Cost Breakdown

Double Egg Yolk Across the Pan
What does it mean? So intense! Lol, if you’ve never seen “Yosemite Double Rainbow” on YouTube, you’re missing out! We did start out yesterday with a double yolk. Not from one of our chickens yet of course, but from my uncle who gets his eggs from a guy at work and this one was huge (pics below). He actually gave it to Grandma who gave it to us because she knows Gabi loves double yolk eggs. I hope I keep my chickens happy and that they provide me with many double yolks. Maybe not everyone gets such a kick out of it, but we do!  Only the large egg was in the pan at the time of this picture... it actually almost looks like a triple yolk!!

Raising chickens is fun, educational, and good for your health, but does it save money? Below is a breakdown of our costs thus far. I’ll continue to track the numbers (and the eggs!) to see where our breakeven point is. With 8 chickens, I’m expecting 200 +/- eggs per month, and we will be selling the surplus. For accounting purposes, the eggs we eat will be valued at $3/doz because we currently buy Eggland’s Best, which costs more than that. The surplus eggs will be sold for $2/doz.

One Time Costs
Chicken Feeder - purchased last year (approx $3)
Chicken Waterer - purchased last year (approx $5)
Heat Lamp - purchased last year (approx $15-20)
Heat Lamp Bulb - purchased last year (approx $6)
Brooder Box

• Wood purchased at Surplus Sale - $4.22
• Stainless steel purchased at Surplus Sale - $4.13
• Hardware and chicken wire - $29.02

Chicken Coop

• Wood purchased at Surplus Sale - $15.03
• Stainless steel purchased at Surplus Sale - $12.16
• Hardware - $8.13

The heat lamp bulb isn’t truly a one time cost, but I don’t how long it will last. It’s predominately used during the brooder box phase. If the winter is especially harsh, it may be put in the coop above the water to keep it from freezing.

We don‘t yet know the final cost of the coop. We got a ton of wood and awesome locks for $15 at the Surplus Sale, but we’ll definitely be needing more chicken wire and maybe additional hardware. When building a coop or brooder box, it’s obviously most economical to reuse wood. The “Surplus Sale” for local companys usually have good deals. Another place to find cheap wood is construction sites or Craigslist. Purchasing wood from a store will make the costs skyrocket. Buying a kit or a ready-built coop is the most expensive option. Coops big enough for 8 chickens can easily go for $1000+. If anyone does end up purchasing chicks, I’m sure Mitch would be more than happy to help with the coop designing/building.

All this wood for $15

Recurring Costs
Wood shavings - $7.71 (every 2-3mos)
8 RIR Pullets - $23.09 (every 2-4yrs depending on breed, if you put a light on so they have heavy production through winter, etc.)
Chick Starter food - $9.11 (unknown)
Permit - $25 (yearly for our area)

Our total costs for 2011 so far- $112.60

I don’t know how often we’ll have to purchase chicken food. I’m going to plant a good sized garden bed for chicken fodder complete with 50+ sunflowers, clover, and alfalfa to name a few. It’s healthier for the chickens to be eating living food plus it is cheaper. My goal is to eventually have the entire chicken production completely independent of processed/store bought food. Soon I plan to write about the chicken diet and what to plant to grow for chicken feed, but my very next post will be on the Dave Ramsey Live Event!

Grandma's Visit

The chicks are growing right before my eyes! Their wing feathers are coming in nicely, and all of them have at least the beginnings of tail feathers. This morning, I heard quite a racket in the brooder box. Feathers were rustling, and chicks were peeping. I walked in to find that one of them had managed to get a piece of the pine bedding from beneath the box, and the rest were chasing her trying to take it, as though it was a worm. I had to laugh at the uproar it caused!

Pa drove Grandma Margie over today to see the chicks. We sure love living less than 5 minutes away from them. As I mentioned earlier, Grandma still remembers her mother’s brooder box and holding baby chicks as a small girl. She was thrilled to hold our chicks and watch the kids make their own memories. She even drew us out a picture of how their barnyard looked when she was growing up in the oil camps in Oklahoma.

Their feed room was located directly north of the hen house to block the wind, and the entire south side had windows to heat it up in the winter. Nesting boxes lined the perimeter, and a large outdoor run allowed the chickens to get ample exercise. The barn is where the cow was milked and slept if the weather was bad. Every morning grandma’s brothers--Gene and Raymond--would have to milk the cow and turn her loose to graze. In the evening, they called her back in to be milked. Grandma and her brothers treated the cow like a pet, riding her and occasionally giving her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

One morning her mom (my great-Grandma Annie) called the boys to get up and milk the cow, but Gene and Raymond didn't get up the first time they were called. Or the second time. Or the third. Until their dad (great-Grandpa Ernest) started walking back down the road; he had forgotten something at the house. Then they jumped out of bed and grabbed the milk bucket and hid it on top of a trunk in the closet, so he wouldn't know the cow hadn't been milked. When he got in the house, their dad went straight for the closet.  It so happened that what he had forgotten was in the trunk.  He saw the milk pail and asked what in the world it was doing in the closet, and Grandma Annie told him the boys hadn't been out to milk the cow. He sent them out promptly to milk her and put the poor animal out of her misery. 

It's interesting to note that my great-grandparents were not farmers.  They lived in the oil camp because that's how Grandpa Ernest made his living.  In those days it was common to keep chickens, a milk cow, and even a pig.  I hope to have a breakdown of start up and recurring costs posted before we leave for Kansas City tomorrow morning to see Dave Ramsey Live; however, "I make no promises; I tell no lies."

Before Buying Chickens…

Decisions, Decisions

When deciding whether you should purchase chickens, the first thing is to determine whether it’s permissible by law in your area. A good beginning search is “’your city’ poultry ordinance.“  In our town, you can have three pullets with no permit or up to twelve with a $25 yearly permit.  Cockerels are not allowed.

After getting a legal “thumbs up,” choose a breed.  This is a great form to help.  Next, you’ll need to decide where to purchase your chicks from. Below are some pros and cons to the different options. Unless you’re purchasing “sex-linked” chickens or buying mail order chicks from a hatchery, straight-run is the only way to purchase day-old chicks. Sex-linked chicks are cross breeds specifically bred so their color is differentiated by sex. Hatcheries have specialists who are able to sex day-old chicks with 95% accuracy.

Hatchery Pros:

• Many breeds to choose from, purebred
• Can choose straight-run, pullets, or cockerels

Hatchery Cons:

• Minimum order of 15-25 chicks
• Higher mortality rate due to shipping day-old chicks
• “Factory setting” possible exposure to more disease from high volume of birds
• With shipping costs, this is the most expensive option

Atwood’s/Tractor Supply Pros:

• Fewer breeds to choose from, purebred
• Can choose straight-run or pullets
• No minimum number to purchase
• Lower mortality, these can be a few days to a few weeks old, not true “day-olds”

Atwood’s/Tractor Supply Cons:

• Purchased from hatcheries, so same “factory setting”
• Additionally exposed to disease from customers

Local Farmer Pros:

• More natural setting, not exposed to thousands of birds
• No minimum number to purchase
• Cheapest option
• Low mortality rate

Local Farmer Cons:

• Will be straight-run only, unless purchased at an older age
• Often will be mixed breed

Buying chickens is not a decision to be made lightly, but it might be the right one for your family.  Raising chickens creates memories.  My grandma is in her 80s and still remembers the brooder box her mother kept in the kitchen.  She remembers leaning down to scoop up the furry, peeping chicks.  She also remembers walking her tame pet rooster on a leash.  Raising chickens helps children see that food doesn't just come from a store.  It gives them a sense of responsibility in the feeding and care of another life.  Of course it's a "green living" choice, all but eliminating fossil fuel needs for your eggs (and potentially chicken meat).  It's also a more nutritious egg, and you know the chickens have been raised humanely.  Not to mention, extra eggs/meat can be sold for a profit. 

Ready to take the plunge?  Before purchasing chicks you’ll need a few items:

• Brooder box
• Heat lamp and bulb (infared lighting helps with pecking, although that isn’t usually an issue with small flocks)
• Feeder
• Waterer
• Food
• Newspaper or wood shavings to put down in the brooder box
• Chicken coop or plans to build one -- plans for ours will available sometime in the future

Coming Up: Break down of start-up costs & Chicken Food: forage, fodder, or store bought?

Urban Farming 101

Of Chickens and Men

Mitch, the kids, and I went to Atwood’s to stretch our legs on a cold Saturday (2/26) and came home with a little breath of springtime. A peeping, feathering breath, that is. We purchased eight Rhode Island Red pullets (immature females/hens) to raise and eventually gather eggs from. This is our second adventure into “urban farming,” and we had a lot to learn that first year despite reading as much as we could from books and online sources.

Right now, we’re just enjoying the new babies! They're still fuzzy and don't mind the kids picking them up all the time. Gabi (4) loves to hold “Henny Penny” (she has a more yellow head than the others) and “Chicken Little” (she has a browner head than the others) -- the rest are collectively called “Little Red Hens.” Addy (2 ½) likes to hold them with too, and pet their heads. Rafe (1 ½) grabbed one from the brooder box a little too tightly and the chick let everyone know about it!

Trial and Error

In March 2010 we purchased five “straight-run” (un-sexed) day-old chicks from someone through Craigslist. We paid $2 per chick, and they sent us home with a small bag of “Chick Starter” to feed them. We chose day-old chicks so that our “brood“ of three small children could have the experience of raising chicks from the first days. They were truly day-old and had to be taught where to eat and how to drink. A couple of times the first day I took each of the chicks and dipped their beaks in the water, and then let go, allowing them to swallow. They caught on pretty quickly.

We put them in the brooder box with the heat lamp the recommended distance from the floor, but the chicks were soon laid out with their wings spread and panting; they were too hot. I moved the light up until the chicks’ body language told me they were more comfortable. Cold chicks will huddle together and peep loudly to say, “where’s Mom?!”

We started out with a cardboard brooder box.

We loosely followed plans laid out in Capper’s magazine, which can be found here.  It was very economical but turned out not to be very practical. Our chickens frequently knocked over the water--at first we used plastic container lids for food and water--which soon resulted in soggy cardboard. Additionally it was difficult to clean, and we always had to move the chicks somewhere else before cleaning it out. That was easy, until they were big enough to jump and fly short distances!

Soon, Mitch had built a wooden brooder box.

Chicken wire was added to the open half of the box after this picture was taken. It was more durable and sturdy but still difficult to clean. Every 5-7 days we moved the heat lamp up a few inches, making the brooder box a few degrees cooler. As their feathers continued to come in, they only needed the light at night, and eventually not at all. By this point we had bought a regular chicken feeder/waterer, but we didn’t realize how easily and frequently the birds would knock the one quart water container over. The spilt water in the wooden brooder box mixed with poop and newspaper was smelly and gross. Luckily our chickens were now old enough to go outside almost all the time, or we would have needed to build another brooder box last year. The transition to an outside coop will vary upon the breed and weather conditions, but they will need the brooder box for approximately 6-8 weeks.

All five of our chicks lived to make the transition to outside, but unfortunately they all ended up being cockerels (immature males/roosters), and we had to invite them to the July Chicken Fry! We purchased through Atwood’s this year mostly due to the fact that we needed all pullets. While I did help my aunt kill, feather, and dress the cockerels last year, it’s not something I particularly enjoyed, and we want eggs!

This year, our brooder box was built with cleanliness, durability, and functionality in mind. It has many upgrades and should last for years to come.

Food and water is located opposite the heat lamp. The flooring features small ½” chicken wire. After two days the chicks were accustomed enough to walking on it that the napkins could be removed, and now their poop will fall through to the steel tray that slides out for convenient cleaning/composting of the chicken droppings. We have wood shavings below the wire covering the tray to reduce/eliminate any chicken poo smells.  It has worked great so far!

Coming Up: Considerations before buying your first chooks!