Is Raising Your Own Chicken Actually Cheaper?

I'm spending about $480 to raise a year of chicken for my family, and that's not as cheap as you might think, but here's why I do it anyway. Here's exactly where that money goes. A few months ago, I ordered 40 Cornish Cross and 10 Black Australorps. The Australorps are to replace our current aging flock, and the Cornish are going to feed our family for the year. All 50 chicks, including shipping, cost us $240. Last year, I raised 20 Cornish Cross and went through 8 50-pound bags of feed. So this year, doubling the birds, I'm assuming that doubles that too, to about 16 bags. I found a place with cheaper feed at around $15 a bag, so that's another $240 or so. So roughly $480 all in. Though I want to be honest, I haven't spent all of it yet, and these birds aren't processed yet either, so this is my estimate going in, not the final receipt. Now let's actually do the math on that, because I bet a lot of people are curious whether this is even worth it. If these 40 birds dress out to about 5 pounds of meat, that comes to about 200 pounds of chicken. At $480, that puts me at about $2.40 per pound. And organic pastured chicken at Whole Foods right now is going for $3.99 a pound. So yes, I'm saving money, but I'm not saving a fortune. And that $240 a pound doesn't include the setup costs, like building a tractor for instance, or your brooder, or your heat plate or heat lamp, and all that other little stuff. Now in my case, I built a lot of these things for free, or was given a lot of the materials to make these things for free, so it didn't cost me anything except my time. But those are additional costs that you need to factor in, especially if it's the first time that you're doing this. But once you have all of these, the infrastructure and all of the tools and things that you need to raise them, you have them for all the years to come that you do this. But most people are going to spend a one-time cost to set all of this up. So if that's you in your first year, your costs are probably going to be a little bit different than mine, you might be closer to break-even on all your costs. And that's the honest truth, but in my eyes, it's all worth it. So if it's basically break-even, why do it at all? Because that $3.99 bird at Whole Foods and the bird I raise here are not the same product. Not even close. Mine is on grass almost its entire life. It's never sprayed with bleach, it's never treated with chemicals. I know exactly what went into it every single day because I was there. And for the egg layers, I'll be honest with you, it might not seem like a huge difference. Eggs at the store really aren't that expensive. But the cost adds up, especially when you're always eating eggs like we are. And honestly, it's the best feeling in the world to go get eggs from your own backyard. I think everyone should be able to have a small flock to support their family. Because the chickens also supply us with compost to grow more food. So they're the best investment we've ever made. We started with our first six chickens back in 2020 as a response to the pandemic for food security. Those six Rhode Island Reds turned into six more White Leghorns the following year. And then we had 12. And from there, we experimented with all kinds of breeds. Black Copper Morans, Americanas, Buff Warpingtons, and Barred Rocks. We found that we liked having 8-10 hens to keep up with our family's demand for eggs. We've learned a lot in the past six years. And what I've learned most of all is that I'm never going to be truly self-sufficient if I'm always buying feed from the store. Chickens need a lot of food. And that's the part nobody talks about when they tell you that chickens save money. Because if you're buying every bag of feed from the store, you haven't actually opted out of anything. You've just moved your dependency from the grocery store to the feed store. And that's why I keep experimenting. Chickens were originally jungle fowl. If you look at the history of them, they lived in forests, cleaning up the forest floor, hiding under canopies of green foliage. And I replicated that here with our chicken tunnels. That's extra food they get without me buying a thing. And most of it is perennial, or just weeds that basically act like perennials. I'm working on a course that explains how you can feed your chickens naturally without store-bought feed. I'm finishing the filming of it now, and I hope to have it completed before the end of the year. We're raising these hens on my own developed feed method, using food you likely already have in your pantry, plus growing a garden specifically to feed them beyond that. If that's interesting to you, please join the email list for the waitlist below. Now I do want to tell you how this week actually went, because it wasn't smooth. When I've ordered through the mail in the past, they typically ship Monday evening and arrive Wednesday or Thursday. This time they showed up Tuesday afternoon, and I was not ready. Last year I raised 20 birds and it went really well, so this year I thought, you know, why not double it? That seems simple enough in your head, until the mailman hands you a box of 50 chirping chicks, and you don't have a brooder ready, and you don't have your mobile tractor built yet either. Luckily, the chicks are all in a brooder now, so that buys me about a week to get everything ready. The meat birds will only be here two months total, but they're still a balancing act while I maintain my current laying flock and make room for the new hens. That'll happen around October or November, when I'll find a new home for the older hens. And that's specifically so I'm not feeding birds through the winter that are already past two years old and won't be laying much anymore anyway. I'd rather feed my new hens through the winter, they'll eat less, and we'll have fresh eggs from them come spring. Every bird you feed has to earn its place. For the meat chickens, I tried an experiment last time feeding them an altered version of my homemade feed recipe. It didn't go well, and it was pretty expensive. So this year, I'm just feeding grower feed to keep it simple. They'll still get the most natural varied diet from being on grass almost their entire lives. I like to get them outside as early as possible, and mid-August makes that easy on young birds. I built an 8x10 tractor to house most of them, and a few more will go in a smaller tractor. In mid-October, these birds go into our freezer to feed our family. There is no better feeling than growing your own protein in your backyard. It's fulfilling, and it gives me a lot of pride. But it's not just about saving money. It's about being resilient. I talk about that all the time. I see things happening that I don't like, and there's no way to control what happens outside our homes or out in the world. But you can provide a food source for your family. That's our right. And yet even those rights keep getting more regulated and taken away. I fear that in the future you won't be able to raise chickens or grow gardens, and it'll be limited to certain people with enough land or whatever the rule ends up being. But it should be a right for everyone. So I'm doing what I can, even on a low income and small land base, to provide from home for my family. And chickens are the ultimate self-sufficient animal in that regard. They don't need much space at all. And one last thing to mention, my wife Stephanie just published her first book called Chicken Math Mayhem. She's been a huge lover of children's books her whole life, and throughout her career as a teacher, especially authors like Mo Willems and Eric Carle. She came up with the idea herself, illustrated it herself, and published it herself. And it's loosely based on our actual experience, which, as you saw this week, is very real. I am very proud of her, and the link is down below if you'd like to support her. And if you enjoy it, please leave a review, because that really helps authors find new audiences. Thank you all for watching, and we'll see you in the next one. That's what I do to try to get a cool thumbnail for you guys. Gonna go shower now.