I do not understand the mathematics behind the dilemma. I’m assuming only the firts chicks cost money, because down the line they will breed.
But feeding them, housing them - vitamins and doctoring costs a lot of money.
So anyone with couple or more chickens - how much does it cost to have them on the table? And realistically how many eggs do you get?
I recommend the book Make the Bread, Buy the Butter. Author Jennifer Reese talks about the costs and hassles associated with raising chickens for the eggs, among other food subjects.
thank you for the recommendation!
Really hates canning though, or at least found it not worth it. I personally enjoy canning because I get to choose what is in them.
Canning is great if you find yourself with a windfall of free produce. Otherwise I’m kinda inclined to agree: canning isn’t worth it unless you enjoy the process and consider it a hobby.
All of the comments about loss leader and factory scale vs. hobby farming are huge factors. Another is the predatory nature of poultry farming in the US. I don’t know about Costco, but the other major producers, like Tyson and Perdue, have an extremely abusive relationship with contract farmers.
https://sentientmedia.org/contract-farming-makes-corporations-rich-and-family-farmers-broke/
Not to mention the breed of chicken matters immensely. The ones that are grown for meat are, in my opinion, nearly an entirely different species at this point and wouldn’t survive a year on a hobby farm.
We found several chicks that fell off a Tyson truck and added them to our flock. They all grew to be nearly featherless, fat, grotesque birds that’s broke their own legs because their bones couldn’t keep up with how quickly their meat grew. They did all die in under a year.
They also taste like trash. To those who’ve have never had non-mutated birdmeat the difference is wild. The factory farm stuff almost tastes rotten in comparison.
That’s horrifying…and entirely unsurprising. :(
A lot of times, rotisserie chicken is a loss leader.
Supposedly there is a big problem with supply chains for chicks, they ship them in the mail but delivery times have gotten worse so survival rates have gotten much worse.
That’s a terrible and good thing to know. Thank you!
The cost of owning chickens is a really flexible number. My wife wanted to try and loved it so we have put more money in. Our first setup was a small coop for 3 birds for around $200, the birds were cheap enough not to matter in the equation, another $100 or so in food and water things, feed, grit, calcium, etc…
She liked it so we upgraded to a $1000 coop and more birds. Not calculating the monthly payments on the coop we probably spend $20-30 a month on maintenance (feed, grit, shell, straw)
One reason those cooked rotisserie chickens are so cheap is because they are used to get people in the store to buy other things. So the store takes a hit on them but they end up making money from other stuff that may not have sold.
Also, scaling up a chicken farm, especially one focused on either eggs or meat, reduces the cost per animal by a lot. If you’re buying a single chick to raise, it’s gonna be 3 to 50 dollars depending on breed. If you’re buying 30,000 they are gonna be a hell of a lot cheaper.
So about $30, rhank you for your answer!
To answer the rest of it, there are meat birds and egg layers. Meat birds grow fast and are ready to harvest in a few months. Egg layers produce more and larger eggs. We have a variety of egg layers, 9 hens and a rooster. We get between 5 and 8 eggs a day which is plenty for us.
1 egg per day could be worth 20-30c/day to you. Maybe more for freshness and convenience value. 100 days at 6c profit or 200 days at 3c, would pay for the $6 back. End food value is bonus.
Alternatively, the chickens are pets, eggs are 100% profit 😅
They’re referred to as Hen Fruit for a reason 😂
Prices don’t only reflect the cost of production/raising an animal. But also how much the customers are willing to pay, also supply and demand. Especially stuff that has very little sale numbers are waaay more expensive than production because otherwise a business would not be profitable.
That is clearly true. But again I had no idea of how much they actually cost to produce - that’s why I was looking for people with actual experience growing them.
But now I have a way clearer answer, and learnt a lot of fascinating information on the way.
Baby chicks are cuter than a rotisserie chicken. You pay for the cuteness.
Very true!
I’ve kept chickens for eggs and once for meat. Meat wasn’t worth it, just too much trouble and the butchering cost don’t make it very economical. They were massive though and tasty.
It’s worth it for eggs. Get less chickens than what you think you need. Just two gives you a dozen eggs a week. Building a coop can be done really easily with some scrap wood. Upkeep was mostly opening the coop door in the morning, closing it at dusk and refilling water and food every three days. They herd and manage themselves for the most part.
Nice! Thank you for the answer!
$5 is selling at a loss at this point.
Yeah, that’s why I wanted to know the real cost.
How much actual loss we are talking about?Idk I’d estimate a dollar or two. If they sold it at not a loss it would be $10 but they likely pay near $5 per chicken. The storefront usually doubles prices due to costs associated with the building, employees, food waste, etc.
Let’s see here now licks pencil
Raised. Fed. Butchered, Feathers Plucked/Removed. Meat Inspected, Cooked, Inspected again, Flash Frozen, Inspected Again, Packaged, Inspected Again, Paackaged again, put in controlled refrigerated cargo trucks to be dispersed across a controlled amount of grocery stores, placed on shelves by workers and is now under surveillance by a security department within that grocery store.
You’re not ready for Chicken Math, buddy.
Chicken math:
You have a couple of hens and a rooster. They’re pretty chill and everything’s cool. But you can’t eat the birds you have, then you wouldn’t get any eggs… Maybe you should get more birds? You wonder what it will cost you to hatch and rear some chickens. Before you’re done guestimating, one of your hens is broody, so you let it do its business.
You starting building a secondary run for momma hen and her chicks. You forget the material price, but you do notice the text message half way through the month. It’s from the bank, you’re getting close to insufficient funds on your debit card. Anyway you move some funds around and head off to the feed store. Chickens need special feed and different feeders/water dispensers.
The chicks grow and you start to see something akin to personality. You want to optimize for size, so you wait with the harvesting. Suddenly some start presenting male characteristics. But the rest? They’re too cute and you could do with a few more eggs.
While picking up considerably more feed, you notice the text message from the bank, you ignore it and start looking at that incubator that’s on sale. It doea look neat. Next spring then hens start laying eggs again, you decide to not wait for a broody hen, and you start collecting an incubator’s worth of eggs.
When the eggs are about to hatch, finally a hen has become broody, so when most egg have hatched momma gets her eggs switched with a load of chicks. You don’t have any chicks to loom at indoors now, so maybe you should hatch a few more. You’ve heard about a different breed that you want to try out, so you find eggs on facebook marketplace and drive for 2hours each way to pay 50€ for the 24 eggs your incubator can hold. Of the 24 eggs 15 are fertilized and as you miss a single critical water refill only 10 hatch. You do note that that’s 5€ per chick. But you think to your self “hey, it’s an investment, now I have this breed and can hatch more down the road”
You keep this up, and second year you are worrying that the authorities will discover that you have more than the 30 chickens you can have without registering. You’re also on a first name basis with the clerks in two feed stores and you ask about their kids ball games when you get your weekly 80kg of feed. You try to recoup some of the money by selling eggs. You have no idea what an egg costs to produce, but you can’t get yourself to charge more than about 50 cents per egg. You don’t piece it together, but your income doesn’t match your feed budget. Your bank loves you, because even though you should be able to save money for a car and a holiday, you end up getting financing for all major purchases and going on holiday is overrated anyhow. You like to stay home, who would take care of your birds?
Anyway ⬆️that’s chicken math…
Before doing this, you may want to checkout the Farming while Beige youtube channel (blackbirdcoop).
In some of his videos he provides a very honest description of the work involved.
It was more of a curious question. I have no energy to take on this amount of responsibility - but I might in the future. :)
Seriously go follow him, though. He talks a little about chickens. He talks a lot about politics and race. He talks also a lot about other videos. He is absolutely hilarious. Especially note the, uh, discrepancies between what he says and the subtitles. It’s an extra layer of humour.
Basically, dude is half black and half native and all bad-ass. He’s started a farm in the Richmond, VA area and sells chicken, eggs, and some other stuff, which his staff helps proces and deliver around eastern Virginia. He talks about this, and is quite hilarious.
Not everyone will appreciate him, but I feel like a lot of progressives will. He’s a lot of fun.
I will definitely check him out, thank you!
I checked him out, and he is definitely an acquired taste!
And he again reminded me of how different is the US kitchen to central European one. “And now we have the back part and we will make dog food out of it”.
We even had chicken head in regular soups (without the eyes) - and gizzards, liver and even other edible parts should go into the soup. I guess the only part you throw away is the digestion track - everything else is just too yummy…Well, the offal is not considered awful by probably more “rural” people, as well as soul food. People who traditionally have been more poor and so make use of more of their resources. heh.
I don’t particularly like chewy gizzards, but I ate them growing up - mom would fry a chicken and out of love fry up the heart, liver, gizzard, and neck and that would be a snack for me. And I love fried chicken livers… it pains me that I can’t find a good local source (because I try not to fry - it stinks up the apartment for days - and I’ve found that fried chicken and livers and certain other fries foods are often better in commercial operations/kitchens). heh.
Dammit, now I’m craving fried livers! lol
But… while you can find chicken feet for sure, and chicken necks, I’m not so sure about chicken heads. I’ll grant you that that one goes to my “squick” factor. heh.
I know, chicken head is now an ick factor to me also. This is just a core memory for me - seeing it getting cracked open and being offered to me to eat… And if your chicks are your pets that’s even worse :D
And fried liver - haven’t had those for a long while - tho it is really easy to mess up and turn it into a un-chewable piece of leather. You can always just cook it with onions tho - that’s definitely doable.Ah, well, I never ate animals I raised, only vegetables/fruit we grew :) But I knwo the rule: Do not give a name to what you’re planning to eat. lol
Ah, I dunno, chicken liver is alright to fry. I don’t mind if they’re medium well to very well done, they’re tasty to me. hehe.
And I can’t do onions, so no liver-and-onion for me (especially because in the US, fried liver usually means chicken (tasty) and liver and onions usually means calf (eww). lol
Yeah I was really disappointed when my grandma decided it is time to butcher my bunny when I was away for summer camp…
Have you tried liver just in the soup? Same with the cleaned up gizzard. Just put it with everything and it is a nice bite while eating the soup. There are hundreds of way enjoying it - you can even make home made pate with it - yummm.
DOUBLE-U DOUBLE-U DOUBLE-U DOT
Looney Tunes theme song plays at full volume
What is it now?
:slow grin:
What is it now?
Fucking love that guy.
“you just going to throw all that into the dirty ass oil, aren’t you?”
that’s right.
Buy fertilized eggs and incubate them. Let them scratch through your compost and eat the grubs. Don’t worry about the economics unless you’re starting a factory farm.
Hmm, I didn’t even think about buying fertilized eggs!
Thank you for the info (that they exist and it is friggin logical for this market to exist)
Chicks at the hardware store are for the eggs
They also sell meat birds in bulk. At least ours all do.
