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If you’re wondering exactly how many chickens we have, I believe the answer is 23. I think? Are backyard chickens worth it? Around here, that question has gotten a little complicated.
We didn’t exactly set out to have 23 chickens. We just keep accumulating them.
Someone had chickens in an apartment building and they needed somewhere to go. A neighbor was moving and couldn’t take theirs. A friend lost most of her flock and wanted her remaining two to go somewhere they’d have more chickens around them. And then, of course, we raised a whole slew of babies ourselves last season.
Apparently once people know you have chickens, you become an unofficial chicken rescue center.
So ours probably aren’t the perfect flock to use for a carefully calculated backyard egg business. But they are a pretty good example of what keeping backyard chickens can actually look like.
And despite having approximately 23 mouths to feed, the numbers aren’t actually terrible.
What We Actually Spend on Our Chickens
We spend about $50 a month feeding our chickens, or roughly $600 a year.
That includes their regular chicken feed plus treats.
But purchased feed isn’t the only thing on the menu.
We don’t have a compost bin sitting on our kitchen counter. We have the chicken bowl.
It’s actually a beautiful Temp-tations bowl by Tara that lives on the counter and slowly fills up throughout the day with whatever appropriate scraps and leftovers the chickens can eat.
Odds and ends from cooking, leftovers nobody is going to finish, food that would otherwise end up in the trash, it goes into the chicken bowl.
When it’s full, someone takes it outside and dumps the whole thing into the coop, where approximately 23 chickens descend upon it like they haven’t been fed in weeks.
It’s become such a normal part of our kitchen that nobody really thinks twice about it. Instead of automatically throwing food away, the question is usually, “Can this go in the chicken bowl?” It’s one more way we try to make the most of what we already have around here.
There are obviously other expenses involved in keeping chickens. You need somewhere for them to live, feeders, waterers, bedding and all the random little things that come up when you own animals.
But at this point, that $50 or so a month is our biggest regular chicken expense.
How Much Money Do We Make Selling Eggs?
This is where chicken math gets interesting.
We sell our extra eggs for $4 a dozen.
During the summer, when everybody was laying like crazy, we were selling around 6–8 dozen eggs every week.
That’s $24–$32 a week, or roughly $104–$139 a month.
Considering we’re spending around $50 a month on feed and treats, the egg sales during our best laying months more than cover what we’re spending to feed the flock.
And those aren’t even all the eggs they’re producing. We’re keeping eggs for our own family, too.
Then fall rolls around and the chickens apparently decide they’ve contributed enough to the household for the year.
Right now, we’re lucky to have 2–3 dozen eggs a week available to sell.
At $4 a dozen, that’s only about $35–$52 a month.
Suddenly our thriving backyard egg empire is barely covering its own snack budget.
But that’s part of keeping chickens.
They aren’t egg vending machines. Production changes throughout the year with daylight, molting, weather, age and whatever other reasons chickens apparently have for collectively deciding they’re done participating.
The Funniest Part Is That I Don’t Even Like Eggs
Here’s the part that makes owning approximately 23 chickens particularly ridiculous:
I think eggs are disgusting.
I know.
We have a backyard full of animals whose primary contribution to this household is producing a food I don’t particularly want to eat.
Thankfully, everyone else eats them.
I’ve also finally found a way to regularly get eggs into my own diet by making French toast. Apparently if you soak bread in them and add enough other ingredients, I’m on board.
I’ve even reached the point where I don’t flick the little pieces of egg out of my Chinese fried rice anymore either.
So we’re making progress.
Of course, 23 chickens occasionally means ending up with more eggs than you know what to do with. If your hens are also overachievers, my free Too Much of a Good Thing guide has ideas for using and preserving an abundance of eggs… plus plenty of other things that tend to pile up around the homestead. Grab the free guide here →
But Eggs Aren’t the Only Thing We’re Getting
If I only compared the cost of feed against the money we make selling eggs, I’d be leaving out a huge part of why having chickens is worth it for us.
They turn food that might otherwise be wasted into something useful. They give us manure that can go back into the garden and compost. They produce food literally in our backyard.
Our kids get to collect eggs and see firsthand where some of their food comes from.
And when production is good, we have enough extra eggs to sell and put a little money back toward their care. And honestly, they’ve just become part of our little backyard ecosystem.
Food comes out of the garden and kitchen. Scraps go into the chicken bowl. The chicken bowl goes out to the coop. The chickens give us eggs and manure. The manure eventually helps feed the garden.
It’s certainly not a perfectly closed-loop homestead system, but it’s one more way we’re able to use what we already have and waste a little less.
The Costs Nobody Talks About
Of course, $50 a month isn’t the whole story. If you’re starting from scratch, backyard chickens have startup costs. You need a coop. You need a secure run or another safe setup. You’ll need feeders and waterers. You’ll buy bedding. Things will break. Something will inevitably need to be repaired.
And then there are the chickens themselves. Although apparently you don’t always have to buy those. Sometimes people just start giving them to you.
This is also why I wouldn’t tell someone to get chickens purely because they want cheap eggs. If you spend hundreds, or thousands, of dollars creating the world’s most beautiful chicken setup and then compare your first dozen eggs to the grocery store, you’re going to have some very expensive eggs.
For us, the calculation is different because we’re already established. Our regular ongoing costs are relatively low, and selling our surplus eggs helps offset them.
So, Are Backyard Chickens Worth It?
If you’re looking for the absolute cheapest possible dozen eggs, I’m not going to tell you that you need to run out and build a chicken coop.
There are startup costs. They require daily care. They make messes. Egg production fluctuates dramatically throughout the year.
And if you’re anything like us, you may start with a perfectly reasonable number of chickens and somehow become the place where everyone else’s chickens come to retire. But for us, they’re absolutely worth having.
We spend roughly $600 a year on feed and treats for our flock. During the summer, selling our surplus eggs can bring in more than twice what we’re spending each month to feed them, while still providing eggs for our own family.
During the slower months, they may barely cover their feed bill or not cover it at all. But the value isn’t just in the eggs we sell.
They turn some of our food waste into something useful. They contribute to our garden. They give our family fresh food from our own backyard. They provide an endless amount of entertainment. And apparently they provide a home for every chicken in the surrounding area who suddenly finds herself needing one.
So yes, backyard chickens are worth it for us.
Just don’t ask me exactly how many we have.
And if you have a chicken who needs a home… apparently you know where to find us.
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