To Chicken or not to Chicken?

[Jstpssng]

Unless you free range or pen them in a decent sized yard they will strip it to bare dirt pretty quick.

Until recently I had a 12x18 foot area where they could go scratch if I wasn't around to let them in or out. Over the past 8 years or so I've had as many as 15 birds working it. Last winter I took the fence down and plan to move the henhouse to another spot.
Last week my piglets got out and made a beeline for that nice bare ground, tearing it all up. I've got some really nice soil there, waiting to be used.

 

[Alan W.]

Our chickens have a large run which helps on feed cost, they can forage some. Coop and fence have long been paid for.
Feed cost about $9 a bag for layer mix at the mill.
We can raise our own replacements or swap eggs to incubate with other owners.
Wife sells quite a few dozen to family and friends who like the taste. And yes they do taste better. This easily pays my feed cost.
I don’t worry about my time cost. If I calculated what I think my time is worth I couldn’t afford to go to the bathroom.

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

I started with chickens this year. I never expected to bond with them like pets... but I did. We got a few ducks and about a dozen chickens. I am over the ducks. Talk about dirty, and they are not personable at all. The chickens are a lot "cleaner" at least it takes a lot longer to be inundated with poop. We have 4 different breeds and they all have a different personality. One of them is my buddy and hangs out close to me when I'm outside, I named her Squirrel. She will hop on my hand and let me carry her around and pet her. I'm working on building them a permanent coop and am probably still 2-3 months away from getting eggs.

 

[Oaktree]

Waste of time and money.

It’s an egg...how wonderful can it be?

Lots of things are a "waste of time and money" if you're not interested in it.

My wife had chickens off and on for the last 15 years or so. She says the eggs are a lot better...I'll take her word for it, I don't like them (and they don't particularly agree with me). Hers were mostly pets that produced eggs, rather expensive eggs at that. Don't have any now, there are probably 4 others on my road that have them and sell the eggs for $2/dozen and let someone else deal with the predators, rodents, etc.

 

[Gee Ray]

Do feed them the scrapes from the house. Seam to love almost everything from the table except onions. Recycle the egg shells back to them as well.

They have greatly reduced the number of snakes and bugs in the yard.

The small holes they dig are a drawback but I think they are worth the trouble.

 

[Jstpssng]

If they don't free range you'll need to have a way for them to "dust"... their version of a shower. Mine had mites last summer so I cleaned the coop as well as I could, then put down some cedar shavings that I had. They don't recommend cedar as it can cause respiratory problems, but I couldn't find diatomaceous earth locally so used what I had on hand.

You also will want to fence in your garden. Chickens love everything including cole products, plus they will dig and scratch enough to uproot your corn.

 

[Bill Guenthner]

It is impossible to raise chickens on a small scale without spending a lot more than you would to buy the same amount of meat and eggs at the grocery. And no, your chickens and eggs are not “so much better tasting” than the ones from the grocery. Biology dictates the chemical make up of any animal or plant and differences are going to be very minor among health specimens. One of the major news organizations sent eggs to a testing laboratory, everything from the cheapest Walmart eggs to the most expensive, boutique, home schooled, chickens, no detectable differences.

 

[shooterdon]

Lots of things are a "waste of time and money" if you're not interested in it.

My wife had chickens off and on for the last 15 years or so. She says the eggs are a lot better...I'll take her word for it, I don't like them (and they don't particularly agree with me). Hers were mostly pets that produced eggs, rather expensive eggs at that. Don't have any now, there are probably 4 others on my road that have them and sell the eggs for $2/dozen and let someone else deal with the predators, rodents, etc.

Wasting time and money on something makes it a hobby.

Raising chickens for eggs or meat is a waste of time and money; but if it turns your crank it does not matter....because it is a hobby.

I waste my time and money shooting, casting and reloading. But I am honest about it. I can never harvest enough critters to pay for the fun I have and I do not care.

 

[beowulf]

We once had chickens. About 20 or so. They were free range in the day, and they returned to an enclosure at night.
Our experience:
-Ours were free-range and coyotes would pick them off one by one - and uncannily, always taking the plumpest one next. We would from to time to time actually see them do this.
-We woke up one day to see that all of the chickens had been killed inside their enclosure. They were scattered about inside a 6' chain link enclosure. We think it was a weasel as it appeared to just be a killing frenzy.
-If they are free-range, it is said they will eat a lot of bugs, but the downside is that it is guaranteed that they will tear up your wife's flower beds and any unfenced garden. That alone is a reason we don't have them again.
-I liked the taste of the eggs, my wife did not.
-Their droppings can attract flies - more if they are enclosed.
-I have heard there can be issues with diseases humans need to think about, but we never had that issue.

 

[Jstpssng]

It is impossible to raise chickens on a small scale without spending a lot more than you would to buy the same amount of meat and eggs at the grocery. And no, your chickens and eggs are not “so much better tasting” than the ones from the grocery. Biology dictates the chemical make up of any animal or plant and differences are going to be very minor among health specimens. One of the major news organizations sent eggs to a testing laboratory, everything from the cheapest Walmart eggs to the most expensive, boutique, home schooled, chickens, no detectable differences.

That's an interesting hypothesis. Care to cite your sources? I've heard vegetarians argue the same thing about soy burgers, but the one time I tried one I didn't finish it. This study, Flavour Chemistry of Chicken Meat: A Review
from the National Library of Medicine* indicates differently.

Chicken meat flavour, however, relies on several production and processing factors including the breed/strain of chicken, diet of bird, presence of free amino acids and nucleotides, irradiation, high pressure treatment, cooking, antioxidants, pH and ageing. Therefore these ante- and postmortem factors can influence the status of chicken meat flavour.

It doesn't matter to me anyways. I like knowing that the meat I'm eating came from animals which weren't raised in an industrial setting. Mostly though, I enjoy doing it.
* I'm not sure what nation they are from.