[aj_icracked]

It's a good question - From what we've seen most suburban people that raise chickens don't do it to lower costs of eggs - they do it to have better control over the quality of food they eat, to teach their kids that you take care of the chickens, they take care of us. To eliminate food waste (avg family throws out 200+ lbs a year of food that can go to chickens, and because funnily enough most backyard farmers treat the chickens as family and pets vs just little egg-factories.

Avg hen lays about 250-270 eggs a year depending on breed. So 6 chickens (our coop is designed for 6) throws off about 1500 eggs a year. Avg American eats around 291 eggs + egg products per year (which is crazy!).

Most people build their coops or buy one from Tractor Supply or Amazon for $300 and day-old chicks are around $4 each and feed is inexpensive (50lb bag at Tractor Supply is $21). You can make the economics work super well if you want to but as most backyard chickens are treated as pets (I am leaving out large farms and homesteads, etc) a lot of people pamper and spend $ on their hens because it's more than just getting a lower cost egg if that makes sense.

[bombcar]

From an absolute financial standpoint it might be hard to justify eggs from backyard chickens, though once you realize that they can eat something like 25% of their feed can be grass or clippings, and that some percentage can be redirected household waste (think: peels, food waste, etc) it becomes much more favorable.

As you mentioned, most treat them like pets which means they get to learn how long-lived chickens can be, and how egg production levels off in the later years.

But even then, if you're buying less than half the feed needed, you can probably break even for quite awhile (especially now).

[ljf]

I grew up on a (very) small farm - I still go to throw apple cores out of the window, as when I was younger the was always /something/ that would be happy for the treat. All dinner scraps were saved (or rather taken straight out), and all the windfall and rotten apples were happily eaten by the sheep, cow, geese and chickens.

I really hate throwing food away now, really pains me!

[iancmceachern]

It's a good thing we don't make every decision in our lives from an absolute financial standpoint. We'd all be eating gruel and porrage.

[username135]

Almost all our food waste goes into a small metal bowl that gets dumped in the coop every night. I used to bury it in the compost pile, but since the hens have picked through it all, theres not much left. They happily eat the scraps and I happily collect their eggs.

[hattmall]

Financially speaking the biggest way to break even is having some way to get value from excess eggs. Selling them or trading for feed is ideal.

[bee_rider]

I think they also eat ticks, right?

[jacobr1]

We've had good success with Black Soldier Flies[1] too. They compost pretty much anything - you can toss in meat/cheese and similar scraps not just veggies. And you get a very high quality protein to feed the chickens.

[1] https://www.hobbyfarms.com/black-soldier-flies-free-self-har...

[hosh]

Pasture-raised backyard chickens are also great pest control.