stinkerpants design

Last week I wrote a post about how raising chickens isn’t as easy as we thought it would be. In the comments, a few of you asked if I could talk about how much it costs to raise chickens. In my experience, you can make choices that make it either relatively cheap, or really expensive; I’ll talk about all these options.

Just to get organized, I’ll go over the few main expenses of raising backyard chickens first, and then I’ll expand on them in a moment:

1. The chicken coop and accessories: This is the home where your chickens will live. It needs to provide a safe place for them to stay at night, and a comfortable place to lay their eggs. You will also need a container for their food and a container for their water.
2. Food: Chickens eat a lot. They eat chicken feed and pretty much any scraps you give them.
3. Chickens: Of course, you need to buy some chickens. Otherwise the other stuff is pretty pointless.

Okay, now let’s talk a little bit more about our options.

The Chicken Coop

When we got our first two chickens, Y and I bought a pre-made coop from a local feed store. At the time, we thought we’d only have two chickens, so it was a good size. We also thought it was a good deal. As it turns out, this was an expensive route to take. Chickens need a coop and an enclosed area on the ground, so they can peck at the ground and not get picked off by an eagle. This coop and run are sold separately. Total, they came to about $350-$400 with tax, and we only had enough room for 2 chickens.

After we realized that we wanted more than 2 chickens, Y decided to build a new coop himself (I just realized that I never posted about this specifically, and I really should!). This new coop is really high quality, big enough for six chickens, and materials cost about $200-250.

Some people aren’t as handy as Y is, or don’t feel like investing the time. If you buy your own coop, you’re looking at probably $400 (but you might luck out if you look on Craigslist, as the woman who bought our first coop did!). As backyard chickenry gets more and more hip, you’ll find a lot of options for pre-made coops. For example, at around $500, I think the Eglu (pictured below, photo source here) is really cool, but you’ll probably want more than 2 chickens, so you’re looking at the big one, which is more like $1000 with the run.

If you’re thinking about going the DIY route (or you’re just interested in learning about the different types of coops), Backyard Chickens is a great resource for the different types of coops, and they have a lot of examples of homemade coops. People are pretty creative!

As for the accessories–that’s another one-time investment. I’d recommend getting the largest food containers you can so you don’t have to refill it all the time, and figure out how to hang them–otherwise you end up with a lot of chicken crap in the food, which is totally nasty. We bought large metal water and food feeders at the feed store, which probably cost about $50 total. The photo below is Tulip with the water feeder.

Another expense we have is bark chips. While at the Sunset Festival this summer, I checked out Sunset’s chicken coop and was very impressed. They used bark chips on the ground (in fact, they just recently wrote a post about their coop flooring), and it cut down on the smell and the need to clean the ground every week (the coop itself still needs to be cleaned, though). I came home and told Y, and we recently got a bunch of bark nuggets (around $50) to cover the ground. The results have been miraculous. The poop falls between the chips, and it doesn’t smell at all. I’d even venture to say that it smells good. So if you aren’t planning on getting the type of coop that you can move all around the yard (a tractor coop), I highly recommend the bark.

The Food

Chicken feed is pretty cheap. We feed all organic pellets, which we get from a local feed store. We get a big 50 pound bag for $35, and it usually lasts about 6-8 weeks (for 5-6 chickens). You’ll also need oyster shells as a calcium supplement, which keeps the eggshells thick. They hardly eat any of these, and they’re only 55¢ per pound.

Another cool thing about chickens is that they love scraps and will eat almost anything; here’s a list of all the things a chicken can and cannot eat. Chickens eating spaghetti? Pretty hilarious.

The Chickens

Chickens vary in price. You can get them as chicks and pay about $2 per chick, but then you have to go through the trouble (and heartbreak) of raising them. There are also upfront costs for that, like heat lamps, etc. We found grown chickens in our area on Craigslist, and paid about $25/chicken. One thing to note: chickens don’t start laying until they’re about 6-7 months old, and after a certain age, they lay less. So if you’re buying a “used” chicken, do your research.

The fun part about choosing your own chickens (as opposed to getting a kit with chickens included) is that you can choose what breeds you get. And different breeds of chicken lay different colored eggs. We get white eggs, light brown eggs, dark brown eggs with spots, and olive green eggs. It’s really cool.

In Conclusion

As you can see, the cost depends a lot on how much you choose to spend. How much are you willing to do yourself? We’ve spent more than we probably should have because we bought a crappy coop and didn’t plan ahead (although, we’ve been able to recoup (haha) some of our costs by selling stuff on Craigslist, so it’s not a total loss.

All in all, I’d say that unless you are super frugal and eat a lot of eggs, I wouldn’t do this to save money on eggs (at least not initially). We get about 2 dozen or so eggs per week for five chickens (when they’re all laying). However, for us it’s worth it not to support egg farms, and for the fun of it. It is really cool to have all these different colored eggs, and as I’ve said before: chickens are awesome!