Happy Monday!
Today, I want to dive into the costs and benefits of raising chickens. We’ve had laying hens for about four months now. While it’s still early to assess how successful our first generation of home-born chickens will be, here’s what we know so far.

Starting Costs:
We started by purchasing ten hens and a rooster, averaging about $12 each, which totaled $132. Then, we converted a small thatched beach hut into a chicken coop, using wire, additional palm leaves to fix leaks, and construction blocks for nests. This cost us $150. We also had help from a handyman and another worker for half a day, costing $18. Altogether, our initial investment came to $300.

You could opt to buy chicks that are a few weeks old for less than $1 each, but there’s no guarantee they’ll survive to adulthood. They’ll eat without laying eggs for a few months until they mature. We preferred to get hens that started laying eggs within a week of adapting to their new environment. Sadly, one hen was eaten by an animal.

Ongoing Costs:
The primary expense is food. A 100-pound bag of vitamin-enriched corn (hormone-free) costs just under $30 and lasts about a month. However, we also have two turkeys, two ducks, and a couple of geese sharing this food, so the cost attributed to the hens is around $25 per month. They also consume kitchen scraps and hunt for bugs and worms, especially during the wet season.

We haven’t needed to vaccinate our hens thus far since they’re not in contact with other nearby animals. However, if you live in a rural area with other chickens, vaccinations might be necessary.

Return on Investment:
After four months, we’re collecting an average of six eggs per day. Some hens lay every other day, and hens stop laying when they are hatching. On average, caged hen eggs cost $0.17 each, while free-range eggs cost $0.20. If we only focused on selling eggs, we could gross $36 per month, but after factoring in food costs, our net profit would be around $11 monthly. This translates to $132 annually, a 44% return on our initial $300 investment.

However, our main interest is raising chickens for meat. We eat two eggs each for breakfast, leaving two eggs daily for reproduction. It’s impossible to know if an egg is fertilized until the hen has incubated it for 21 days. If not hatched, the eggs are neither edible nor sellable. So far, we’ve had low hatch rates—7, 5, and 5 chicks from each of the three sets of 15 eggs, respectively. Many chicks don’t survive due to predation or other causes.

You can consume a chick between four to six months old if they survive. Currently, one of our oldest chicks is weak, and we doubt it will make it. Because of these variables, it’s hard to give precise figures on the return.

Nonetheless, the extra food costs for chicks are minimal. After four months, we’ve accumulated 13 chicks worth about $2 each, which will be valued at $7.50 each by six months and $12 each if we keep them for a year. We’ve consumed the equivalent of $104 worth of eggs in this period, which brings our total profit to $30, or 10% of our $300 investment—translating to 30% annually.

Future Prospects:
In six months, assuming all the chicks survive and no new ones are hatched, we anticipate having:
– 13 chicks valued at $7.50 each, totalling $97.50
– 130 eggs per month for consumption, valued at $156

This means we’d earn $253.50 while spending $150 on food, resulting in a $103.50 profit—amounting to a 34.5% return on our $300 investment (69% annually).

Raising chickens looks promising when considering meat production alongside egg consumption. However, this requires being able to slaughter the chickens yourself, which is something I haven’t yet done. We usually buy fried chicken weekly from the supermarket and hold off on eating our home-raised chickens until they are larger. By waiting to eat them, we maximize our returns as each chicken lays more eggs and hatches more chicks.

Considering a Larger Scale?
Not quite. While raising chickens is enjoyable, our small setup offers limited profit margins. To cover the cost of a $200/month handyman, we’d need to scale up to 120 animals, which would outgrow our current coop. Expanding means significant costs for new nests and land. Large-scale operations like BF’s father’s egg business, which involved hundreds of thousands of birds, indeed reap substantial profits, but scaling up from a household level introduces new challenges like health regulations, possible egg contamination fears, and higher distribution and marketing costs.

For us, the current scale is perfect. It complements our grocery needs without requiring sales, thus bypassing additional costs associated with a larger operation.

Do you raise chickens or ever thought about it? This is our story so far!