Why Eggs Are So Expensive? Raising Chickens for Eggs

hi I'm Mike and with the price of eggs on the rise and everyone talking about getting their own backyard chickens today we take a look at what it takes to raise chickens and how much does it cost and maybe if it's worth it today let's do some chicken math on our Wyoming life [Music] those are geese not chickens but either way my wife Aaron was in the grocery store the other day behind a gal who was talking about the price of eggs she made a comment in passing really about how much how the price of eggs is now going to force her to get her own chicken you know to save money I've also gotten a few emails from people asking me how to get into the chicken business and how to start their own egg production on their Farm Ranch or Homestead or even backyard but is it really worth it can it save you or even make you money by letting your chickens do all the work and all you have to do is sit back and collect the windfall first off let's start with some easy math and uh well we'll take a look at a chicken also in order to get those I'm gonna have to move because these guys won't keep quiet foreign [Music] much nicer it's actually even warm in here in order to get those eggs that are worth so much to so many in fact we're here in our farm store where we actually sell the eggs that we make here on the ranch you're going to need a chicken a female chicken or a hen later on we'll start putting prices on everything but for now let's just take a look at what we can get out of her literally even though she's going to be lonely we're going to start with just the one contrary to what many people believe you don't need a rooster to get eggs from your chicken a hen will lay with or without a rooster but without a rooster the eggs will be infertile so they will not grow they won't hatch into a into a baby chicken the hen takes about 24 to 48 hours to develop an egg the yolk is created in the ovary and then when it's ready it moves down into the oviduct this is where fertilization takes place if she's mated with a rooster afterwards the yolk is released and begins to form the egg white then the inner and outer shell membrane begin to form over the next few hours then the egg moves into the uterus where the egg's outer shell hardens this takes about 18 to 24 hours and then when the egg is done forming the shell is nice and hard it leaves the hen's body via the cochlea which serves as the opening for the digestive reproductive and urinary tract of the hand then all you need to do is pick the egg up and it's all yours ready to start your way on the roads to riches or just an omelette depending on the breed of chicken they can lay between 100 to 300 eggs per year for our purposes today we're going to actually use leghorn chickens as an example they're some of the best layers you can get at an average of 300 eggs or 25 dozen coming from what that one Little Hen per year but how much is that worth well the median cost of a dozen eggs eggs in the U.S right now is four dollars and 25 cents which is actually an increase of 59 percent to what it was last year around the same time now inflation may have something to do with the rise in prices but the main reason is an avian flu that has decimated chicken Farmers causing over 57 million chickens to be euthanized consumer eating habits have also well they have something to do with the price as egg consumption is on the rise about 20 percent over the last few years so if we do the math that 25 dozen eggs your hennas produced is now worth 106.25 and she's either made you or saved you about 30 cents per day but in reality who's going to have just one chicken you're gonna have to well you're gonna have to get more than that so let's set up two different chicken Farmers farmer a who's going to raise eggs and to sell and farmer B who's going to just raise eggs for her family farmer a is going to take the whole thing times 10. and if you were farmer a you now have 10 hens no roosters and 250 dozen eggs a year worth one thousand sixty two dollars and fifty cents now we're talking we're in the four digit range and maybe you can even charge a little more after all your chickens are special They free range they get to listen to music and watch movies on Saturday nights now they're Gourmet eggs and worth double what the median price is right now so you can justify pricing them at eight dollars and fifty cents a dozen they're worth it your chickens are spoiled and the eggs will reflect that both in taste and in quality so now your 10 chickens are bringing in 2 125 dollars per year with their Gourmet eggs of course you can't afford to eat them but you can sneak one occasionally I won't tell they're they're best a little over easy maybe some black pepper nothing special looks like an easy way to make a few dollars but if what if you're like farmer B and you only want a couple chickens let's say three and those three will give you 75 dozen a year that's enough for a dozen a week for you plus you can give some away to your friends and neighbors and save yourself over three hundred dollars per year or 600 if you're gonna call yours Gourmet but wait your hands well they need something from you just like any living creature they need four things shelter water health care and of course food those things are going to cost you money let's start at the beginning with shelter I I just did a quick search online for chicken coops because well they have to live somewhere and I gotta say some of these are pretty dang nice fifteen hundred dollars two thousand dollars oh wait here's one all right this one will hold all 10 of our chickens with a little room to spare and it's 599 dollars now we should just depreciate that over one year because well which means that all 10 of our chickens are actually going to take it on a debt of 60 dollars we're just doing it over one year because it's just easier to figure out that way so each check-in takes on a debt of 60 dollars of course you you might have a shed somewhere that would work but you still have to build nests and roosts and all that infrastructure so if you can get out for 600 you're actually doing pretty good also in their shelter you're going to need shavings or bedding of some sort that we can search for too cheapest here is 6.79 now my own experience says that uh that the bedding will last a couple of weeks so a whole bag will last you a couple weeks so we have a total of about 180 or 18 per chicken for the entire year bringing their bill up to 78 dollars that's it for shelter pretty easy or at least required shelter I guess if you need a heat lamp and electricity that's a whole other group of costs that we're just going to skip for right now just know there are going to be expenses that you don't expect when it comes to water that's kind of a tough one uh to kind of put a price on but I can tell you that we will need a water of some sort and here's a five gallon water that's going to cost you about 40 bucks uh water to fill it is going to differ based on your location a chicken drinks about a pint per day or a gallon a week that's 52 gallons a year and with the average household using 300 gallons per month the average water bill in the U.S is about 75 dollars that's a cost of 30 cents per gallon or 16 dollars per year per chicken so let's add that onto our tab which is now 94 dollars for the year Healthcare is next and luckily they don't have to pay for insurance and the standard cost is actually pretty hard to judge also a good vitamin regiment will cost maybe 15 a month for your flock each hen now owes 95 as her a fair share okay so we have shelter water and Health Care covered but now it's time to take a look at the big one probably maybe that's food there's so many different choices for food for your chickens your hen is going to eat about a quarter of a pound of food per day or seven and a half pounds per month so break out the checkbook because this might cost a little bit the basic lay pellets with 16 protein 16 for a 50 pound bag 32 cents a pound so that puts your basic chicken feed at 2.50 for your chicken so if your chicken has a little bit more bougie check this out organic layer pellets 28 dollars for a 40 pound bag that's 70 cents a pound 5.25 cents per chicken per month let's just split the difference call it 375 and now rent for your chicken is 98.75 per month oh I almost forgot you have to buy the dang chicken to start with so we can buy them online I think of course we can't we will select one of the best laying breeds we can which are the leghorns all females at four bucks a piece now where are we rent from the hen uh her cost is now 102.75 all she has to do is pay for that in the first year and we're all set but wait she's not going to lay an egg for six months so we actually have to feed her shelter her medicator and water her for six months before she decides to lay a single leg or makes us a dime so now her egg production for her first year is only 12 dozen eggs instead of 25 and our return is only 53 dollars with the average price of eggs today even our high-end eggs 850 a dozen are only worth a hundred and two dollars leaving the hen still owing us 75 cents in rent for her first year of course she's going to live longer than that and eventually will make us and save us some money but research shows that the average hand will only produce about 600 eggs in her lifetime as they only have about two productive years of egg lay over her lifetime she will make us 312 dollars that's splitting the difference actually between our average eggs and The Gourmet bougie ones so is it worth it to raise a chicken or are you better off heading to your local farmer pay the going rate well maybe a little bit more chicken math will help you you are farmer Ray your ten hens made you 750 in their first year and cost you one thousand twenty seven dollars and fifty cents so that's a loss of 277.50 for Farmer B with the flock of three at an average price of 625 per dozen in the first year you harvested 37 dozen eggs at a cost of 308 dollars and 25 cents or eight dollars and 33 cents a dozen a little bit more expensive than the 625 for our half ordinary half high class eggs if you bought them from the guy that has the 10 hens farmer a you could have saved over two dollars per dozen and taken none of the risks that farmer a took you didn't have to clean a single Chicken Coop and you never had to chase a coyote away that was trying to eat your profit margin next year of course will be better always Farmers always say that next year is going to be better both for Farmer a and for Farmer B but they will need to buy new chickens and unfortunately the cycle will repeat itself over and over and over and over and over and over and over the old question which came first the chicken or the egg that may be easier to answer than which came first chicken Prophet or chicken loss all this being said if you want to raise chickens and sell eggs or even give them away more power to you keep in mind though that there is a loss that you're going to face with a chicken this is like a perfect perfect world example that I just gave you something that coyote is going to come in and eat a chicken you're going to lose a chicken somewhere along the line you may use lose two or three you'd never quite know so chicken math isn't about being precise in fact it's not even about making a profit or even making sense it's about doing something that you love to do and if you don't love chickens you're not going to have them for long trust me now you may ask well I do we have and sell chicken eggs right here in the farm store that's a good question and because I think we deserve the same scrutiny as anyone else let's take a look at our own chicken math right now we have about 70 laying hands that's a rough estimate because I can't count them all we average 0.8 eggs per per day per chicken so that's a total of 56 eggs per day or four and a half dozen we sell eggs right here in the farm store for six bucks a dozen so he grows twenty seven dollars per day totaling nine thousand eight hundred dollars per year in eggs we also eat our own eggs so knock off ten percent right off the top of that that gets us down to eighty eight hundred dollars along with our 70 laying hens we probably have about 10 or so roosters that roam around so our total cost using our last estimate which was about eight thousand dollars to feed shelter and water and medicate them that leaves us with a profit of eight hundred dollars I probably spend four hours per week on average messing with chickens so I make about four dollars an hour when I have to deal with chickens wow so why do we have chickens because we do chickens are the are the Gateway farm animal they were the first animals we called our own here on the ranch they're pretty self-sufficient they eat bugs they're fun to watch and they do get along with most other animals and when it comes down to it they poop food that's a pretty efficient addition to any farm and here's the real meaning of chicken math three turns into ten ten turns into 25 50 and 100. very very fast chicken math couldn't be solved could be solved by Einstein himself but I'm sure he'd have fun trying now someone out there right now is saying to their husband or to their wife see I told you getting chickens wouldn't work but you know what I think get the chickens give it a try and see if you can get the math to work out for yourself all in all even if you've never even considered raising chickens I would encourage you to find a local farmer who produces and sells eggs first you're going to be supporting local Agriculture and second you'll never believe the difference a fresh farm egg makes I would take the run-of-the-mill farm egg over the high class Gourmet High flute and bougie grocery store egg any day thank you for coming along today this was a lot of fun and I hope that you can subscribe and follow along as we continue on our journey and explore the ranch life escape the ordinary it was only 15 years ago when Aaron asked hey can we get a few chickens look where we are now here in the farm store have a great week and I'll see you soon right here [Music] foreign

Channel: Our Wyoming Life

Views: 101,014

Keywords: Ranch, cow, cows, horses, cowboy, gardening, farmers market, Wyoming, our Wyoming life, animals, animal videos, peacock, farming, planting, cattle, ranching

Id: VnBMa5JO9OQ

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 23 2023