Poultry: costs and benefits 

By having our own poultry we do not support the cruel practices of battery hen farming or the free-range industry that sometimes uses the words “free-range” in very dubious ways.

Our chooks are part of our farm and our sustainable way of gardening. They have many more uses than just egg laying:
- they provide us with meat
- they scratch through empty garden beds and get rid of pests while aerating and fertilising the soil
- the litter from the chook house contains nitrogen and goes onto the compost heap and later onto garden beds and under fruit trees
- they are our companions and we are never alone while we work in our gardens.
- they are companions for children who can also learn how to care for animals and how to handle them and make friends with them.

A layer hen will consume about 110g of feed per day, or 40kg per year. Layer pellets currently cost about $20 for 25 kg (the better quality, not budget pellets). That adds up to $32 per hen per year. Add $8 to cover costs for worming etc and your total expense is $40 per hen. Chooks are social animals and three hens are an ideal number for a small backyard. That gives you continuing costs of  $120 per year. How many eggs these three hens lay really depends on the breed. More about this later. But let’s just assume that these hens are purebred hens from a traditional breed rather than hens especially bred for the egg industry. Traditional breeds only lay around 180 eggs per year (sometimes more, sometimes less) and this number declines as they age. The three hens would therefore lay about 540 eggs or 45 dozen in year one. Genuine free-range eggs will usually cost $6 per dozen and the three hens will produce eggs worth $270 in the first year. The hens cost $50 each or $150 for three, the feed costs are $120 per year giving you a total expense of $270 for the first year against $270 worth of eggs produced. The hens have paid for themselves in the first year! In the coming years the hens will lay less as they get older, but even if they lay only 70 eggs per year, the eggs still pay for their upkeep.

Chooks need a chook run and a small house and the costs for these can vary greatly. Even if you buy new materials you should not need to pay more than –let’s say- $300 for a house plus fencing suitable for three hens. It would be much cheaper though to use secondhand materials and your imagination! Any money spent on bedding materials for the chook shed (straw, hay) cannot be counted as an expense because the birds will convert the hay or straw into fertiliser and mulch.