The Joys of Backyard Chickens
3 Things to Consider Before Owning Chickens
Before you jump in the car and head to the farm store to get some chicks, I do have some things for you to consider. It’s wise to go into the endeavor with some forethought and knowledge.1. You don’t get “free” eggs
Believe me, you will be paying for those eggs (especially if you buy Organic feed, which is well over twice the price of conventional feed). If you were to measure cost effectiveness, it would certainly be less expensive for you to just buy the cheap factory farmed eggs from the grocery store. However, most people are raising chickens because they don’t want to support factory farming, so maybe cost is not your primary concern.Read more about farming styles in Katie’s Farmers’ panel interviews.
There will be lots of time where you are paying for chicken feed, but not receiving any eggs in return, such as:- Chicks – Chickens don’t lay eggs until they are roughly 5-6 months old. So when you buy those cute baby chicks in the spring, you need to realize you will be going through lots of chicken feed before you even collect your first egg in late summer/early fall.
- Molting – When chickens are about 18 months old, they lose their old feather and grow a new set. This is called molting and it can take several weeks or even months. During the molting process their egg production reduces significantly…and sometimes stops.
- Winter – Depending on where you live and how much sunlight you get in the winter, your chickens may stop laying altogether in the winter. Long days (hours of daylight) triggers egg production, so people living in northern climates (where winter daylight hours are very short) may notice a big drop in egg production.
- Some hens stop laying altogether. The real kick in the pants is that the chickens require more feed to help them stay warm in the winter! You’ll be increasing their feed rate, while getting less/no eggs.
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2. You Don’t Need a Rooster to Get Eggs
Believe it or not, the #1 question I get about chickens is “Do you need to have a rooster to get eggs?” NOPE.A chicken will ovulate and produce eggs, regardless of whether she has a mate (just like a female mammal ovulates regularly as well). There really is no reason to keep a rooster, unless you would like to try raising your own chicks at home (although they are ridiculously handsome creatures!).3. You Need to Have an “End of Life” Plan
This is the biggest mistake I see people making when they decided to get chickens. What happens when your dear Mathilda gets old and stops laying eggs? What will you do? It’s tricky. If you have a backyard flock and your city only allows you to have 5 chickens, what will you do when it’s time to replace the old layers? If you just hold onto the old hens, pretty soon you will be feeding 5 hens that aren’t giving you anything in return. I know many people get attached to their chickens and cannot bear the thought of eating their “pet”.However, unless you want to start running a retirement home for chickens, you need to take matters into your own hands. As chickens age, they lay eggs more infrequently. They can continue to lay for 5-6 years at an increasingly reduced rate (and can live for over 10 years!), but most people sell them or butcher them after 2-3 years, once the hen is costing more to feed than she is worth in eggs.Older laying hens (“Stewing Hens”) make delicious soup and broth – they are generally cooked slowly and the meat used as stew or soup meat, not as a roasting chicken (meat chickens are usually butchered when they are only a few months old).- Sell her to someone else as a Stewing Hen.
- Butcher her yourself and make soup (admittedly not for the faint of heart).
- Start a Chicken Retirement Community. Not ideal as it will be very expensive (all that feed cost with no incoming eggs). Possibly preventing you from adding new chickens to your flock.
Final Thoughts on Raising Chickens
One last warning… and I say this half jokingly and half seriously!Chickens are the gateway animal. Not quite ready for chickens? How about gardening?
See how you can save money and enjoy fresh food grown by you with all our gardening posts!
Have you considered starting a flock of backyard chickens? What is holding you back? What are your reasons for wanting backyard chickens?
We’ve been wanting to get chickens for a while now. These are some excellent points (especially the end-of-life issue) that we hadn’t yet thought of. As much as I want them, this is probably the one thing that might keep me from it. Until I get a thicker skin at least. Thank you!
We’re getting six chicks this coming week! I’m praying it goes smoothly ?. Have you ever ferment your feed? I’m looking into it to help feed last longer.
I have 4 chickens and can relate to everything in the article. The eggs are not free but they are soooo worth it, with orange yolks. I love my girls and yes, I’m probably that crazy chicken lady. Who cares? I could be a crazy cat lady too but I don’t have any cats.
I really enjoyed this article. Thank you so much for the information!
Rachel, you are welcome! Glad you enjoyed it.
We love having chickens because it keeps the bugs downs. We have significantly less ticks and spiders to worry about with having chickens on our property. I also love have almost zero food waste. The chickens get most of our food scraps!
I don’t even want chickens, but for some odd reason I was intrigued by the article. I do like purchasing “better” eggs from chickens that are supposedly treated better. Great article with some pretty good humor.
Mara, so glad you enjoyed it! And glad you enjoy my humor 😉
I was just commenting to my husband that I’ve not been without some chickens in my backyard for more than a few months since I was 10! (i’m almost 30 now…) That’s nearly 20 years of chickens, and I never tire of them. My young boys are now taking responsibility for them as well, and it’s so enjoyable to see how much they love their hens. We had a broody hen hatch out three chicks last week and it’s adorable to watch Mama hen with her babies. (And, yes, we have an aging rooster who is very gentle with the kids and we will be sad when he dies…) We love our hens!
Yes, I love our hens too! It still surprises me how happy they make me… even though it’s a constant battle to keep them out of my gardens!
So how much is the monthly cost? We have toyed with the idea of getting chickens, envisioning “free” eggs, and obviously not taking into consideration everything else.lol
That is a great question! I’ve kept records of expenses for the last 5 years, but never added them up. I think I was afraid to 🙂 It totally depends on how many birds you have, what breed they are, what you feed them and how you house them. So yeah, about a million variables!
I added it up (because you inspired me!) and one year we spent about $60 a month on chickens (I’m not exactly sure how many we had around that time… between 15-20). That includes: cost of purchasing chicks, chick feed, feed for the laying hens from the previous year, bedding, grit, oyster shells, etc. We buy Organic feed, which is nearly triple the cost of conventional, but we’re willing to pay that because we eat a LOT of eggs. Not included in that total is the equipment to get set up: a chicken coop, fencing, waterers, feeders, etc. You could potentially spend hundreds of dollars on that.
With 15-20 chickens, I can expect to get about a dozen eggs a day (because some of those are not laying yet or they are molting). We go through about 5 dozen eggs a week, so that leaves 2 dozen to sell to offset costs.
This simply a snapshot of what it looks like for us. I’m sure some people spend way less and some spend way more. For us, it IS worth it to have our own, because buying comparable eggs (Organic, free-range, pasture raised) would cost us at least $5/dozen. $5 x 5 dozen eggs a week x 4 weeks in a month = $100. We spend about $60 a month raising our own, so that is a $40 savings per month.
I hope this helps!
We have had backyard chickens (12) for almost a year. We were excited for home-grown eggs but the main reason we got chickens was to help our kids learn perseverance, hard work and responsibility. Obviously, we help with “chicken chores” but we make the kids take responsibility and do most of the work.
I can see how chickens would be a “gateway animal”…we are hoping for goats and/or a pony next!
Chickens are a great job/chore for kids! Good luck with your next critter 🙂 It was goats and hogs for us!