As some of you know, back in May 2010, I set out and built a chicken coop. The goal was fresh eggs, which I personally quite like.

Recently a friend of mine pointed me to a discussion about the cost of a dozen organic eggs and asked me how much it was costing me to produce said fresh eggs in our little coop setup.

In my current chicken setup in our backyard, the last month has current costs of $1.02 to produce a dozen eggs.

How it breaks down:

• The two hens lay about 10-14 eggs per week and so far through their laying careers have been very consistent
• The chickens eat about 2 pounds of feed a week, and by using pellet based feed we’ve been able to cut down on feed waste (which is a plus).
• From our local feed store, on average it costs $15.00 for 50 pounds of feed.
• We don’t use the antibiotics or any of that stuff; the only other costs are minimal and non-consequential

If you do the math, it works out to be: ($15/50lbs)(2lbs2hens) = $1.20 per week. On a good week, that’s $1.02 per dozen on a bad week that’s $1.44 a dozen.

There’s been a bit of luck in the numbers these first 6 months; the Barred Plymouth Rock breeds we have seem to be superb layers beyond their rated 200-260 eggs per year production (if they were to stay on the level they are now, they’d hit the ~320 egg mark). Good for us, your mileage may vary. We do live in a rather temperate climate area in California, which probably helps overall production. The egg qaulity has been great, in the medium to large egg size.

Now, a truely certified organic dozen eggs range in price based on location, but in stores around us they run about $5 per dozen. Could ours be considered organic? Probably not, but the feed we used is “certified natural” (I air qoute it because unless I’m producing it…well, it’s just a marketing line item), the chickens roam free and Alli plays with them, so it’s a win win all the way around. I’d take the eggs they lay any day of the week.

For the economistics in the room, yes, my time is not free. It took time to build the coop, it takes time to feed and water, it takes time to buy feed. But the maintenance isn’t time consuming (which should be bullet point #2 on anyone’s I-want-home-chickens list), and the secondary benefits (compost for the garden) are also nice.

Overall, I rank getting chickens highly on the good-things-we-decided-to-do list. If you can swing it, I’d recommend it.