Chickens: as a money saving method only - does it make sense?

Davesnave

Teddi wrote: »

As the title really, we eat a lot of eggs, 25-30 per week between the 2 of us.

You could buy 3 dozen of my eggs for £6.60 a week.

So, no, it doesn't make sense, because it would be far cheaper to buy mine!

Never think of chickens as money-saving, or imagine that if they have a wire 'run' they're truly free range. I see many hens just scraping around on mud, or living in a couple of m2 and their owners are kidding themselves.

Also, unless the pasture the hens are on can be rotated properly, there will be a build up of parasites and an eventual onset of disease. Even with excellent management, wild birds will occasionally introduce disease or parasites.

Where I live, predators frequently break into inadequate hen housing/runs and, on occasions, wipe out an entire family flock. People seem to either give up, or just shrug their shoulders when this happens, rather than spend on the necessary predator-proof defences. I can understand that, having paid-out for ours!

It's obviously easier keeping, say, three chickens rather than 30, and as a gentle introduction I'd go for hybrids. You can branch out with breeds later if you want to expand the flock.

Former_MSE_Wendy

Hi all

I'm a bit late to the party but I also have a couple of cheeky chooks and like a few have said above I'd say it's best to not think of them as moneysaving (and this is coming from a long time member MSE staff).

I too got a second hand eglu from ebay (£200) and we built a 4m run for when we're at work (£280). The two hybrids (£15 each) get to roam the garden when someone is at home. They were each giving about 25 eggs a month but this has now dropped to about 10 as one of them has slowed and the other has stopped for some reason.

Once the set up costs above are out of the way my spread sheet, yes I keep a chicken based spread sheet , shows we've spent an average of £20 a month on things like bedding, food, health products, one trip to the vet (£35 per bird) and a back up wooden house (£30) in case one of them got really ill and needed to be separated (luckily it's remained unused).

When we had too many eggs I gave the extras away as gifts to colleagues and neighbours. We've also sold a few, but only £15 worth over the past year. I'd say we've had around 800 eggs from the two hens in almost two years.

My overall calcs say this means we've a cost per egg of 50p (excluding the set up costs) and £1.12 including everything. If we sell the eglu for the same price it'll be 88p.

Whatever the cost though, they are worth EVERY PENNY!

Davesnave

That's a very honest financial appraisal, Wendy.

I've no clear idea what our start-up cost, but partial allowance would have to be made for two orchards to be fenced and sheds erected in both, so we're into the thousands, although we had to fence for sheep anyway. Lack of fencing was one reason why we our smallholding was cheap, so the financial picture is very blurred.