Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

To save money? Absolutely not. I'm keeping a spreadsheet on our 20 chickens this year. They're young, so input is very high while output is still ramping but I'm guessing it's $7-8 dozen in food costs alone (the highest end organic feed tho), never mind the initial buyin.

> the highest end organic feed tho

Maybe feed them your food scraps? Or bulk buy and prepare your own grains/pulses?

We have 10 (backyard) chickens and spend about $40/mo in feed. We average about five eggs per day when they are laying, so let's say that's 150 eggs per month. That's $0.26/egg or $3.20 a dozen.

But we have to factor in around 4 months of them not laying during the winter. So for laying months, that brings the feed price to around $60/mo or $4.80 a dozen.

So yeah, at current prices, it's worth it for us. I also haven't factored in the value of their compost, which is really quite expensive when you're buying as much as they generate, so it's probably even cheaper than listed.

Out of curiosity why not grow your own feed?

In many cases you can cycle the compost back in to the feed you grow (as fertilizer).

Around here our eggs are averaging about $9 per 12 on the shelves, and you can't buy just 12, the only eggs on the shelf are the 18/24 packs so about $20-22 per pack, almost the same price as choice meat.

It's two 40lb bags. We don't have enough square feet to grow that much feed per month (and still have room for the other stuff we grow).

The labour and land step up from tending chickens to growing grain is a very large step. If you are organized enough to grow grain, and you're near a farming area, you'd be farther ahead to try to buy right off the field grain at harvest time for cash. Mechanized grain harvesting is an immense labour saver that is unavailable to people growing feed for backyard chickens.

What is the amount of time required for all the different chicken activities? (estimated weekly average)

You're feeding them the wrong stuff. They can live off of cracked corn and whatever stale bread and vegetables you toss them, as well as bugs in their general vicinity. As for the initial buy, they can turn over a new generation in about 3 weeks. You can also eat the old chickens. You're looking at it wrong.

Once you have it set up, I'd say no more than about 2 hours per week. The feeding and watering can be automated, so it's really just whatever cleaning or optional shuffling of their locations you do. Checking for eggs can be done in a few minutes, and you technically don't have to do it every single day. You might actually choose to spend more than the minimum to tame them and treat them as pets.

I don't know how accurate this is, but there was a youtube video from some homesteader I accidentally ran across saying you can ferment the feed to a mash, and the chickens will eat/need less.

How much land would you need to grow that much grain? Probably a lot more than most backyard chicken flock owners have.

Because I'm not looking at it the way you look at it? Been at it for ten years and am perfectly happy with how it's been going.

Yeah, I'd say two hours a week, maybe an hour. Feeding and watering and checking for eggs can be done quite quickly when it's below freezing out :)

It's a recent experiment, we were on the more reasonably priced organic feed until I discovered my local feed store had this stuff over the holidays, so we're trying it out. The quality of the eggs is absolutely miles above what I already considered really good eggs though.

I'll probably get around to making our own someday, but I'm not there just yet.

I've seen someone just chuck a load of split peas in a plastic barrel and submerge with rain water. It naturally ferments with occasional agitation and this is supposed to be good for the chickens. So not so hard to do when you get to that point of wanting to try it.

Yeah, the daily tasks are pretty small. Just a few minutes a day. Scoop some food, change out the water, gather the eggs.

Every so often, you need to do bigger chores, like go buy fees or fix something in your setup. A couple times a year you need to do a deep clean of the coop (throw out all the straw, scrape any poo that's collected on the floor or wherever, put in clean straw). Sometimes a chicken dies, and that's not fun, but it is something you have dispose of properly.

Ultimately, though, it's a hobby. It should be fun or relaxing most of the time or else it's not worth it. Like gardening or running a home server. If you're trying to just save money, maybe you can save a tiny bit in this particular moment, but there are surely better ways to save a few bucks.

That sounds like the level of effort I'm after, thanks neighbor.

The spreadsheet in isolation view does seem odd to farming types.

We have chickens, my father's still looking after them and he's had chooks since his birth in 1935 .. along with at least 10 fruit trees on any property we've had, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, garlic, herbs, pumpkins, and all the usual stuff that you can sow and that grows pretty well on its own (we've all had other jobs .. but this all stems from either growing acres of grain in some wings of the family or raising cattle in remote parts of Australia far from regular shops).

Point being, chickens do well on picking through big piles of rotting down compost from everything else so feed costs are low, return on having chicken shit turned into soil that can be used for the next garden bed is high, value of having bugs kept in check is saving on sprays, etc.

By all means keep a spreadsheet, I'm fond of them also, but having had chooks for decades we see them more as an integrated component of a bigger picture.

If you think you're spending too much on the eggs then you're not perfectly happy. I grew up with chickens and my family also grew up with them. I'm just saying, something is really wrong with the way you're doing it if you think it's not worth the money. There are ways to do it economically. What do you suppose the big farms feed the chickens to make it economical to not only grow the chickens but also package and ship the eggs profitably for all involved, cheaper than you can do it without packaging and shipping and paying middle men?

FWIW, you can get generally better results with different breeds. Golden Comets or ISA Browns will typically get you 1 per day per chicken. In reality if you had 10 you'd likely get 8 or 9 per day. They also seem to lay in the winter better than many. Unfortunately they just don't live long so it's a constant cycling process.

> The quality of the eggs is absolutely miles above what I already considered really good eggs though.

I must drive past a dozen (lol) honesty boxes on the way to work offering the sale of eggs and this is my general experience as well.

Its amazing how individuals can produce and sell a product as cheap if not cheaper than mega corps with such staggeringly different quality.

> There are ways to do it economically. What do you suppose the big farms feed the chickens to make it economical to not only grow the chickens but also package and ship the eggs profitably for all involved, cheaper than you can do it without packaging and shipping and paying middle men?

They feed them shit and treat them like shit. For most people [that I know] the whole point of doing this at home is to do things differently.

Chickens will eat grain, but the best eggs (and healthiest chickens) come from lots of protein and green leafy matter. Vermiculture and simple insect attraction methods like maggot buckets, food scraps, and lawn/garden waste can go a long way with chickens.

I don't think they get a lot of calories out of greens, do they? I feed mine all sorts of scraps, but they also eat a lot of grain.

Yeah, definitely not a money-saver, especially with high-quality feed

Your post got me thinking about where I am right now in my life. We’re planning how we want to retire and recently bought an old home that has a smattering of produce trees. Citrus, olives, figs, and walnuts. Learning how to deal with them (with help from the neighbors) has been stressful, but also very satisfying after mainly being in front of a computer for 20+ years.

The ideal flow is investing a lot of time in (say) the first two or three years (three full season cycles gives you a fair amount of exposure) getting the swing of watering, planting, sowing, gathering waste, etc.

With any luck you can then transition into barely spending an hour at most a day (on most days) keeping things ticking along .. bursts of weeding, pruning, turning soil as needed and letting the plants do the work.

It's good steady exercise keeping on top of a substantial but "small" home garden but it doesn't have to suck up all your time once you get the swing of it.

We have fresh egg vending machines along the road by farms in the Netherlands!

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/ne3ivw/i...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9Ui4zmqyxY

https://www.fietsnetwerk.nl/en/places/farmers-vending-machin...

https://www.deboeropautomaat.nl

Here's a German company that will sell you your own egg vending machine:

https://vendy1.de/en/blog/egg-vending-machines/?srsltid=AfmB...

I'm sure drive-through egg vending machines would be popular in the US! (And drive-by egg delivery too.)

What are your thoughts on a more communal approach? Say we have a neighborhood of 20 single family homes that all participate in tending a large garden and raising chickens. Would the cost and chore time drop to a level where it was saving all involved enough money to justify the effort?

I ask because I used to have a good sized garden at my old house, growing enough veggies to both preserve and distribute to neighbors because I grossly underestimated the yield. While it was nice to have the neighbors love me, it was also a lot more work than I had bargained for (especially when otherwise working 40+ hours per week) and it got me thinking about community gardens and whatnot, why those might make more sense these days

I mean if you add everything up - land value, labour, food costs, etc - I'm fairly sure they're selling eggs at a net loss, however, it's not a capitalist endeavour unlike the industrial production. And IMO that is the key difference, that is, they produce for themselves and sell the excess and earn some money off of it, it's not their primary goal to do so.

I'm fortunate the prior owners have most things setup. They were older so some of the maintenance around trimming is behind, but I am learning. My problem now is, I don't know what to do with all the oranges. I've been giving them to the local restaurants in town, but I don't think they even want any more. Good problem to have I guess :) Next up is learning how to make marmalade.

You should have a deep chest or big standing freezer away from the kitchen for long term storage .. somewhere cool that it can do fine in for six hours+ if you lose power.

Oranges, yep - marmalade (castor sugar + other stuff, and jars) OR skin | cut away peel and pulp, save juice and freeze for later in the year; drinking ot adding to cakes, etc.

Lazy cooking == slow cookers once every two weeks or so, make a lot of vegetable stir fry and pacage and freeze, chicken and vegetables ditto. If you use tomato stock | paste for these batch meal preps then always get a standard jar and save those in a jar cupboard for reuse for orange jam, fig jame (also look into glace figs, etc).

Keep that up and you'll be living like a 1930's off grid veteran in no time ;-)

I've learned that they are Seville oranges which are apparently great for marmalade/marmalata, ok for juicing, but can't really be eaten raw.

I also have to say how awesome it is when I'm cooking and need a lemon so I walk outside and pick one off the tree. Harvesting and pressing olive oil for the first time in the coming fall will be interesting.

> Keep that up and you'll be living like a 1930's off grid veteran in no time ;-)

The house is old enough and lacking enough modern features that it already feels a bit like 1930s haha

Thanks for the conversation!

This makes me wonder - would chickens grow more efficiently if you cook their food for them?

When we invented cooking it gave us a massive advantage because of the nutritional efficiency, yet we feed animals just random raw stuff. Would feeding them porridge instead of grain lead to higher output?

These vending machines exist where few people are

There is some middle ground. It costs very little to let your chickens roam in your yard or in a cheap shelter that you build yourself. You don't have to feed them premium organic bullshit that costs $5 per pound. I haven't bought any in a while but chicken feed is probably like $0.25-0.50 per pound if you buy it in 50 pound bags.

They didn't say they think they are spending too much.

Your proposal may give interesting results in a couple hundred generations of chickens, when evolution has had some time to take profit of the cooked food. But, concerning the hens that lay the eggs I'm supposed to eat, please refrain from experimenting with them, thanks!

Exactly, even with it being excess, I think the motivation is to reduce waste versus produce money in these situations. They have uses for the waste, it can be eaten by an animal, but that’s also true if it doesn’t get sold

Yeah "fermented chicken feed" is the search term you are after and it really does work with all kinds of grains and chickens love it.

Everyone just has to opt-in to it and remain opted in. That's a completely different community building problem, but it's still a problem. If you succeed at it you trade off the cost of "doing all the chores" with the cost of "keeping the community running" (unless you are graced with someone else in the community who is interested + able + better at it than you are) so you don't generally come out ahead (but it's worlds better for sustainability if you can build up something like that).

My chickens feed is a grain mix that can be boiled or even fermented, often called silage with the larger livestock.

The chickens love some warm mash on a cold day like today, they'll get some yogurt too.

> When we invented cooking it gave us a massive advantage because of the nutritional efficiency,

I was reasonably confident cooking reduced nutrition but reduced food-based disease way more.

I was actually a member of a "cohousing" community for a while, which is similar to what you describe. If you're not familiar with the concept, I recommend looking into it, as I think you'd find it appealing: https://www.cohousing.org/

I'd still say that if the primary goal is saving money, there are better options to consider. If there are 20 single family homes living the "default" lifestyle of such a home, there are probably more than 20 cars (probably approaching 40). Can this community work out a system of sharing cars (and the costs associated with those cars)? How few cars can this group of people reasonably get by with if they are sharing?

Another option is having one big tool shed where everything inside is shared. Each single family home, by default, would probably own their own lawn mower. But a community of 20 households probably only needs to own one or two.

That said, I think there are other benefits of a big community project like a community chicken coop. It's good for building relationships with other people, it's fun, and the eggs do taste good. You could draw up a simple calendar and decide who is responsible for taking care of the chickens each day if you wanted, and that'd probably make things easy (although, tbh, one or two people will probably need to be "in charge" of the chicken coop, and following up if something falls through the cracks). A community chicken coop also makes it much easier to take a week-long vacation or whatever, because you know that someone will take care of things. When we had a chicken coop (in our single family house, not part of a larger community), finding someone to care for it was kind of a large task before we could actually leave our home for an extended amount of time.

When four roommates often can't keep the kitchen sink clean of dishes, I wonder how a 20-home communal coop would work without creating politics and resentment.

Great, the guy who "cleans" the coop when it's his turn by gently sweeping it for two minutes just swiped all of the eggs again.

I always thought it was silly that everyone in the suburbs owns their own lawn mower, edger, and weed whacker. Why not have a communal shed on every cul-de-sac? ...Until I lended tools out to people and saw how they treated them.

I'd think most of the time you'd need some sort of oversight structure just to manage people.

"Around here our eggs are averaging about $9 per 12 on the shelves, "

What state are you in, that's crazy pricing. Article says, "Last week, the average price of a dozen eggs hit $4.95 per dozen—an all time-record." So you are stuck 2x the national average price.

Or they're using "surplus" resources (like their backyard, and domestic food scraps) that they'd still have otherwise. Which is something that is not commercially scalable. Unless, I guess, someone tries "Uber but for chickens".

What makes you reasonably confident? Cooking leading to better nutrient absorption and our IQ growth is mainstream science so making a wild contradiction like that without something to back it up isn't very helpful. Helping with food-based illness is an interesting thought though.

Community projects like this can operate successfully, but they do take work (like intentional communication and meetings), and there are politics. If we're envisioning 20 houses, yeah, there probably needs to be some kind of structure.

Since you mentioned the suburbs specifically, I'll also note that, at least imo, that: - the suburbs are designed in such a way as to encourage atomized, isolated living (houses are relatively far a part, you usually need a car to get anywhere, fenced-in yards are the norm, etc). - presumably people are moving out to the suburbs because they find that lifestyle appealing, so there's some self-selection happening such that people in the suburbs are less interested in sharing stuff communally.

So if you were just trying to get 20 households that happen to live closest to you involved, it probably is too big a committment for them.

I never voiced an opinion other than "buying chickens ain't the way to save money on eggs". Do you always jump to conclusions and imagine peoples' motivations and mindset like this?, because you're making this whole thread up in your head.

OTOH for shop bought eggs you also have to add transport (fuel/truck maintenance), storage, commercial land rent/interest costs, electricity, and of course the mark-ups along the way by processors, distributors, and—most of all—the shops themselves, that use their monopoly powers to reduce the margins for everyone else. And if we're doing like-for-like, you have to buy certified 'Pasture Raised' eggs.

Hmmm the thread isn't all made up in my head. To recap:

You said your way wasn't saving money.

Then I said you're doing it wrong if you're not saving money.

Then you said you're happy doing it your way (which doesn't save money).

I then questioned whether you're really happy not saving money, because you've obviously done calculations to figure out if you're saving money. If you didn't care, would you really do that?

My comments aren't all for you. We've established that you don't care if you save money or not. My comments are for those who might be looking at raising chickens to save money, and would be discouraged by your failed attempts. As I said, the fact that chickens are raised for profit all over the world disproves your claim (at least, if you don't count your own labor; obviously you can't bill even a couple of hours on a programmer's salary toward raising a handful of chickens and still save money).