustaining
One rooster is pure bantam Cochin, the other is a Silkie/Cochin cross
And yes, that means the eggs have the potential to be fertile, I scrambled up a couple yesterday, one was fertile (Buff Orpington), the other one wasn’t (Partridge Plymouth Rock)
In the pics linked below, we have two eggs, the left one is from my backyard hens, the right is a “Nellies cage-free” egg, note the color of the yolks
Why is the Nellies yolk broken? Simple, the shell was so thin that when I cracked the egg on the dish, the shell collapsed.
My hens egg was so strong I could peel the shell away from the inner membrane after cracking it, I actually had to cut the membrane open with a shell fragment to release the egg…
And the Nellies eggs are supposed to be a few steps above factory farmed eggs, quality-wise, no way it could compare to my hens eggs…
