Should I get chickens?

OK... I admit it's a bit of a click bait title... but I'm hoping the information will help people decide if chickens are right for them.

Why should I get chickens?

Why should I NOT get chickens?

What are your pros and cons of owning chickens?

Pros:
Eggs
Fun to watch

Cons
Feathers all over
They taste good to just about everything and need a massive amount of protection (comparatively to say... a cow)

Pros:
Eggs and/or meat.
Great source of green compost material from excrement.
Can be kept in a variety of systems successfully. (Free range, enclosed run, paddock shift, etc. etc.)
Easy beginner livestock
Variety of breeds available with a variety of genetics to fit into different climates.
Omnivores


Cons:
Tendency to scratch can damage garden space.
Ultimate prey animal (Feels like everything hunts chickens)
Veterinarian care can be hard to come by.


Chickens, for me, have been a blessing. They are fun critters that provide different outputs from low cost widely available inputs. Chicken keeping can scale from a few birds to take care of your immediate family to hundreds to provide a income stream for your homestead. I found that most of the work owning chickens came with the prep before we even got the chickens. We opted to build out coop and run, and we 'overbuilt' it to accommodate more birds than we intended for possible future expansion but mostly quality of life for my hens. Now that I have chickens, the maintenance costs of feed and bedding are minimal and they do a decent job of taking care of themselves between filling feeders and waterers.

Chickens are fun egg laying machines, especially if folks have kids.

Once the shelter is provided and a safe haven the benefit out ways the questions.

Chickens will help eliminate garden pests.

I will have to disagrees about the feathers unless the chicken becomes fried chicken.  We use the technique of jurking their shirts off which makes this less to clean up.

Go ahead, don't think twice ... get chickens.

The number 1 and to me the only reason to have chickens ---- compost the making of and turning of existing piles if given access and garden clean up at season's end.

The only bad thing I can think of - everything on this planet likes chicken for dinner!!!


Peace

If you're going from a no-livestock operation to having chickens, keep in mind the impact they will have on your ability to take vacations. Maybe you have neighbors to rely on. Maybe you already hire a pet-sitter for your dogs. But maybe you haven't thought it through and you should first.

To me the most important question is figuring out how you will feed them, preferably for free or cheap.  If you are thinking of outright competing with mainstream eggs and meat dollar for dollar it is almost impossible when you are purchasing their food. If you have strong values around qualitative differences in the eggs and meat that you can raise at home this may offset this issue to make it worthwhile anyway.  But for me it's always been important to be able to provide at least a large fraction of their food for free...this might by from dumpsters, it might be from what you grow or what you...or they...can forage for themselves.  Over the years I've raised a lot of poultry heavily subsidized from bread and bagel dumpsters, grocery store dumpsters in general, big bags of movie theater popcorn thrown out at the end of the night; foraged, leached, and cooked acorns, bugs caught with an electric zapper light at night, and quantities of black soldier flies raised on coffeeshop coffee grounds and humanure!  Whatever works, just try to make something work feed-wise...

Pros have been well covered already!   Best, supply of eggs which are way and above better than shop bought ones for some reason . . . possibly my imagination.
Cons mostly that the left-over spread about feed attracts rodents, mostly mice, which the attract snakes. . .
Also if you decide on a rooster as a pathway to chicks, halfway between egg layers and meat birds, steer away from Indian Game - we had one, he was very protective of the flock (great) but hated me to the extent that I had to fend him off with a bin lid whenever I had collect the eggs duty.   Built like a brick, so he packed a fair wallop.

I would add my experience.

In hot, arid summer climate like mine I almost have no eggs between July and October.
Also the free ranging chicken will destroy the garden, cucumbers, melons and watermelons and even potato leaves - the only place where they can find green vegetation.
I'm not impressed with chickens.

I got my first chickens for a really shitty reason - it was for the manure for my garden!

Yes, they don't save us any money. Yes, they stop me from taking holidays much, but holidays aren't all they're cracked up to be when I live in paradise already. Yes, they need daily input of energy from me - the eggs don't collect themselves.

They are a good introduction to what it means to have farm animals. You can learn a lot, and be entertained a lot, and learn to understand a different language which is good for our brains and souls.

Their daily needs get me out of the house on a schedule in a way that a garden just won't.

Another thing I like about chickens, if food spoils in the fridge, or it wasn’t very good to begin with, there’s too much to eat, and the neighbors don’t want it, or the prep “waste” is still “good”, but I don’t have time to process it (apple cores and peels), or there’s a bumper crop this year, of something like apricots or other soft fruit which falls to the ground, rots and ferments and supports fruit flies and other nuisances,

All of this and more, I give to the chickens (or let the chickens into the orchard) and they turn it back into fresh new food!

They also clean up and “recycle” feed animals other than humans have wasted.

List pretty well covers it other than cost in both money and time.  If your goal is to save either move on.  Chickens are expensive in both.  Lets say you are doing egg chickens.  You spend just 15 minutes a day with them average to gather eggs, deal with feed etc.  365x15= 91 hours per year.  Lets say your time was just worth just $2 an hour.  Now you are looking at $180.  Then waste management lets say you clean the coop once a week taking 15 minutes.  That is another 13 hours of effort taking you well over $200 labor value even at $2 an hour.  What if your time was worth 3X that?  Then add in the pain of losing predators, disease etc?  Add in what ever feed costs are.  So what are you getting out?  Say your family eats a dozen eggs a week and say grocery store eggs are $4.  Your value back is $156 in eggs.  Is the effort and added expense worth it to you?  Gains you know what they are eating, meat and eggs are often more flavorful and you get a certain amount of joy in watching, petting etc.  Guessing you will end up spending more time than that on the chickens.  Some of it joyful but some of it going out to gather eggs in 100 degree heat or a blizzard.

Remember with coops, fencing, feeders you probably have another $1000 to amortize into this too.  Lets say that is scattered over 10 years.  There is another over $100 in expense.  Now you can save some labor here with automation but that adds probably another $1000 in cost.(automatic doors, water level sensors, feed sensors, automatic feeder shakers or feeders etc.)

Finally I will reemphasize livestock becomes a trap if you want to travel or be away.  You need to arrange for them to be tended if you are gone.

Then I will add one other thing.  The effort to tend 2 chickens vs tending 25 is virtually the same so if you are going to do it suggest if possible in your location a bigger flock and design everything carefully to save labor and improve reliability.

One final comment realize these are an entry level drug for many that leads to goats and ducks etc.  

I’m aware Letelier isn’t the only one who holds that opinion, but how various aspects of chicken are awarded monetary value always seems pretty subjective.  If I want to make chickens seem profitable, then I assign more value to the quality of the meat, the eggs, the food security, the joy and love of the undertaking, and that my chickens replace themselves in perpetuity.

Sure, it cost me about 1000 for a nice workable chicken house, but if after 10 years I quit with chickens, the sturdy structure is still useful for any number of things.  Why bill the total cost of it to the chickens?  Do we bill the mortgage or property taxes to the chickens?

The chickens are part of the whole way of life, like my hand and arm are part of my life.  I don’t count the cost of a sleeve or glove as part of the cost of having an arm.  The arm is integral.  If you’ve chosen chickens, they are integral.  Justifying is pointless.  Change your mind any time you want.

We can do the accounting anyway we want, and if monetizing helps a person see what they value, it’s a useful tool.

I agree with Thekla that the same chicken costs can be looked at very differently. Joel Salatin says it is hard to make money on eggs with chickens... and he is a very good businessman. I think it comes down to your motivation for getting chickens. If you are looking to start a business selling eggs... you can do it, but it's not a get rich quick scheme. There is a lot of work for not much profit. If you are looking for a backyard flock as a hobby or just because... suddenly it's not so hard.

Maybe you are getting them to have fresh eggs, or for their manure (looking at you Jay), or you simply like having chickens around. Raising chickens is certainly not free, but the payback is not always monetary either. They can be companions, compost workers, comic relief, emergency food, and more.

What is your motivation for getting chickens?

Matt McSpadden wrote: Joel Salatin says it is hard to make money on eggs with chickens... and he is a very good businessman.

My recollection is that a big part of Joel's Layer flock's responsibility is to follow the cattle and help control flies and parasites. Apparently, Cattle don't like to eat pooped on grass any more than Humans would and the Chickens break up and distribute the Cow pats while looking for bugs and grubs and this saves Humans having to do that job with fossil fuel machinery.

So yes, making money strictly on the eggs you can sell on a small scale, is not generally economic. However, if it brings in customers for other products, or if you can put your Chickens to work stacking functions, it may still be a viable part of your homestead.

You are correct. My brain is kind of fried, so I forgot to add it in. In the same talk he mentioned that while the eggs by themselves do not make a lot of money... it attracts people to come in and buy the other products that do make more money.

Matt McSpadden wrote:

What is your motivation for getting chickens?

This is key!  And it applies to so much more than the chicken question.

You can mitigate going on vacation by using automatic door openers and feeders depending on your set up. I rigged a feeder using a battery operated door opener and hardware cloth. I basically made a cage that would lower and rise over the feeder.

If your chicken free range they'll reduce pests like grasshoppers and ticks. Plus they absolutely HATE snakes = snakes generally stay out of where the chickens are allowed to roam. Free range chicken = eggs turn into health-bombs with orange-yellow yolks.

Mice? getting a cat will help heaps
Fox? a live stock guardian dog (or two) will help heaps

Vacation-wishes? I'm sure you know someone who'd love to come and spend their vacation at your place in exchange for them looking after your chicken!

My veggie garden is fenced in, the chicken roam free. The plants didn't want to roam around anyway ;-)

If you plan properly, they will be a wonderful addition to your property and you will get a lot of entertainment out of it. You can even get a nice income stream out of it with the eggs. Their meat will be better too than what you get at the store.
On the plus side:
+ eggs, meat, manure, surface tilling/garden cleaners in the fall & early spring, free kitchen disposal [within limits].
On the minus side:
- manure to clean up, need for a locked coop at night that's big enough, roosting bars, right size fenced paddock,[Not too big nor too small, and they can jump 6 ft in the air to get on the other side, so...]; they waste a lot of feed, plan for water when it freezes [electricity to the coop?], vet bill might be high for a relatively small return. They are very difficult to herd. [I plan with the light: they are blind and don't see well as soon as the sun disappears]. Plan well ahead for the butchering if you are doing it yourself [killing cones, plucker, scalder/ thermometer...weather] Like any other animal, they may put a damper on long vacations. Roosters can be noisy and aggressive, so unless you have good hens for brooding and want to raise their clutches, save yourself the trouble. Roosters also may need to have their talons groomed once in a while or they may injure their girls.
All of the minuses can be offset somewhat with good planning and tricks of the trade, but hey, that's why you come to Permies, right?

I was told about a great success story aired on Australian ABC's Landline. A couple wanted to raise chickens to sell their eggs. They had no land and no capital. So they approached some farms. A cattle farmer agreed to allow their chickens on his land.
The end result is a thriving business for the couple and a happy farmer. Why happy? The land is now well fertilised and he no longer uses chemical fertilser. Don't you love win-win stories?

Birds are the easiest, cheapest(?) way to get the e-i-oh vibe, the work is simple but constant, benefits and drawbacks measurable ( as stated above), entertainment immeasurable, soul re-enforcement cumulative.
I'm 70 now, father told me when I was 8, he could sit and watch the chicks, we'd get 3000 at at time, in the brooder house and time would just slow down,  grandfather always said puttering around the animals does as much good for the farmer as the animals.  

Pros:
Chickens are cute, and I wouldn't have to buy my eggs, and, since I would be watching their health for salmonella, I would risk eating raw eggs (after adding them to my dog's raw newly fertilized pigeon egg diet)
The facilities for my large flock of pigeons could easily be modified for accomodations for 3 chickens, the municipal limit
The manure (but I already have pigeons)
The whole grains I already buy for my pigeons, and the facilities for storing will accommodate chickens
Grown chickens are too big for hawks (they will still hit the pigeons)

Cons:
Chickens carry avian flu (pigeons don't)
I would have to quarantine them then test a small number of pigeons exposed to them to make sure they don't make my other birds sick
I would have to fence off garden I:d need to protect
I doubt I would be satisfied with 3 layers and would want to breed my own, buy Chantecler from someone I know
Chickens don't do as well with land predators and weasels always suck the blood out of the biggest birds first (if one makes it past my livestock dog) and I wouldn't like to entertain that mistake
Chickens are more dependent on humans than the pigeons I already have

Here’s a current local price check.

I was at a small local food hub last week.  Some of the eggs were more than $1.00 EACH, cheapest eggs were fifty cents each, and those were “pack your own”:  a stack of egg flats and a stack of donated empty egg cartons, only buy as many as you want.

C. Letellier wrote:So what are you getting out?  Say your family eats a dozen eggs a week and say grocery store eggs are $4.  Your value back is $156 in eggs.  Is the effort and added expense worth it to you?  Gains you know what they are eating, meat and eggs are often more flavorful and you get a certain amount of joy in watching, petting etc.  Guessing you will end up spending more time than that on the chickens.  Some of it joyful but some of it going out to gather eggs in 100 degree heat or a blizzard.



One final comment realize these are an entry level drug for many that leads to goats and ducks etc.  

I get eggs from a neighbour farmer for $4/dozen.  Eggs at the grocery store labelled as organic are in the $6 range and more like $8 through a local food hub.  I don't think the neighbour's eggs come from free range, organically fed hens (don't know as I actually get them from another neighbour farmer from whom I purchase meat and some baking) but I'm supporting a neighbour (as Jay notes, I'm Canadian so the 'u' belongs in words like neighbour ).  I find value in supporting a local somewhat circular economy.

As for flavour, my neighbour's birds are hands down better than any I can get at a supermarket.  She can't call them free range as they do get a bit of feed daily, but then peck the rest.  Above and beyond flavour, there is size.  Depending on the weather in a given year, her birds are typically 7-10 pounds.  In a bad year, they may get down around six.  It is tough to find birds that size in a local market as the industrial model butchers them younger.

Her birds remind me of my youth.  I grew up in a small agricultural town in central Saskatchewan.  There's a difference in colour between dark and white meat and a massive flavour difference compared with supermarket chicken.  We do purchase some from the supermarket for the convenience of being able to get big packages of breasts or thighs that we can break down into smaller packages and freeze...that's a bit of a hold your nose while doing it decision, but sometimes we pay for the convenience.

I can't speak to the way anyone else teaches a PDC, but when I took my course, we did a "Needs & Yields" exercise.  The example given was the chicken.  It seems to me that's the example Bill Mollison gives in the Permaculture Designer's Manual (not sure that's the exact title, but something along those lines, also know as the Permaculture Bible in some circles).  Having never been directly involved in the raising of chickens, some yields were unanticipated.  One primary issue is that you need to provide for their needs in your context.  Then you have to ask yourself if the yields you can get from them is worth your time, effort, and financial capital in providing for their needs.  What price do you put on knowing exactly how the chicken was raised and tended (whether you're eating their eggs and / or meat)?  What price do you put on the services they provide you (manure, compost mixing services, entertainment, etc.)?  Is the "price" you need to pay worth it for the yield they provide to you and your property?  With the grasshopper and cricket pressure we have, I'd love to have some chickens on our property, but it isn't feasible until we are living there full time.

Another consideration, if one is considering meat birds, that can be done seasonally.  You can hatch eggs or purchase chicks, raise them through the summer, and butcher / freeze in late summer / fall and plan vacations for winter (as many Canadians like to do).

Just a few thoughts to add to the conversation.

Scott Leonard wrote:Birds are the easiest, cheapest(?) way to get the e-i-oh vibe, the work is simple but constant, benefits and drawbacks measurable ( as stated above), entertainment immeasurable, soul re-enforcement cumulative.
I'm 70 now, father told me when I was 8, he could sit and watch the chicks, we'd get 3000 at at time, in the brooder house and time would just slow down,  grandfather always said puttering around the animals does as much good for the farmer as the animals.  

Our connection with Nature. Vital for life.

For me, chickens are essential for self-sufficiency. An egg is a fantastic package of nutrients and protein. The only vitamin missing is C!! Eggs keep well in waterglass without any gimmicks. They can be used in dozens of dishes. Eating eggs, I take care of my basic nutrition. The vegetable, berry and fruit harvest varies, but eggs are a great base.

My chickens multiply on their own. I do absolutely nothing. They hatch their chicks and tend to them endearingly. Extra roosters can be eaten.

Feed doesn't need to cost much at all, as chickens love various weeds. They eat all veggies apart from onions. My neighbor grows barley and wheat on the field bordering my farm, and I pay 10 snt for a pound of grain, delivered to my storage barrels.

They live in an unheated henhouse. It is amazing how hardy these Arctic landrace chickens are. They lived healthy and lively in frosts down to -15°F. Their plumage just grew huge and they ate like horses. So you don't really need fancy construction. Their henhouse is an 80 year old dilapitated sauna!

Then there is the joy of sitting in the henhouse and just looking at those endearing little dinosaurs ❤️

Pros
- fresh eggs daily
- easy to care for if you do it right (automatic door, feeders, etc)
- can scratch your compost pile for you (look up Billy Bond - the chicken tractor on steroids)
- entertaining to watch
- omnivores so you can feed them scraps and they can get bugs from free ranging

Cons
- they can destroy an area from scratching
- broody breeds can be stressful
- feathers everywhere when molting
- high quality feed can be pricey

I think the pros outweigh the cons. We live in an area hit by Hurricane Helene and when none of the grocery stores had eggs, we had them and were able to share with others. So there is an aspect of self-reliance that is also a strong reason to have chickens.

As I live on the farm and rarely venture away, I forgot to comment on maintenance. Chickens eat food that doesn't spoil - like grains. So you can leave them for half a week or even more without problem, as long as the run is protected. Just fill enough feedes full, leave looooots of water in containers they can't accidentally topple over and you are all set.

Only problems arise in the einter if there is a risk of watrr freezing, or in the summer if they statt brooding on the pile of eggs that is accumulating.