Raising a few chickens in the city sure isn’t about saving money.  The organic eggs our chickens gave us cost A LOT!  Since June of last year when they started laying, we had approximately 950 eggs or about 80 dozen.   After looking back at all our expenses, it worked out to about $2.83 a dozen.  It is still cheaper than organic eggs in the stores around here, but I also invested a lot of my time, hard work, and love into them.   There are non financial benefits I did not figure into to the income, especially the organic fertilizer, the bug control, the entertainment, and the pleasure of sharing the extra eggs with friends and neighbors when we had more than 3 hens.

Expenses:
$225 for 9 bags organic chicken feed, Re-occurring expense of $25 for 50 lbs. (I split 18 bags with a neighbor, one each month)
$20 for 2 bags shavings, Re-occurring expense $10
$4 Chick Feeder (used my own mason jar)
$2 vintage chick feeder (used my own mason jar)
$3 Chick waterer (used my own mason jar)
$5 extra Brooder Light bulb
$13 Poultry Waterer
$13 Poultry Feeder
$24 for 8 Vaccinated Chicks
$150 Coop
$10 additional materials to build a recycled tractor/ second brooder out of a free hutch
$4 for 10 lbs of oyster shell Re-occurring expense $2 for 5 lbs.
$4 for 10 lbs of grit Re-occurring expense $2 for 5 lbs.
? Treats = I just spoil them with stuff they like and didn’t keep tract.  Oops.
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$482 Total

Income:
$10 Sold 2 chicks at 6 weeks
$150 Sold Tractor/ Brooder
$40 Sold 2 Point of Lay Organic Pullets
$55 Sold 3 Organic Hens (I am still a little down about this one and waking up early, and that’s why I felt like calculating expenses!)
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$255 Total

$482 Expense
–  255 Income
$227 Net

With this next set of chickens we are raising, I figure the costs per dozen will be much less since we do not have the start up costs of feeders/ waterers, coops, bulbs this time around.

As of August 2010 my costs include:

$25 for organic feed

$59 for 15 chicks, vaccinations, insurance, and shipping

$10 bedding/ wood shavings

Income includes:

$20 for 5 pullets/ 2 free cockerels at 6 weeks old