Economics of having chickens: getting started

Posted by louisa on Thursday 1 July 2010 in chickens, frugal | 1 comment

After 18 months of waiting, we *finally* got some chickens on Tuesday. This post is the first in what I imagine will be an occasional series about the economics of having chickens.

Despite my tight-fisted frugal heart, having chickens at home isn’t about getting cheap eggs. It’s about getting good eggs from well treated and well fed chickens. It’s about food metres and not food miles. It’s about using up an otherwise hard to make productive bit of ground. It’s about introducing more diversity into our garden and harvesting poop for fertiliser. And it’s about living with some fascinating pseudo-dinosaurs – learning about them, looking after them and laughing at them because they’re such fun, odd things. But while those things are almost priceless, they do have a price.

Back when I first got giddy about the idea of having chickens, I read a great page about the economics of having chickens – breaking it down to the cost per egg over the first year (when there are higher capital costs but potentially high egg production) and in future years (smaller capital cost, slowing egg production etc). It was great – but can I find it now? No. I hate Google sometimes. But I’m going to work out something similar for myself and this post is the first stage of that.