I am only a couple months away from completing my first year having chickens.It has been well worth it. They eat all of your kitchen scraps, bugs from the garden, provide eggs of course...it really has been a joy for me as well as my children. I highly recommend it. I live in what I'd call a suburb with a rural hint. I have a good sized back yard, fenced in. The chickens have a coop and run but after only a couple months I realized that I never have to close the run and they just wander around the yard all day and go home at night. They haven't even tried to get out of the yard once (my privacy fence is a 6' wooden fence).
You have to consider what you are getting when you consider the economics of it. It's not even the same food as store bought eggs when you look at the nutrient content you will get from your eggs vs store bought. And if you REALLY want to balance off the budget, do what I did. Get an extra chicken or two and sell the extra eggs. Supplemental feed costs me about $13 every 2 or 3 months, and in that time I sell multiple dozen eggs at $4 each. In that respect, they pay for themselves. But even if I wasn't able to sell them, I'd still do it.
Handle your chickens often when they are young and it will be a joy to go visit them in the yard down the stretch. They come when called, like to be pet, eat from your hand etc. BTW, you'll be using more eggs than you'd think. I underestimated when I figured how much my family of 5 eats because I forgot about baking, cooking, and the other things I now make from the eggs like mayonnaise and ranch dressing.
The ONLY down side is that I had to fence in my garden because those girls eat their weight in lettuce and young corn leaves! Don't waste your time with a rooster, just get some healthy female chicks from southern states or tractor supply in the spring and roll with it.
If worse comes to worst and you don't like having them (not even sure that's possible), you can either eat them or sell them. Have fun!
