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i don't actually have any but was just wondering if ppl have chickens purely because they like them or because of the eggs?

what i mean is, is it cheaper to buy the chooks and feed and whatever else ya need or would it be a lot cheaper just to go to the supermarket and buy eggs.. also what do you do with all the eggs?? (and how many do they lay each?)

would really love some btw

Ha ha, no it's not cost effective, although I try to sell enough eggs to cover feed costs. Buying hens is expensive (£20 + for pure breeds pol), a little cheaper for hybrids or cross breeds. I raise my own, but occasionally get in hatching eggs from other sources and the odd cock that is unrelated. Hen housing is expensive - even if you build your own there is still the outlay for wood etc.

I guess we all do it for the LOVE of it. Chickens clucking in the garden is something I've had all my life, and can't really imagine not having any.

The eggs are far superior to those from any supermarket though, but during the spring and summer months I guess we are all struggling to find new ways of cooking eggs (I bake loads of cakes and the children eat them boiled/scrambled/fried several days a week). Who wants to start up a Recipes using lots of eggs thread?

We spent about £100 buying four brown hens, building the run and house, feeder and bits and bobs, the first bag of organic layers pellets and a bag of grit. The feed lasts five weeks or so when supllemented by greens and costs £7.85 for 20kg. The grit will last about another month by my reckoning so has lasted three months altogether and cost about 50p ish.

The hens are bog standard brown hens, £5.50 each, and bred specifically for egg laying. These are the hens they use in battery farms I believe.

You may need to take things like worming and de-lousing into account at some time but we've not needed to do either yet. I'm a big believer in not treating them until they need it (you wouldn't take a paracetemol just in case you might get a headache).

Call it £100 a year altogether-ish. (sounds a lot put together like that )

What I get in return is, on average, one egg each a day, that's two dozen large/very large organic eggs a week, which cost, in our local Tesco, £2 for half a dozen. There's £416 a year for a start.

I also get a black bin of chicken manure roughly once every few months. This will probably rot down to be a bucket full, but a bucket sized container of chicken manure pellets costs a fiver a throw, and it's good stuff too. So, another £20 quid's worth a year maybe.

You'll also get the best tasting eggs you've ever had. I made an omellet the other night and I can't remember ever seeing an omellete quite so yellow

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A Year in the Veg Plot

On average, taking into consideration ALL costs, and only 'pricing' the eggs (supermarket standard free-range prices) it probably just breaks even for those who don't get carried away with cost of housing and such (that was what we found when I kept chooks mainly for eggs).
Some will do better than that, some worse.
Extra advantages are
better, fresher eggs
manure for the garden
all the fun of owning chooks.

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have you all got them on allotments etc or has anyone got any in their back garden?

oh and here's a really dumb question.. why do you call them chooks (ie chickens) when they're really hens? are hens female chickens? cos the males are cocks aren't they? (no pun intended......... or was there?)

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Ours are in the back garden. And yes the females are hens and the males cockerals.

Not sure why people call them chooks though, too many Aussie soaps on the telly?

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A Year in the Veg Plot

Our hens cost £10 each (I have 3), the run etc was built by OH and cost about £60. Then we had to fox proof it all which cost a lot more in chicken wire etc. The we had to get some onduline as the lid leaked.
The feed costs about £7 every 4 weeks.
We also had to buy the feeder, drinker, grit, oystershell, bedding, wormer, mite powder... (but still got the originals of all of these 15 months on)

Mine laid one a day each for a year and now slightly less in their second year, so about 20 eggs a week. I don't sell mine unless people at school ask for some (£1 for 6)

So no they are not cost effective - but they will be if I still have the same hens in about 50 years lol. They are great fun though

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janeyo

Please have a look at my blog

http://janefruitandveg.blogspot.com/
updated February 19th 2010

You can't hurry compost...

I think if you eat any males you breed then you'd be certainly making a profit- a free range chook over here starts at about 12 Euro- so from a clutch of say 10 chicks you'd get 5 cocks (ish) which would cost about £50.
Mother hen won't lay for about 10 weeks- so averaging 6 eggs a week that's 60 eggs - 5 dozen- at £2 a dozen (ish)???? =£10 ish loss from lack of eggs

Tis a bit tricky to work out for me cos mine free range- which must be much cheaper on food.

If you'd really love some- then go for it- they're lots of fun and quite like pets which actually reward you with more than a cuddle ( remember you get the droppings too for the fruit and veg!!!)

Go for it!!!!!

yeah and now it's driving me mad that i can't think of the aussie soap that i was watching when i first heard the chook word.. there were some ppl (especially the woman) who was doing the self suffiency thing

think there was a busybody called esme in it.. any ideas?

how big is your back garden? ours isn't huge

origin of the word chook......

World Wide Words: Chook

I have had a mixture of chicks,pullets,hens ,cockerels...no idea when they grow up from one phase to another...tis easier to say chook!!!

ohhhhhhh i just read that and it mentions that they're called chuckies too... i remember when i was little (about 35 years ago) my mum used to ask me if i wanted a chucky egg!!.. maybe it's not such a new word after all

We're lucky there. Our's is quite big (roughly 70ft x 70ft) but the area the chooks get moved around in (made the run moveable and move them every other week or so) is about 5M x 5M. There's room to move the run a few times before they get back where they started. The run is about 1M x 3M ish so they get moved half a dozen times. By they time they get back where they started it's all grown back again, with a little help from some grass and kale seed.

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A Year in the Veg Plot

when you say the run does that mean the outside bit or does it include the bit where they sleep and lay eggs? cos it doesn't sound huge

OMG!!!!..I can't believe I've just looked that up for you!!!

....here you go...

A Country Practice: The classic Aussie soap A Country Practice

That's just the outside bit. If you look around and take a look at some of theose chicken arks you can buy, supposedly for 6 chickens, they're even smaller.

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A Year in the Veg Plot

My chooks (I fancy the name is derived from the chuck-chuck in henspeak!) make a profit!
I have 14 layers and about 6 eaters.
The eggs I don't use at home are snapped up by fellow allotment holders at £1.50 dozen.
They are fed on layers pellets which are dead cheap (excuse the pun!) and greens from the allotment.
The money I get in my honesty box pays for the layers pellets easily as I only need to sell 4 doz eggs to pay for a bag (£4.95 for 20 kilo)
They ae a bit tying but are self financing.
Chicken sheds and runs cost nowt as they are made from scrap material.

Laying chooks cost me £2 each apart from the ones I hatched which cost me about a quid each! Ex bats can be picked up for 50p each.

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

yes that was it!!!!... i used to love that programme

thanks nicos!

is it ok to let them run round the garden or would they peck at all my veggies?

am i right in thinking that chickens can't fly?

Nope- tis pigs wot can't fly!!!!
Chooks most certainly can fly if they want to- height of 4ft along the ground- but they can fly upward 6ft or so depending on their weight and inclination. Some with clipped wings are escape artists too....I think you need to choose a certain variety with a lazy temperament!

and yup- they'd be delighted with a buffet table like that!!!!....fencing is the answer to be honest

My laydees are making a small profit over their keep by selling eggs, but then I have a lot of laydees and they live in a big stable and I buy layers 10 bags at a time which means they are 50p per bag less. And I had a lovely potato and onion frittata the other night.

Desperately trying to stop myself using four on the side so I can hard boil them.

And yes chooks can fly but only in short spurts which is why in some cases wings need to be clipped.

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Hayley B

An Egg is for breakfast, a chook is for life

Mine live in the garden. There are 4 of them and they normally inhabit a run of 3 x 2.5 metres which has the house inside it but raised on a platform so they have the whole space to use and shelter from the rain - both for them and their food. They're not expensive to keep - compare with dog and cat food etc - no pet is free. Their run is 6ft tall (I'm 5ft 9) and is covered, including the top, in small gauge weldmesh. This setting up cost is fairly high. They also have an outside area of about 3 x 4 m of grassy scrub and a few shrubs where they scratch and play as long as I'm out there to supervise.
I've never seen a fox round here but a neighbour opposite who sleeps badly sees one coming up my front path most nights! It then crosses to next door's front garden. I'm sure it does the rounds of the back gardens too but the chook run is like Colditz.

When we were little we called them chucky hens - which laid chucky eggs!

The eggs are like no others I've ever had. Even supermarket best organic free range don't come near for flavour and depth of colour in the yolk. And you can't put a price on having the chickens fly up to your knee when you're sitting with them and having a read. 3 of the 4 did it today. They like to be stroked gently - and to try making a grab for any buttons or jewellery you might have about your person! Chicken cuddles are ace!

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Its rather akin to calling cows moos........

My mum lived on her aunt's smallholding during the war and has always referred to them as chucks and eggs as chuckie eggs.
Our chicken house was supposedly 'free' in that we were given a quantity of marine ply by the firm next door to where I work. A family friend, who is a skilled carpenter, then turned it into a chicken-house for us and refused payment because he'd 'enjoyed doing it'. We bought some of the wood, the 2"x2" and 2"x1" which was needed to make the frame, plus things such as screws, roofing material, wood-preservative etc, so it still cost us the best part of £100. Having said that it's exactly what I wanted and is so strongly made that I shouldn't have to replace it for years. (the carpenter reckons 50 years if I keep redoing the preservative!!!) The adult hens (6 of) cost us £23 each and the growers were £8.50 for the Rhodies (3) and £10 for the Gold-tops (2). Lynda66 gave us the cockerels. So, close to £190 for the birds. A £20 kilo bag of organic pellets costs £13, but our feed merchant doesn't always have it available, so we sometimes have to use the Smallholder Range pellets which cost £8.05p. I could buy feed which is considerably cheaper, but all the cheap stuff, without exception, contains GM ingredients and I really do not want that.
If the hens lay fertile eggs and the broodies hatch them them I shouldn't need to buy another chicken and if the carpenter's right then the house should last longer than me, so the massive part of the outlay is hopefully over, but what with the continued costs of feed, wormer etc, then I doubt I'll ever find it's cheaper to keep chickens than to buy eggs. That isn't really the point though, chickens are wonderful, great fun and the eggs are fresher than you could ever hope to buy - I read somewhere that supermarket eggs are always AT LEAST a fortnight old before they reach the shop. I know what my hens have been eating, I know they've had the best life I could possibly give them and that's what is most important to me. When my hens lay eggs with beautiful deep-yellow yolks, then I know that it's because of a good diet and not because their feed contained yolk pigmenters.
I keep mine on the lottie. I did consider having 3 hybrids in the back garden, but in the end I wanted the scope that pure-breeds and cockerels could give me. I keep one allotment specifically for the chickens, the birds on one half and food for them (kale, sweetcorn etc) growing on the other half. It's a bit of a pain because our 'human' food is grown on a plot at a different site (a council one), but as chicken-keeping there is allowed, but is very restrictive, - 6 hens only, no cockerels, house to be built to flimsy council plans, small runs - I've taken on another plot at a private site on which the chickens are kept under a slightly less rigid regime, but with better possibilities for their welfare. After a bit of a struggle in early spring it's now working well and we're reasonably organised.

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Into each life some rain must fall........but this is getting ridiculous.

I use Farmgate layers pellets at £4.95 for 20Kg. It states on the packaging it is GM material free!

BOCM Pauls Farmgate Layers Pellets (Size: 20 kg)

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Wonder where I can get those, our feed merchant stocks either the Allen and Page GM free stuff or their own cheapo brand which definitely is not. Admittedly it's a large feed mill and the attached shop is a recent development, prior to that they just used to deliver to farms by the ton. At the moment I'm just grateful that I can get what I want and that the feed merchant's is not too far from Mum's village, so I do pass on a regular basis, but I'm certainly going to start shopping around soon. A local pet-food store is selling GM free, but are charging £6.99 for FIVE kilos, so that's a non-starter.
Sadly I can't store vast quantities - and I'm told it doesn't keep anyway - otherwise I'd order from the company you suggest and get free delivery for an order over £40, at the moment though 2 sacks at a time is my storage limit. And when you pay delivery you lose any savings.

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Into each life some rain must fall........but this is getting ridiculous.

Do my chickens (and cockerels) pay their way? Nahhhhhhhhhh They live in my back garden, produce the most beautiful eggs, talk to me when I go and sit with them, ask me if I've brought any treats back from the lottie when I come in the back gate, produce lots of free manure, eat my weeds, the list goes on!! Foodwise I use the same as Snadger, Farmgate, but I pay £5.50 a bag (cos I'm further south than him). I wouldn't use anything containing GM stuff. I've got 12 ex-battery which I paid a donation to the BHWT of £5 each (could have got them cheaper, but I want to support their charity). My 4 Bluebelle girls and 1 Bluebelle cockerel were £10 each. My 6 Welsummers were from 12 eggs I hatched out (hatched 8, sold 2 for £8) and they cost me £3.50 at a local market. The 3 week old chicks (5 of them) cost me £20 as eggs (bad hatch rate)

To be quite honest, I've never added up the costs in setting up chicken keeping any more than I added up the costs of getting my cat when I rescued her as a kitten. They're all my pets, and to have pets there's a cost involved. But they're worth it

I get about 6 eggs a day which is far more than I need, so I sell some at £1 for 6, and keep my family and friends supplied

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My girls found their way into my heart and now they nest there

When we took the plunge to go for the hens, I actually did an ROI calculation (Return on Investment). Although I "forgot" the capital cost of the coop and run and initial hens), it turned out that if we ate all the eggs ourselves, we'd break even. Of course, with 5 eggs per day, even our family of 6 struggled, so we sell them on... I now have regular "orders" for eggs from colleagues, which puts the hens into "profit". We are putting the "profit" to one side, as we will need to buy a new henhouse one day...

HOWEVER, the actual reason we got the hens was because we wanted to. (I'm sure if I took the ROI calculations to my bank manager as part of a business proposition, he'd shoot it down in flames)

Once you actually taste your own freshly laid egg you won't care whether or not it's cost effective. They are out of this world...AND...(it's a biggie) you'll know exactly what went in to that egg to produce it, and what welfare standards the birds who laid them have endured.

Makes the whole thing worthwhile...some things just can't have a price point!

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and the smile on friend/family faces when you walk out the chicken house and hand them some newly laid eggs........priceless.....for everything else there's......well you know the other bit! Don't think it's about 'cost effective' - everyone else has covered it for me, it's all part of the self sufficiency 'bit' ....and it's just the best fun ever!

go for it

Well what could I possibly add???other than,Go for it...and,My how I loved "A Country Practice"

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Happiness is not having what you want,but wanting what you have.xx