Tending backyard chickens is both a delight and bargain. Relative to the cost of buying and keeping a purebred dog or cat, chickens are equally fascinating animals that are relatively inexpensive to keep and come with a bonus. Fresh eggs!
Just what does it cost to raise a clutch of chicks to the laying stage? How can that cost be reduced?
Marion and Rich Patterson decided to keep track of costs. They already had feeders, waterers, brooders, and a coop, so the costs listed below are the consumable ones for raising chicks to 20 weeks. That’s about when they start laying.
The Pattersons received 12 baby chicks of various breeds from Hoover’s Hatchery in April 2024. Since many families buy just six chicks their food costs will be about half of what’s listed below. Costs vary by location. These are based on buying from an Iowa farm store.
Cost to Raise 12 chicks to 20 weeks
Purchase chicks. 12 @ $5/chick average $ 60
Brooder electricity estimate $ 6
Starter/grower feed. Five 50-pound bags @ $20 $100
Bedding/litter. Four bales of wood shavings @ $7 $ 28
Total $194
It comes to $16 a chick. That’s a bargain, but there are ways to reduce the expense. Since the cost of the chicks, bedding, and electricity are fixed, a frugal family can manage the flock in a way that reduces feed expenses.
Reducing Feed Costs
It’s never a good plan to scrimp on feed. Quality commercial food helps chicks grow into healthy hens that lay plenty of eggs. Chickens should always have access to top notch feed, but here are ways to lower the cost. Here are a few.
Buy feed in a Big Bag.
When bought in a 50-pound bag the per pound cost is about 40 cents.
The same feed in a 10-pound bag is about $1 a pound! Most farm stores
are happy to help anyone unable to heft a 50-pound bag. Ask at
the checkout counter and they’ll have a salesperson load the bag into a
customer’s trunk at no extra cost. Once home, open the bag while it’s still in the
trunk and scoop five to ten pounds of feed into buckets that can be easily lifted
without back strain. It may take a few trips from the car to the storage container but it eliminates the need to lift heavy feed.
Organic vs. Conventional feed: A 40-pound bag of organic feed costs about $40 or
$1 a pound. It’s about double the cost of standard feed. Whether to buy
organic is a personal choice. It’s high quality, just expensive. Shifting to
conventional quality feed saves money.
Store Brand. Store brand feed is less expensive than quality name brand feed
and meets a chick’s basic nutritional needs. Often it lacks probiotics and
essential oils commonly found in premium breeds. Store brand feeds can
knock a few dollars off a bag’s cost.
Kitchen snacks and neighbors. Kitchen scraps are chicken treats slightly lowering
consumption of store-bought feed. Leftover rice, pizza crusts, melon seeds
and a host of other of other leftover nutritious human foods will be devoured
with enthusiasm. Scraps are best fed in moderation as a treat rather than
a steady diet. Compost potato peels, meat, and house plant trimmings instead of putting them into the coop. Neighbors may also bring over their food
scraps. Advise them on what is best to share with the hens.
Situating a compost bin near the chicken run makes for easy sorting. Toss
scraps that chicken can eat into the run and the rest into the composter.
Maximizing Run Size to Grow Delicious Food for Foraging Chickens.
Homegrown Feed. Most families can’t grow most of the ingredients usually blended into commercial feed, but it’s easy to manage a run or yard so it produces natural feed as a supplement. Chickens are hungry omnivores. They love seeds, grass, worms, grubs, bugs, and just about any other small animal they can catch. Managing a chicken run is an easy way to reduce feed costs.
Chickens soon turn a tiny vegetated run into a barren swath of dirt. A run devoid of plants produces little food, so the bigger the run the freer food it can produce. The huge fenced run at Winding Pathways provides about 200 square feet for every chicken. It is so big relative to the number of hens foraging in it that they can’t possibly eat everything there. During warm months it’s a constant source of free food. Chickens eat some of the plants directly while others attract high protein insects that hens snap up. Increasing a run’s size helps it sustain plants.
Families with small runs can do a few things to temporarily expand it to give the chickens more foraging space.
The off-season garden: Many vegetable gardens are located adjacent to, or near, a chicken run. Often gardens are fenced to keep rabbits and deer away from tasty vegetables. The same fence will keep chickens in.
Chickens love many vegetables. If they can get into a garden during the growing season, they’ll quickly devour lettuce, chard, sprouting beans and ripening tomatoes. They must be excluded during the growing season, but after the last tomatoes and beans are picked and fall’s nights are frosty, chickens can be outstanding garden helpers. By rigging a portable passageway from the chicken run to the garden hens will gleefully scratch amid vegetable debris as they snack on weed seeds, insects, and bits of leftover vegetables. They can forage there all winter and be excluded just before next spring’s planting season. Chickens foraging in a winter garden do more than find free food. They deposit droppings, loosen the soil, and eat weed seeds and insects that would otherwise cause problems during the next growing season.
From the Kitchen- Even the neighbors kitchen. When fed leftover bits of rice, pizza crusts, chunks of tomatoes, melon seeds, and a host of other kitchen wastes, chickens enjoy interesting treats and put otherwise wasted food to use. Human food scraps can stretch feed dollars. Make scraps an occasional treat, rather than a main course. Some human foods may be toxic or unpalatable to chickens. It’s wise to avoid giving chickens Potato peels, tomato plants, many herbs, and house plant trimmings. These belong in the compost bin.
Neighbors can help! Many will save their kitchen scraps and enjoy the flock snacking on them.
Seeding the Run. Seeding tasty plants in a chicken run helps it produce more food.
Sprinkling inexpensive annual rye seed in the run every spring, and excluding the chickens until it’s a few inches high, will produce a green vegetation carpet. Adding clover, turnip, radish, alfalfa, and buckwheat seeds adds diversity. Blends of seeds ideal for planting in chicken runs can often be found in stores that sell hunting equipment. Hunters often scatter these to increase deer forage.
Chicken owners have many ways to save costs while enjoying the hens and relishing the jewels they lay each day.