In Praise of Good Eggs

“Value of all egg production in 2009 was $6.16 billion, down 25 percent from the $8.22 billion in 2008. Egg production totaled 90.4 million eggs, up slightly percent from the 90.0 million eggs produced in 2008. In 2009, all eggs averaged 81.7 cents per dozen, compared with $1.09 in 2008.”
–Poultry Production and Value, 2009 Summary USDA  April 2010

Pulletpalooza was a rip-roaring success, considering that we did everything in our power to keep people from showing up, and about 30 intrepid chicken fans showed up anyway.  Part of the reason, we suspect, is that even though prices for factory farmed eggs have been coming down of late, dissatisfaction with factory farmed eggs (or, indeed, with any factory farmed foods at all) is driving a larger number of folks to consider backyard birds.

One of the most common questions we received related to production costs and return on investment.  This was a practical question, indeed, given that it was asked while small children were gleefully tossing popcorn at our hens and squealing “Chickie like popcorn!”  Clearly, backyard chicken ownership comprises both a practical and an emotional component.

Practically speaking, the biggest investment vis-à-vis backyard flocks relates to housing.  Areas that allow free-ranging your birds give a tremendous advantage in this respect, since in such places, the only coop you need is a small cabinet-like space where you can lock them up at night.  This is traditionally what a chicken coop looked like, many years ago when practically every home had chickens; you’d let the birds out in the morning, and at night, your children would be responsible for searching your yard for eggs, and then just before dark, you’d put the birds back in the coop and lock it.

At Myrtle’s place, however, we have to keep the birds caged all day long, so we needed a bigger coop.  our structure is 10’ x 12’, with a large nesting box elevated on one end, and a 10’ x 2’ ‘run’ on top, giving our birds a total of 140 square feet in which to roam.  Our roosting poles are about 6’ each, and our birds have a choice of two on which to sleep at night.

All told, we have about $200 in materials invested in our coop.  We initially believed that this cost would be dwarfed by feed expenditures, and in fact, when we first started our little venture, that seemed like a reasonable assumption, since we would go through three to four $7 bags of lay pellets each month; throw in the gas we burned driving to Producer’s Coop ever week, and they seemed awfully expensive right out of the gate.

However, these costs were grossly exaggerated due to our inexperience.  We were totally unaware of how much we could save by feeding our birds table scraps and weeds.  Toss in the occasional grubworm, caterpillar, dragonfly, or (saints preserve us!) cockroach, and Myrtle and the girls are down to only a bag of lay pellets every month or so.  Given that an hour of sitting, sipping coffee, and watching the birds scratching in the leaves replaces a month of psychotherapy, and the $70 or $80 a year we spend on feed really seems pretty paltry.  I’m sure the American Association of Liscensced Professional Counselors would agree.

The flip side of the cost question is the question of return on investment (ROI).  This is harder for us to measure, of course, given how many benefits we get from the chickens apart from their primary output, eggs.  As alluded to, our chickens are also our primary means of composting kitchen leftovers, in addition to being excellent disposers of yard waste.

Still, the simplest means of evaluating ROI is to calculate expenses per egg.  This, of course, leads to another common question – “How many eggs do you get?”

The rate per bird varies wildly, as does the rate in each given season.  We have noticed numerous trends worth mentioning – first off, our chickens lay larger, healthier, tastier and more numerous eggs the more we ply them with weeds.  Lay pellets are fine, they seem to be telling us, but weeds are much, much better.  They also like stalks of sunflowers, broccoli, tomatoes, and the like, but even these tasty consumables pale in comparison to good old fashioned weeds.

We get, on average, 200 eggs per year, per bird.  Some parts of the year, every bird is laying virtually every day; some parts of the year, each bird only lays every other day or so.  On the whole, though, we are getting 0.55 eggs per day, per bird.

This comes to 1,400 eggs per year total for our flock of 7 birds.  Given that we are paying at most $84 per year on lay pellets, that comes to $0.06 per egg at a maximum, not counting initial capital outlay.  This puts one dozen low cholesterol, high Omega-3, hormone free eggs at $0.72 in production costs. 

This is cheaper than the nasty chemical laced factory farmed eggs with their potential salmonella infections and god only knows what other health hazards.  We are paying far less for our eggs than for the equivalent healthy eggs from a natural foods store, where you might expect to pay anywhere from $3 to $5 per dozen for eggs as healthy as those we get from Myrtle and the girls.

If you want to throw in the capital outlay for the coop, then we would be paying $284 in the first year, bringing the cost of each egg to $0.20, or about $2.43 per dozen.  This, obviously, is less than $3 to $5, and it is only capitalizing for one year.  Our coop will more likely last for at least ten years, and hopefully more like twenty, which would drop our cost-per-egg back down to anywhere from $0.08 to $0.10.

On the whole, then, we would argue that there is a fairly significant ROI on backyard chickens just from measuring their primary output – eggs.  We don’t really have the analytical tools to calculate the ROI on their secondary output, but we are fairly confident that the value of chicken-poop compost is at least as profitable as the eggs.  Given how much every plant in our yard loves the stuff, we suspect it is probably actually much greater.

And then there is the tertiary benefit of avian psychoanalysis.  Maybe we should replace our lawn chairs with outdoor couches.  “Myrtle will see you now…”

Happy farming!

"Here we go, a-wassailing, whatever that might mean!"

December is a strange month for chickens and for gardens.  Virtually every Texas gardener has abandoned fruits and veggies this month in favor of pansies.  Weeds for the chickens are as hard to come by as are peaches or plums for the people.

Yet, it is the time of year when every table is topped with delectable goodies, and every kitchen smells of ginger and cinnamon.

We are hosting our share of festivities at Myrtle’s place this year, and will be serving our share of sugar.  In lieu of gardening advice, or pontifications about poultry, let us offer you a serving suggestion.  Wassail is not just a word in a Christmas carol.  It is also a tasty beverage.  And it explains why, even in warm climates like ours, Santa is so jolly in spite of his heavy suit, and his nose is still a bright cherry red!

Traditionally, wassail was a hard cider warmed in a turreen full of sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and topped with pieces of toasted bread to serve as ‘sops’.  If you live somewhere with a copious quantity of sweet and tart apples, and have access to good hard cider, may we suggest you go traditional – there is absolutely nothing in the world as tasty as home grown cider spiced and warmed over a fire and drunk with a host of friends in a cozy room with windows overlooking a frozen garden.

Many of those ingredients are not available at Myrtle’s place – we would have to import the hard apple cider, we don’t have an indoor fireplace, and our garden is far from frozen.

Modern recipes for wassail, however, are somewhat forgiving, and so long as your group of friends doesn’t contain any picky purists, you can get away with calling a good old-fashioned mulled wine “wassail”.  It’ll do in a pinch, anyway.  Take a large quantity of any good sweet red wine (the cheaper, the better, in our book), toss in sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, apples, oranges, raisins, etc. to taste, maybe a splash or two of cinnamon schnapps if the mood strikes you, and heat the whole thing up.

A cauldron over a fire is a nice touch, of course, but barring that, a crock pot will suffice.  If you don’t have a crock pot, try a stew pot and your kitchen stove.

This year, we may experiment with putting in some pomegranate arils, since in future years we hope to be celebrating a fruit harvest in late fall.  We also hope to have a field of flowering quinoa as a backdrop to future wassail parties.  For this year, though, we’ll settle for a firebowl, a few flowers, and a good sit.

Winter festivals mean many different things to different folk, but one thing they all have in common is the theme of lights in the darkness, and of warmth in the midsts of cold.  We hope you can find your own island of warmth and light in the coming month.

Happy farming!