How many keep chickens?

I looks into getting back into it, with the cost of building a coop I can' make it work financially. I have the feeders and a brooder but need to buy birds and a coop setup with fencing etc.

It would be years before break even based on supplying our family with eggs...and you have to feed them for 5 months before they start laying...what am I missing?

I had chickens over 50 years, finally saw the last of them a couple years ago, pretty much a breakeven venture, maybe, unless you already have a tight coop, waterers and feeders, and have a self replicating flock.
If you have to buy bagged feed and chicks at Tractor Supply, and build a coop, fencing and supplies, probably not....

Time is one thing you're missing, I think it would be very challenging to make a profit, other than I free range my flock, so I think a lot of health benefits come from the eggs and the meat/ bone broth I also use mine for pest management, I know part of the year I rarely feed them anything chicken's are opuraltunist they'll eat the easiest way they can. I do loose a few mostly to Red Fox but also coon, coyotes housecats and blacksnakes but I feel it's worth it financially NO health benefits YES!!

If you don't enjoy livestock don't get them. My neighbor was recently telling me I should put in a new bin and auger to more efficiently feed my steers, I told him the best part of my day was carrying my buckets and looking at my Feeders. If you don't enjoy Chickens, just buy eggs.

It's mostly the joy of having your own chickens and getting your own farm fresh eggs.

I've never looked at having chickens as being profitable financially.
We have fresh eggs and my wife sells 8-10 dozen per week which more than covers the feed bill.
Above having fresh eggs that actually taste good, they are excellent for pest control. Which is very nice considering that we have 50 acres of strip pits within 100 feet of the house. Rarely do we see a mosquito, so I don't care if I lost money on them, not having a mosquito problem is worth keeping them around to me.

Nice. I get farm fresh eggs locally and the price has gone up some but not as much as I was calculating to get my own flock

Thanks all for the inputt. I will give it some thought

In my opinion, chickens are super easy to raise. Guineas are even easier. The chickens develop "personalities" and are a lot of fun. Mine free range all spring, summer and fall so require very little grain or feed. Training the Guineas to go back in the coop at night is important. The chickens seem to want to go back in on their own.

Like others said, I’ve never thought about it as being profitable. We keep about 30 hens. My wife loves watching them and I love eating fresh eggs(4 or 5 fried eggs almost every morning). If we have extra eggs we will usually just give them to family and friends. Ours also free range but we do supplement them a little bit with self mixed scratch. They are also great at cleaning up table scraps. We lose a few to predators every year(mostly hawks) but not to many. More than anything we just enjoy having chickens. In all honesty though, it’s hard for me to eat a store bought fried egg anymore and my wife won’t. The difference in quality of fresh free range eggs compared to store eggs is night and day.

I run about 15 to 20........and see them as livestock that produce something as value. I sell the surplus to cover feed costs. My labor is donated. Others might see it as pets with benefits. I sell hay to people that keep goats, sheep, mules, donkeys and horses. Almost all of those are pets or pasture ornaments that just cost money. Another way of looking at chickens is to look at them as being like a garden. Yet another way is to look at it like hand loading ammo for guns.

I know of at least one guy who I am convinced keeps chickens for no other reason they attract varmints to his setup so he can trap them. Traps coon year round. But death loss to varmints is no joke. Everything that wears fur likes to eat chicken. Starting out, keeping birds alive is the biggest hurdle people face. They have no idea the level one must go to to keep birds safe from all harm.

This is True

This pretty much describes me.

We are much smaller scale than you. We keep 8-15 birds in two age groups two years apart. Every two years we replace the old ones. That way we always have active layers.

I built the coop and put up the covered run twenty-plus years ago so I figure they're paid for. Or only cost is feed in the winter, we free-range the other three seasons and the food bill goes way down. That and the minimal cost of electric for a thermostatically-controlled waterer warmer and lights. Oh and chicks every other year that are $2.00-$3.00 each.

We mostly give our extra eggs away.

I just really like eating fresh eggs with flavor. Store-bought eggs are bland and runny in comparison.

I had chickens for many years until just two years ago when I stopped for the time being. I liked having them walk around the yard and listening to them and was never in it for the money per se. But I used to be able to get egg laying chicks for $2.50 a piece or whatever it was and it wasn’t so bad. Now there almost touching $5 a chick for just your standard breeds and nothing fancy and I have a hard time justifying that cost for a chicken that the coyotes, fox, and hawks love as well. I would buy 50 every spring and rotate them out with the older ones but it just gets too expensive

I was looking at $5+ per chicken for the small quantity I would get

https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/red_star.html

Timing of this thread couldn’t be better! I’ve got an incubator that I haven’t used yet. How long can you collect eggs and hold them before they need to go into the incubator and still be viable?

I would buy pullets so you skip the starting period, they cost more but you don’t have to wait as long for eggs.

Thing is, I’ve already got the incubator and have unlimited supply to fertile eggs but at a limited rate. I can only get 5 to 10 a day. Likely closer to 5 per day this time of year.

Sorry bvrRetriever my post was for the O.P. To your question here they use to keep some 10 years here, but I’m talking about millions of birds I’m not sure about home condition.

Chicken eggs have decent fertility to 9 days after laying.

Keith