There are many reasons to raise your own chicken for inwardness : a drive for self - sufficiency , a refusal to support industrial - farming system , the gratification of know exactly where your food for thought arrive from , a commitment to humane essence - animal production . economic science , you notice , is not on this leaning . From purchasing bird to source provender toprocessing chickens , there are both financial and time cost for everything .
get ’s say you need to raise one batch of chickens for meat each twelvemonth : Fifteen is a estimable numeral to start with , give you about one chicken to take out of the freezer each month and a few to give as gifts . Here , we look at the fair cost of raising one batch of 15 chickens . The prices name below are estimates based on numbers try out from across the United States . Assuming you already have the substructure you necessitate — shelter , fencing , waterers , feeders , entrepot blank — believe these inputs from wench to deep freezer before embark on a meat chicken - farm endeavor .
Costs Of Raising Chicks
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If you have a flock of inheritance - breed meat Gallus gallus ( such as Russian Orloff or Jersey Giant ) or dual - intention birds ( Australorp , Buckeye or Chantecler , for example — breeds that are good for laying bollock , as well as good meat birds ) , and you have the patience and the know - how to hatch your own , you ’re ahead of the curve already .
Without a ready - made batch , you need topurchase chicksfrom a hatchery , a breeder , a neighbor or a feed - supplying memory board . Generally , fast - growing sort that have been commercially developed specifically for meat — Cornish Cross and Red Ranger — will be less than slow - growing inheritance meat or double - intention breed . The toll will go up for the rare breeds and will waver depend on your source , as well .
The prices below are what you could expect for sexed cockerels , though keep in judgement that male birds produce quicker and put on more muscle :
Feed Prices
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Besides the cost of your biddy , feed will be the highest - economic value tangible input . Feed costs deviate tremendously ground on your placement ; whether it ’s organic , non - GMO or established ; current trade good prices ; and the amount buy . If you have a means of storing feed , such as securely covered metal drum , an old thorax freezer or a feed wagon , you may make bulk provender purchase for a cost break . Feed purchased in bag from the farm - provision store is generally more expensive than that purchased in bulk from a grain mill but also more convenient for small - scale chicken safekeeping . Pasture - raised Gallus gallus will get some of their nutrition from the plant life and fauna of their surroundings — as much as 30 pct — so you may consider that in calculating your look provender toll .
A slow - growing volaille that will be ready for processing in 12 to 16 weeks will corrode less provender per twenty-four hour period but more feed over its lifetime than a commercial - breed chicken that will grow fast , consume a mickle of feed each day and touch market weighting in eight weeks . Kentucky Cooperative Extension account needing 105 to 120 pounds of provender to keep a flock of 15 fast - grow , commercial-grade - breed meat birds . lift slow - growing chickens requires 135 to 150 Ezra Pound of feed over the spate ’s life-time . Here ’s what you may look to give for provender over the course of action of your muckle ’s lifetime :
Water Bill
pee is the most important nutrient for a chicken . tight - growing heart and soul chick require clean water to stay level-headed .
Meat chicksneed more than one - and - a - half to two times as much water as provender by weight unit , according to the University of Georgia Extension . Considering 1 gal of water weighs 8.3 pounds and using the provender estimates delineate earlier , your flock of 15 heart chicks will drink approximately 31 gallons of water over their lifespan . This figure is averaged between the fast - growing breeds and the behind - growing breeds and will increase in hot conditions and if your chicks happen to be run through more . Add in a few gallon for maintenance purposes : rinse off out waterers , cleaning off feeder , et cetera .
Bedding Costs
During the chickens ’ fourth dimension in the incubator house and coop , they ’ll make a great deal of dissipation and will require bedding to take over it , ply stable and dry foothold , and maintain unspoilt air quality . Sawdust , woodwind instrument shavings and chop straw are good options .
Whether you select to raise your kernel hoot on pasture or in a henhouse , they ’ll all need to start out as chicks in a brooder house for two or three weeks . If you move your chickens out tochicken tractorsat a few weeks of age , your bedding monetary value will be zero after that time . preserve them indoors for their whole lives will imply the largest bedding greenback , while providing access code to a coop but not circumscribe them to the social organisation will postulate a negligible bedding investment . The amount of bedding you want depends on the previously mention factors , as well as the size of it of the brooder sign or coop .
As with most comment , bedding costs will vary base on where you live and the beginning . Many baseball bat railway yard , furniture factory and other woodworkers give away their wood shavings for free ; likewise , Sir Henry Wood chips are often light to come by from tree - trimming companies and public-service corporation declarer . If these sources are not available , you could purchase bagged wood shavings from a farm store — which is probably your most expensive option — or bulk Sir Henry Joseph Wood chips from a landscape fellowship .
Assuming you need to buy bagged Ellen Price Wood sliver over the course of keeping the chickens for 10 weeks , here are your costs :
Price Of Electricity
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The brooder household is the most expensive phase angle of this operation in terms of electricity , too , as chicks need a constant high temperature in their early days of life . Depending on the temperature alfresco and the size and type of space your chicks are in , you might have to persist a heating plant lamp for just one week or for longer . Your cost will variegate based on your electric utility rates , but the follow number is from the Duke Energy Corp.
Processing Fees
With only 15 meat hoot , home processingmakes the most sense from a fiscal standpoint . Here , your costs will be proportional to H2O use , propane or electrical energy to heat scalding water , plastic bag for storing your inwardness , and crank to bring down the meat to storage temperature . At a processing quickness , all of these price are progress into the per - bird processing fee , which will motley some based on the C.P.U. you choose , but be given to be in the $ 3 to 4 mountain chain .
Total Cost Of Your Meat Chickens
Looking at each of these identification number separately might give you a new appreciation for the investment that blend into raising meat animal . think back that none of these include the initial capital jump - up investment of a incubator house , henhouse , fencing , poulet tractor , waterers , feeder , storage blank space , processing equipment , Gallus gallus crate , shovelful , barrow and knickknackery . After your calculate in the value of your sentence , this is the toll you ’re looking at :
These numbers are enough to make you asphyxiate on your volaille pot pie . If you subtract your time investment and only view your actual financial investment , they go down significantly :
There are many benefits to raising your own inwardness snort that reach beyond the financial , so do n’t let these numbers discourage you . Realize , too , that if you were to have a larger flock , your per - raspberry cost would not increase , rather just the antonym would happen . If your chicken tractor is large enough to hold 30 birds , for example , you would not be spending any more fourth dimension each mean solar day to care for a lot of 30 than you would for a flock of 15 — you would still be move only one volaille tractor each day — so your per - shuttlecock time investment would minify . You would be paying more money overall for feed but the same amount of money per bird .
Consider all of these item — fiscal , tangible and selfless — and be realistic about the scope of your investment before you put all your meat shuttlecock in one basket .
This article run in the November / December 2015 matter of Chickens magazine .
