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Chickens, ya just gotta love chickens! Here at the homestead we have had chickens for a little over a year now and I just don’t know of any other animal that can do the work of a chicken. One of the permaculture philosophies that makes its way into all of our decision making here is that no matter what you do there should be at least three benefits, well chickens have way more than three!
Meat· Eggs· Soil regeneration· Compost contributor (Chicken Poop)· Soil preparation for gardening· Pest control (they love bugs)· Income stream
See video here
So, let’s take a look at the last item, income stream. We just purchased 30 chicks, they will live on this earth for 2 years and 9 months and they need to be fed. We raise our chickens on pasture/free range, so during the summer months here in Kentucky (Lasts 10 months), they get better than half of the nutrition from grass and bugs, for the other half we supplement grains. For two to three months a year they will get a full ration of grain which equals one third a pound of feed per bird per day. Now we have already invested in the infrastructure for our flocks including poultry fencing, solar power for the fencing, a mobile chicken coop, water containers and feeders, but for this exercise lets allocate $20 to infrastructure.
These birds will produce one egg every 30 to 36 hours so on average we will get 20 to 24 eggs a day. We run our birds through two egg laying season then they are culled as roasters. Each chicken will weigh around 6lbs and we will sell them for $3 lb.
So the simplified numbers look like this……
Income:20 eggs X 730 Days = 14,600 eggs or 1,216 dozen 1,216 X $2.0= $2,432.00
Chicken Sales 30 birds @6lbs = 180lbs 180 X $3.0= $540.00
Total Income $2972.00Expenses:
Cost of chicks 30 X $1.90 $57.00
Cost of feed at full ration (to account for feed during grow up)
$1.90 per day X 730 days= $1,460.00
Total expenses $1,387.00
Total Profit $1,585.00
Now you may be thinking we don’t have any labor figured in here and you would be correct. Chickens as far as animals go are almost labor free if they live in a coop and fenced off area. Ours on the other hand are a little more labor intensive as we move them almost weekly behind the cattle to control the flies (chickens love fly larva!), this keeps our feed costs down, give us better tasting eggs. Now there is the other benefit, we won’t need to buy eggs or chicken from the grocery store and quite frankly we don’t want that chemical infused, chlorine bathed meat or antibiotic infused, radiated eggs.You will also notice there are no fees for say antibiotics, growth hormones or vet bills. Free range chickens don’t need any of that, the mega producers need all that stuff because their animals are grown in a barn very, very close together say 5000 birds in a small barn, they get sick from literally being on top of one another all the time, it is pretty sick to see, not to mention all those chemicals they feed to the public.
It does not take a lot of room to raise chickens, many city folks are raising them in their back yards and I have seen some on patios! Chickens are scalable the exercise above is for 30 chickens. The number gets better if you raise 300 hundred chickens and the labor factor is the same. I have a few mentors, they probably don’t know it but they have helped me tremendously in our chicken raising efforts.
For detailed information on raising chickens, check out Justin Rhodes at Abundant Permaculture, Geoff Lawton at Permaculture on Line and of course the master, Joel Salatin at Polyface Farms. If you are going to homestead and incorporate permaculture, my belief is you need chickens!
Links to mentors:Justin Rhodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOSGEokQQcdAVFuL_Aq8dlg
Geoff Lawton: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL_r1ELEvAuN0peKUxI0Umw
The master! Joel Salatin: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
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