How much does it cost to produce eggs from backyard chickens?

The basic formula

The cost of one backyard egg is a division: the money you spent on the flock over a period, divided by the eggs you collected in that same period. Multiply by twelve for a cost per dozen. Everything difficult about the number comes from the two halves of that sum, which costs you count and which eggs you count, so decide both before you start.

A month is the most practical period. It is long enough to smooth out a hen that skipped two days, short enough to show the seasons, and it lines up with how most people buy feed. A week is too noisy, and a whole year hides the winter slump that every keeper wants to understand.

Keep two figures apart. The running cost is what you buy over and over: layer feed, bedding, grit and oyster shell. The set-up cost is what you paid once: the coop, the feeders, the chicks or pullets. Mixing them in a single month makes that month look absurd, and leaving them out entirely is fine as long as you say so. Most keepers quote the running cost and treat the coop as the price of the hobby.

How much feed your hens actually eat

Feed is where most of the money goes. The University of Kentucky's Extension publication "How Much Will My Chickens Eat?" (ASC-191) opens by saying that much of the cost of keeping chickens is in the feed they consume, and gives a rule of thumb: each laying hen eats about a quarter pound of feed a day. For six hens that is a pound and a half a day, or roughly 45 pounds over thirty days, a little under one 50-pound bag.

Other Extension figures land in the same range. The Cooperative Extension poultry site's article on feeding laying hens, written by University of Kentucky poultry specialist Jacquie Jacob, lists layer feed intake at 18 to 24 pounds a week for ten birds, which is 1.8 to 2.4 pounds per hen per week. The Kentucky publication's feed cheat sheet, based on 50-pound bags, estimates that 25 hens need three to three and a half bags a month if they are commercial white-shell layers, three to four bags for commercial brown-shell layers, and four to four and a half bags for dual-purpose hens.

Your own flock will not match any table exactly. According to the same Kentucky publication, bigger birds eat more, brown-egg hens tend to be larger than white-egg Leghorns and eat more, free-range birds are more active and eat more, and hens eat less when it gets hot, especially above 86°F. The Extension poultry site adds that intake rises in cold weather, when hens burn more energy to stay warm, and its breed article notes that bantams eat less feed than standard-size birds. The only reliable number is your own: note the date you open each bag and the date it runs out.

A worked example

Take six standard-size hens over a 30-day month, eating the quarter pound a day from the Kentucky rule of thumb: 45 pounds of feed. Say your 50-pound bag cost $28; use the price on your own receipt, since feed prices vary by region and change over time. The feed for the month is 45 ÷ 50 × $28 = $25.20.

If the hens lay at 75 percent, meaning on average three in four lay each day, the month brings in 6 × 30 × 0.75 = 135 eggs. Feed alone comes to $25.20 ÷ 135 = about $0.19 an egg, or $2.24 a dozen. Add a $10 bale of bedding and the running cost becomes $35.20 ÷ 135 = about $0.26 an egg, or $3.13 a dozen.

Now keep the same costs and drop the laying to 30 percent, as can happen in a short-day winter month or during a molt. The flock lays 54 eggs, and the same $35.20 works out to about $0.65 an egg, or $7.82 a dozen. Nothing about the coop changed; the hens simply ate the same feed and laid fewer eggs. That swing is why one month's figure says little about the flock as a whole.

Why the figure moves through the year

The divisor, eggs, moves much more than the feed bill does. The University of Florida's IFAS Extension publication "Factors Affecting Egg Production in Backyard Chicken Flocks" describes a typical laying cycle: hens start laying at about 18 to 22 weeks of age, flock production climbs to a peak of about 90 percent six to eight weeks later, and then gradually declines to about 65 percent after twelve months of lay.

Daylight matters too. The same Florida publication says hens need about 14 hours of day length to keep laying, and that shortening days in fall and winter would be expected to cause a severe decline, or a stop, in production unless supplemental light is provided. The Extension poultry site adds that hens typically stop laying during a molt, when they replace their feathers, and that many home flocks produce eggs on and off for three to four years, with production lower each year. Florida's publication notes that after two or three years many hens lay significantly less.

Put together, the cost per egg is lowest in a young flock's first long-day months and highest in an older flock's winter. The University of Kentucky publication puts it plainly: eventually the level of egg production is not enough to cover the cost of production. What you do with that information, whether to add light, keep retired hens or add pullets, is your decision and not a matter of arithmetic.

Common mistakes when costing backyard eggs

Putting the coop in one month. A $600 coop entered in April makes April's eggs cost several dollars each. Either leave set-up costs out and say so, or spread them evenly over the years you expect to use them.

Switching rules halfway. Some people count feed in the month they buy it, others in the month the hens eat it. Either works if you stick to one. Buying two bags in one month and none the next simply makes one month high and the next low.

Comparing a winter month with a summer one. With fewer daylight hours the same flock lays fewer eggs and the same feed costs more per egg. Compare January with last January, not with June.

Cutting feed cost with scraps and scratch. It looks cheaper per day, but the Florida publication warns that feeding whole grains, scratch feeds and table scraps makes the diet imbalanced and inadequate, and the Extension poultry site suggests limiting scratch and scraps together to what the birds finish in about 20 minutes. Fewer eggs from cheaper feed can raise the cost per egg rather than lower it.

Keeping the numbers without a spreadsheet

The calculation is easy; keeping the tally for a whole month is the part that usually fails. Eggs are counted in the coop, feed receipts end up in a drawer, and the two halves rarely meet at the end of the month.

CluckLedger keeps both in one place: you count eggs with a + button on a home screen widget, add feed, bedding and other costs on the day you pay them, and at the end of each month it shows the cost of one egg with every cost listed underneath. It counts only the costs you enter, in the month you paid them, so the coop stays out unless you add it yourself.

Frequently asked questions