Getting Ready For Winter - The Loop Farmer

The Loop Farmer — Sat, 14 Nov 2026 04:06:13 GMT

@lyn1337@vid.northbound.online Chickens and ducks for eggs are cost neutral in our experience. Broiler chickens, grown on pasture and slaughtered as whole birds are worth it if you are buying organic pasture raised birds. It costs about $3.50 to grow what would be a $25.00 bird on the market (I've seen them go as high as $35 a bird); but the same bird being grown conventionally would only cost about $9.00. So either way it costs much less.

Then we include broth of which we can can about 3 quarts per chicken - that's worth about $6.00. So we are spending $3.50 to get about $15 to $31 worth of value.

Long term the goal is to replace feed cost with on farm feed. So in theory we could grow chickens for $0.00 a bird. But that is about 4 years out in the plan.

If we calculate labor to raise 50 birds we are looking at two visits a day and it takes about 5 minutes a visit. So whatever you want to pay yourself for that time. For part I don't really consider it labor in as much as I do something I want to be doing anyway.

The last thing is that they provide pest control, compost creation labor, and manure, all of which have a value. I'm not sure how to quantify that beyond saying what I don't spend money on. But since I've never purchased fertilizer or pesticides I don't really know what that number would look like.

Getting Ready For Winter - lyn1337

lyn1337 — Sat, 14 Nov 2026 03:23:45 GMT

have you found keeping the chickens has been worth it financially for you as well?