Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

I've had chickens for probably 15 years now, starting with 3 and ending up with about 20 (mixture of hybrids, pedigrees and rescued battery/farmed hens) and 2 geese. This happens a lot with chickens. Chickens are a gateway drug to more chickens. If you have a few chickens, they take about as much looking after as a rabbit - keep their food and water topped up, and clean them out once a week.

I agree that you won't make money or a profit. The coop money you will probably never earn back, but I can cover the cost of a sack of feed (£12 or so) by selling boxes to colleagues for £1 each.

I think the eggs taste better because a) what the hens eat and b) because they are much fresher.

I've had to kill chickens (and hate doing it), which is sad, but I've never taken one to a vet. It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20.

We've brought chickens inside the house when they're ill (we have tiled floors) but don't do it on a regular basis. If chickens weren't incontinent, though, they would make great indoor pets. Surprisingly smart and pleasant animals. This will also sound weird but if you pick one up, they also smell nice - kind of like a new puppy smell.

Is the paperwork in the UK (I'm assuming you're UK-based, hence £) particularly onerous? I heard things were getting more complicated if you just wanted a few chickens in your garden.

Sounds like the true answer is having a colleague you can buy £1 eggs from.

According to this website [0] you just need to register with the Animal and Plant Health Agency.

[0] https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/maintain-the-garden/ke...

> It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20.

This logic is confusing. You are taking a purely transactional view when it comes to the chicken’s health, but you also admitted they don’t turn a profit. In that vein, it makes no sense to get the £20 chicken in the first place.

Your utilitarian view is also the opposite of what the person you’re replying to is describing. Do you believe that if one gets a pet cat or dog for free from the street and they get sick, “it makes no sense to get an £X vet bill on a pet which was free”? And if not, what’s the difference? Neither is making you money.

There is some paperwork now in that you have to register your flock. I dread the day though that we are told to kill our hens because of an outbreak.

It was bad enough keeping them undercover for one winter.

Eggs are still pretty cheap in the UK, free range ones for £1.50 or so.

It makes sense if someone likes chickens in general but doesn't care much about any individual chicken.

I think it is the distinction between "livestock" and "pets".

I would also be very surprised if any vets ever managed to treat a hen successfully. They tend to hide any illness until very sick.

> I would also be very surprised if any vets ever managed to treat a hen successfully.

I know for a fact it is possible. I am acquainted with veterinaries and have kept chickens temporarily while they were recuperating.

> They tend to hide any illness until very sick.

Indeed. So do rabbits and other “exotic” pets. It does make treatment harder, but experienced people tend to develop a sense to notice it sooner. You yourself have probably already developed that skill to some extent and might be able to identify “strange” behaviour is specific individual chickens.

>>You yourself have probably already developed that skill to some extent and might be able to identify “strange” behaviour is specific individual chickens.

That might be hard to do with a flock of 20. If they were pets the calculation might be different.

Hahaha - possibly!

My neighbor‘s dog bit one of our chickens. We ended up taking her to the vet and got some antibiotics. she made a full recovery.

And yes, there’s a bit of the mix of pets and livestock. We only have five hens, and they all have names. If you’re naming your animal, is it a pet?

Farmers around here have a few dozen cows and they still all have names. They're not pets.

Really? I have taken chickens to the vet twice (in 8 years).

First was one taken by a fox. My wife chased the fox and he dropped the chicken (she was too heavy for him). She had a broken leg and a broken wing. Both perfectly treatable and she went on to make a full recovery, resumed laying. As result of her closer contact with people during her recuperation she became very tame and socialized with visitors on the deck in the evening. Arguable she became a pet after her vet treatment.

Second was one with an eye infection (eyelids swollen so she couldn't see). She also made a full recovery.

I don't take every sick chicken to the vet, but if you've kept chickens for long enough you get an idea when it's likely to be mworthwhile (it's never financially worthwhilte). What's worthwhile will vary according to what you can afford and how you relate to your flock generally, the age and health of the hen and likelihood of recovery.

For one or a dozen?

6

£1 egg is quite expensive tho: 10 free range eggs at Tesco cost like £3 or so.

It's about €0.35 per organic egg in the Netherlands (€3.19/10 in one store or €5.99/15 at another). The organic eggs have better shells and are so cheap it's not worth bothering with free range eggs, even if you don't care for the chickens. It helps that they're not refrigerated and last a long time, so you don't have to pay for spoilage.

Heh I meant £1 egg boxes of course, like GGP mentioned.

We do take our geese to the vet. They don't have names, but they live for 40 years. Not sure why that is a factor but it definitely is.

I have two geese as well—have you found they help against predators? Anecdotally, we've had no predators steal any chickens since we added them (though a coyote got some goose tail feathers at first), though our neighbors down the street have been decimated by foxes.

Never considered the ROI, but I built a big walk-in coop for maybe $200 in materials. Think that'd pay off with the current price of eggs, if we sold them.

> It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20.

I guess it depends on how you look at it. By analogy, it makes no sense to have my cat go to the vet either (and pay thousands of dollars for a ~$50 cat lol), but they still go. I guess it's all about personal choice and perspective. It does feel a bit silly in a way though

> but if you pick one up, they also smell nice

Agreed, a clean chicken can smell really good!

> If chickens weren't incontinent, though, they would make great indoor pets

That's the big thing! On Japanese twitter, chicken diapers are a popular item!

Our hen was treated successfully, but it wasn't for a sickness, in this case it was an injury:

She somehow got one of her talons very loose and it ripped off, naturally becoming infected. The treatment was antibiotics and later full amputation of the toe in question + chicken house rest. She's still living happily, but would've died without treatment. Overall, it was a surprisingly cheap treatment ($130CAD?)

The geese we put to bed every night, and let out in the morning so they are generally locked away when a fox would come. A friend of ours has about 15 geese and pretty sure they have lost goslings to foxes.

They good at deterring delivery drivers though, and generally alerting people.