We've had chickens for about 5 years now. After raising cornish cross birds for meat, I can't even justify the effort to butcher anything else. We have an egg flock made up of Easter eggers, Buff Orpingtons, and some barred something-or-others (My wife is really the chicken enthusiast). When we want meat birds, we'll get a half dozen or so cornish cross chicks and butcher them at 8 or 9 weeks. They grow amazing fast, and the meat is good.
We have one Buff hen that goes broody a few times each year. We'll give her a few eggs and let her raise the chicks. That beats incubators, brooders, integrating flocks and all the other headaches that come with raising chicks. We're on a schedule where we replace the flock about once every 3 years. That's when the egg production starts to drop off, but we can usually get a few dollars out of a laying hen to re-coup (no pun intended) our costs.
Chickens are a fun hobby, but don't plan on saving money doing it unless you have access to some cheap or free food.
The reason to have chickens is for waffles on Saturday morning. Save the egg whites when you make the batter and beat them. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter just before you put it in the waffle iron. The waffles come out fluffy, crunchy, and delicious. Fry up an extra egg or two to have on the side, and you have a breakfast that can't be beat (no pun intended, again).
