Saving Money For Backyard Chicken Keepers (Part 1)
Many people start to keep chickens because they think it will save them money, and it can, a lot of money but keeping chickens is a significant investment and unless you do things right at the start of your chicken keeping adventures it could b a long time before you see a return.
Many people make the mistake of getting chicken to save money but spend far too much money on the coop, run, feeders and the chickens themselves.
Many people will tell you you need all sorts of expensive equipment but those people are normally trying to sell you that equipment.
So lets have a look at the financial mathematics.
Let's assume you want to get about 8 chickens.
Many pre-built coops for that number will cost you £500 then there are the feeders and drinkers which can cost up to £15 each.
Then there are the chickens themselves, some people will say you should get pure breeds; well pure breeds will cost at least £10 depending on the breed.
So adding that all up brings us to a total of £610.
Then there is also the food, a 20kg bag of food will cost about £6 and eight chickens will eat about 2.
4kg per day between them which will cost about 70p.
So those are the costs.
Now lets look at how much we will be making/saving In the supermarket 6 good quality eggs will cost you about £1.
20.
So if you have 8 hens you can expect to get about 7 eggs a day on average (they won't all lay an egg every day).
So you are saving £1.
40 per day now lets minus the 70p that we spent on food.
That leaves us with a 70p saving each day so £610 divided by 70p is 871.
That is how long it will take to break even.
That is nearly three years! By that time the chickens will be coming to the end of their productive life and will need to be placed to so that will be another cost.
Now if you want to keep chickens as pets and are happy to spend some money on them, then that is great but don't go thinking that you are going to be saving or making lots of money.
It is possible to save money by keeping chickens but you need to be very frugal especially at the start.
I will be writing more about this in my next article but for now the thing to remember is that most of the money went of buying the chicken coop.
If you learn how to build a chicken coop you will save a lot of money.
It is not as hard as you might think there is help out there.
See my site for details.
Many people make the mistake of getting chicken to save money but spend far too much money on the coop, run, feeders and the chickens themselves.
Many people will tell you you need all sorts of expensive equipment but those people are normally trying to sell you that equipment.
So lets have a look at the financial mathematics.
Let's assume you want to get about 8 chickens.
Many pre-built coops for that number will cost you £500 then there are the feeders and drinkers which can cost up to £15 each.
Then there are the chickens themselves, some people will say you should get pure breeds; well pure breeds will cost at least £10 depending on the breed.
So adding that all up brings us to a total of £610.
Then there is also the food, a 20kg bag of food will cost about £6 and eight chickens will eat about 2.
4kg per day between them which will cost about 70p.
So those are the costs.
Now lets look at how much we will be making/saving In the supermarket 6 good quality eggs will cost you about £1.
20.
So if you have 8 hens you can expect to get about 7 eggs a day on average (they won't all lay an egg every day).
So you are saving £1.
40 per day now lets minus the 70p that we spent on food.
That leaves us with a 70p saving each day so £610 divided by 70p is 871.
That is how long it will take to break even.
That is nearly three years! By that time the chickens will be coming to the end of their productive life and will need to be placed to so that will be another cost.
Now if you want to keep chickens as pets and are happy to spend some money on them, then that is great but don't go thinking that you are going to be saving or making lots of money.
It is possible to save money by keeping chickens but you need to be very frugal especially at the start.
I will be writing more about this in my next article but for now the thing to remember is that most of the money went of buying the chicken coop.
If you learn how to build a chicken coop you will save a lot of money.
It is not as hard as you might think there is help out there.
See my site for details.
Source...