Is keeping chickens truly a cheaper way to produce eggs? Let’s break down the costs and see.
I have been managing a flock of chickens for almost 4 years now and I have yet to be able to make it through the winter without going to the grocery store for eggs.
Isn’t that crazy?
When I started managing my chickens, I thought I would be freed from the grocery store! I would have abundant eggs for only a few bags of feed.
Boy was I wrong!
In 2024, my average cost of a dozen eggs hovers around $2.00. Grocery store prices are sitting at $2.68 per dozen in July 2024.
When you do the basic math, raising your eggs is worth it. However, I find most people fail to consider start-up and ongoing costs, like wood shavings and feed costs, when they dream about growing a grocery store in their backyard.
Not to mention the time investment!
Luckily, I’ve been tracking these figures and am excited to share them with you so you can make the best, most informed decision for you and your family.
Is raising chickens for eggs worth it? Let’s take a look.
This post will have multiple updates, so check back! I didn’t start truly tracking my numbers until June 2024. What will my progress be in December 2024? Or in 2025? Come back to see it!
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Start-Up Costs for Raising Chickens for Eggs
My 2024 estimate for basic equipment, feed, and chicks to get your flock going is about $200. However, that doesn’t involve a coop or ongoing costs.
Let’s break down why that figure may change when you factor in things like a coop and ongoing costs.
If you’ve been around The Learning Life, you know my chickens originally started in a coop my husband built. It had no windows and served us well for almost three years.
Because we built our coop at the height of wood prices, we spent about $800 on our coop. Your price may look different depending on whether or not you invest in prebuilt coops, an existing structure, or build your coop.
Christmas 2023, we added an incubator to our tool kit and hatched our first batch of chickens in the spring of 2024. The good news was we successfully eliminated our dependence on a store for chicks!
The bad news was our coop was now too small for our new backyard flock. Thus, we converted our wood shed into a chicken coop.
The initial costs of converting the wood shed into a chicken coop were low because the bones of the shed were great. Scroll down to see what we paid to invest in our flock this year.
Your investment into raising chickens may look like spending a few hundred dollars on a chicken coop and another $100 or so on plastic feeders and waterers (check out my resources page for the products I recommend for chicks!), and a temporary container to keep chicks in.
You may see someone spend money on a metal water trough. Or you may see chickens in a wooden box. Both are very different price points and your budget may influence your decision!
We use plastic totes for chickens and then move them to an infirmary unit in our coop. Check out this post for more information on why we have an infirmary unit.
You have already spent over $100 on equipment and we haven’t even talked about the cost per chick yet!
The cost of chicks will vary by your location, but what you may not realize, is that they also vary by breed. Some chickens will cost more than others.
In 2023, for about 12 chicks, I spent about $50 on chicks. Some breeds cost me $3 per chick and others almost $4.
Day-old chicks vary in price based on your breed. Which makes sense – rare breeds are inherently more expensive! A common breed, like Rhode Island Reds, may be cheaper from your local farm store.
When you tally it all up, I estimate you will spend about $200 for equipment, feed, and chicks. That figure will shift based on what equipment, feed, and chicks you purchase.
Finally, I want to address time. What are you willing to pay for your time and effort in raising chicks?
Added Cost of First-Year Chickens
Would you pay for months worth of chicken feed with no farm-fresh eggs to show for it?
That’s your true added cost of first-year chickens.
First-year chickens may not lay to the height of their capacity for the first six months, or even the first year!
With any living thing, chickens need to reach maturity. That means your initial investment in keeping chickens won’t be returned for months. The cost of the chickens, feed, and shavings are all things you will be spending money on but eggs won’t come for several months.
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Other Costs New Chicken Keepers Need to Know About
Supplements like oyster shells, electrolytes, apple cider vinegar, and other feed mix-ins are all inconsistent costs, but costs that need to be considered. My supplements change based on the season, but I always like to keep some on hand.
Organic feed versus commercial feed is another cost to consider. Ours comes in a 40 lb bag. However, that’s from a commercial farm store. The same quality feed from my local feed store (read – hometown, family-owned) is almost $6 more per bag!
We are not in a financial position to feed our chickens organic feed. However, I do free-range my birds when I’m able.
How to Offset the Cost of Raising Chickens
Selling chicken eggs is the most obvious way to generate profit, but it’s not the only way!
Here are a few other things you can do with your chickens and on your homestead to offset the cost of raising chickens.
Sell your eggs!
If you feed your chickens organic feed and let them free-range on untreated grass, you can sell your eggs for a pretty penny!
When considering how to set your egg prices, be sure to consider the cost of feed, competitor’s prices, and packaging costs.
I sell my eggs for $4.50 per dozen because that’s the combination of the average cost of farm-fresh eggs in my area and it accurately reimburses me for my effort and money spent.
Some months, if I sell enough eggs, I can cut my monthly operation costs in half!
Sell your used chicken shavings!
Gardeners in my area love used chicken shavings (read – pooped on) as an amendment to their gardens.
However, in my area, I need to generate quite a bit of used chicken shavings to see any impact on my operating costs. A bag of used chicken shavings can be sold for about $2 per bag.
Sell hatching eggs
If you intend to keep a purebreed rooster, he can fertilize your eggs. You can sell those fertilized eggs to people with incubators.
This is a great way to help local, aspiring chicken farmers in your area. It also benefits you as a local chicken source! I’m all for narrowing the gap between myself and larger companies.
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Raise free-range chickens
Free-range chickens aren’t cost-free, but they don’t rely on feed like other backyard flocks might.
The tradeoff to this may be the amount of land you have. If you don’t have acres of land you can rotate chickens on, free-range chickens may not work out.
Meat birds may be another consideration. Feed is a convenient way to plump up chickens you intend to eat.
Sell other homestead goods
Soap, baked goods, and garden produce are all great places to start to offset other parts of your homestead.
Feed your chickens scraps
Garden waste and kitchen scraps are the most popular ways to offset feed costs. I’ve even seen some homesteaders pair their compost pit and chickens. The chickens naturally turn the compost and the compost receives the chicken poop for more compostable materials.
I saved my kitchen scraps in June 2024, and with the help of two other families inconsistently contributing, I gave my chickens 74.9 pounds of kitchen scraps.
Unfortunately, the USDA details the price per pound of food by fruits, vegetables, proteins, etc. I have no way of knowing how much meat, fruit, or vegetables I gave my chickens out of those 74.9 pounds. Thus, I don’t know how much money I saved on feed!
However, I know I gave my chickens 120 pounds of store-bought feed. That 74.9 pounds of food saved me from buying another bag of chicken feed at $11.
We both know that in June 2024 74.9 pounds of proteins, fruits, and vegetables cost way more than $11! I’ll take that as a huge win for saving on my homesteading costs.
Our 2024 Egg-Laying Flock Investment
Our wood shed conversion was necessary because we doubled our flock in 2024. Now that the conversion is done, we have room to grow!
Here’s our cost breakdown to move the chickens into a wood shed with a good foundation and good bones.
We spent about $75 on various hardware, like wood screws and latches. We spent about $100 on linoleum sheets, glue, and a flooring trowel. Finally, we spent $11 on the inaugural layer of pine shavings for the coop.
But what about the wood for things like roosting bars and an infirmary unit?
We had a stash of wood my husband had compiled for almost six years. We used all of it for this project! What wasn’t used for an infirmary unit, nesting boxes, a ramp, or roosting bars was utilized in other house projects or burned.
Now that the chickens were in the coop, it was time to focus on the baby chickens we just hatched in my $150 incubator.
More chickens means more pine shavings to keep them clean. More pine shavings mean spending another $11 as we wait for the chicks to mature enough to join my flock.
As the chicks grow, they consume about two or three bags of chick feed. While I didn’t tally up how many bags, I know chick feed is about $10 per bag. So to be on the safe side, let’s say I spent $30 on chick feed before my chicks integrated into my flock.
My hens have recently converted to straw in their nesting boxes, which is another $7 per square bale. However, I won’t include this in my start-up cost calculation. More on that in a bit.
Finally, I average three, 40 lb bags of feed per month for my flock. This includes the chicks I hatched in March 2024.
My feed costs are usually $34 a month for the three bags. So as of July 2024, my feed cost totals $204 for the 2024 calendar year.
However, I won’t be including my feed cost in my start-up cost calculations, either. Why?
My feed and bedding are both ongoing costs related to my flock. Since I sell a few dozen eggs here and there, I’m able to offset those costs by what I sell. That also means that number changes every month, because it’s influenced by how many eggs I sell!
My total start-up cost, for a wood shed conversion and hatching my chicks, was $377.
But farming anything is a long-term play. So what does it cost us to raise egg-laying hens?
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Ongoing Costs for Raising Chickens for Eggs
My monthly cost for 15 or so laying hens is $65. That cost includes chicken feed, pest control, and bedding in the summer months.
In the winter months, my pest control costs are zero. As the frost sets in and the plants die back, so do our garden-variety pests.
I also spend money periodically on supplements.
My chickens are unable to free-range year-round, which means they don’t have access to the grit they need in their gizzard to digest food. So I supplement with oyster shells.
During the heatwaves in the summer and cold snaps in the winter, I also supplement with electrolytes. That has been the best way to give my chickens the additional support they need during those periods of additional stress.
Other Costs for Baby Chicks
If you have done thorough research on raising chicks, you know what I’m about to say. But if you haven’t, these materials are necessary to raise chicks.
A heat lamp is a must. Chicks need the heat, especially if you’re raising them away from a hen or in the chilly parts of spring.
A cardboard box is also a great introductory bedding for chicks. As they find their footing and mature, you can transition them to pine shavings. If you use anything smaller than pine shavings, I highly recommend cardboard. That way, your chickens won’t choke on smaller bedding as they strengthen their muscles and work on moving on their own.
Apple cider vinegar is a simple addition to a baby chick’s waterer and will give their immune systems a bit of a boost.
My Biggest Expense in Chicken Keeping
Infrastructure has always been a budget buster for us and our chicken flock.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a pre-made coop or something we remodeled (like the woodshed). Infrastructure requires materials, tools, extra trips to the store for more materials, and time.
Our original coop was free because it was already on our property when we moved in. But we quickly replaced it with an $800 coop. And then spent $186 on a wood shed conversion.
Even though my chicken feed and bedding will cost me more over time, they aren’t an expense that will break the bank when you’re trying to start your flock.
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The Cost of Older Birds
As your chickens mature, you’re faced with a dilemma. Do you keep feeding them even though they aren’t producing eggs?
If your answer is yes, you know you’re going to spend more money on feed as your flock grows.
If your answer is no, you can expect to spend money on butchering supplies or expend the effort to rehome your chickens.
Are Egg-Laying Chickens Worth the Effort and Expense?
Chicken prices regularly fluctuate at the grocery store for a few key reasons.
During peak seasons of disease, commercial farmers will kill thousands of birds to prevent the spread of disease. That means fewer birds are laying, making eggs a hotter commodity.
Egg manufacturers also take a cut of the cost. It’s not cheap to produce an egg! Just like you are juggling the cost of feed and packaging, egg producers are juggling those and the cost to transport, wash, pasteurize, and market eggs.
Finally, inflation. Now that that’s a household term in the United States, it’s always something to factor in when you consider raising your eggs.
In fact, according to the USDA, egg prices rose another 3 percent in May 2024.
Inflation isn’t something lost on backyard chicken owners. For all the same reasons – disease, manufacturers, and inflation – our feed prices can fluctuate. That means we need to be prepared to spend more money on feed in some months, or factor that extra charge into setting the price for eggs we sell.
You can’t get around inflation. But you can fight it by selling your eggs, feeding your chickens scraps, and looking for commercial feed alternatives.
How to Raise Egg-Laying Hens in the Long Run
We are fans of raising your eggs. But I hope the figures provided in this blog post have helped you see the financial side of raising chickens for eggs.
If it has been an encouragement, comment on this blog post and let me know! I would also love to know what a dozen eggs are going for in your neck of the woods.
I have so many more blog posts on raising chickens. Everything from how to get started, transporting chickens safely, and whether or not you should keep a rooster.
For more homesteading inspiration, follow me on Pinterest!
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