We’ve had hens in the city for about a year now, and it’s been quite the adventure.

 People often ask why we have chickens. “Is it just for the eggs?” they ask. Well, yes and no. The eggs are great - I love knowing where they came from, how the birds were treated and what they eat. We also keep them for other reasons I’ll talk about below.

Other people want to know if it’s cheaper to have your own hens for eggs. Well, no and yes. No because the start up cost of getting a coop going in the city can be somewhat expensive. You can’t just throw together a shed and let them loose the way you can on a farm. You have to look at that coop everyday, as do your neighbors and any visitors you have to your home. That means it has to look GOOD. Or at least not ghetto. If you discount your start up costs, then yes, keeping hens for eggs is cheaper than buying eggs at the store but only in the long run and not in the first year (at least for us).

Here’s a little cost information for you. 

Set-up Cost = $575

1. Coop Materials: Our coop cost right around $450 including the add-on run and the plastic panels we put up during the winter to keep the rain out.
2. Waterer and Feeder: assume between $15 - $25 per for these with plastic being cheaper than metal.
3. Birds: I got most of mine as pullets between the ages of 6 weeks and 1 year. I got one for free and the rest paid between $3 and $8 apiece for them. Chicks will run you about $3 each at the feed store.

Annual Care and Feed = $175

1. Straw: I’ve been through 4 bales this year at $8 each.
2. Feed: We’ve been through (4) 50 lb. bags of organic feed this year at $20 each.
3. Grit and Oyster Shell: 1 bag of each at each. Annual cost = $15
4. Other: 1 container of mite dust at $10. 1 bottle of wormer at $8. Heat lamp and bulbs at $30. Mineral oil for leg mites at $6.

I haven’t kept track of exactly how many eggs we’ve gotten this year. But we haven’t bought any eggs since early March and we used to buy a dozen eggs a week at $4 a dozen for the free range eggs. So that’s 26 weeks of not buying eggs for a savings of $104.  I know that our average has been a lot closer to 1.5 dozen per week so at $4 dozen we would have paid $156 for eggs this summer. So yeah, not a lot of cost savings yet. But then again, we’ve had an awful lot of birds around that are eating but not laying. So if I redid all that to account only for the feed/care of the laying birds, the number would look a lot better.

 Oh well. So it’s not cheaper to keep hens, at least not yet. But that’s not the only reason we have them. They also provide endless entertainment in the forms of hen watching and yard art. Each bird has her own personality, habits, likes and dislikes. The give us a link back to where our food is coming from and a little touch of farm life to our home here on a city lot with an alley.