chicken scratch

I collected 18 eggs today, 2 from the 3 year old hens and 16 from the 8 month old chickens. This is the most eggs the pullets have offered us in one day. I just purchased a bag of layer ration and it cost just over $14.50. That 50lb bag will last me 6 days. Now for a word problem (a flash back to grade school).

Vince has 25 hens that lay 18 eggs a day. If Vince buys a 50 pound sack of feed for $14.50 and his chickens consume it in 6 days, how much money in feed does it cost to get 1 egg.

18 eggs x 6 days = 108 eggs in 6 days

$14.50 every 6 days / 108 eggs every 6 days = $0.13 each egg

It costs Vince $0.13 (I can't find the symbol for cents) in feed to get one egg.

(I had to write the answer in a complete sentence to get full credit.)

Every evening after work I visit the chickens to put away feeders that attract mice if left out and collect the eggs. I usually walk into the run in order to swish the water around and dump out any contamination. The waterer is empty at least one evening each week and I take it up to the faucet to refill the 5 gallons and lug it back down to the run. If I neglect this task in the evening I have to wake up a little earlier the next morning. Around 7:00 A.M. I feed the chickens that I have separated into two flocks, 2 scoops of feed to the smaller flock of older hens and 4 scoops to the younger hens. Each flock has a rooster, more about that later.

By the time these chickens have reached 22 weeks they are starting to lay and it cost about $15.00 each in feed to get them to that age.

I have kept the older flock through their 2nd full year to see how they do throughout the 3rd summer; hopefully they will lay enough to earn their keep. Two eggs a day is what the 9 hens averaged all winter and through the molt. It hardly seems worth all of the feed but I kept a Rhode Island Red rooster to fertilize the hen's eggs. I am going to try to raise some chicks this spring. Mail ordered chicks are only $3 a piece and I will get mostly hens when I purchase chicks, but breeding my own has an appeal that might be worth the extra expense. Then again, this can be how a farm doesn't pencil out and an enterprise fails.

I need to raise my own feed to reduce my costs. I am going to plant a little field corn and wheat or oats. I need to find out more about harvesting cereal grains. The hens eat less feed when they are free to roam, but I can only do that on weekends when I am at home; we lost 7 hens to the coyotes before I built the runs.

When something does not cost a whole lot of money its small cost is referred to as chicken scratch. Boy is that an old saying.