Do like I did and move out to the countryside, buy a vastly cheaper house with some land, work in IT so you can work remotely most days and get some hens. Spend far less on their feed than I did on eggs and I find home range eggs to be a very appreciated going away gift these days.
I do work in IT (software engineer) but I don’t eat eggs so much that I need to buy a damn countryside farm because my egg consumption is ruining me here in the city lmao. I’ll eat cheaper things/eggs only sometimes. It’s not the most expensive food here, in the least. 😄
The eggs is of course just a side benefit, the big thing is a house that is literally 1/10th the cost per square meter of living space.
Weeell we all have our priorities. I like to be close to friends and family and things to do like team sports, and live close to the sea. Close to a grocery store, close to daycare and schools etc.
I don’t think I could live in the country. I wish I could. It’s very nice to be out in nature, where it gets dark, and quiet. How I love the quietness of the countryside.
I just hate driving far to everywhere I need to go. I want to get places quickly. Too little time to be alive to be driving for hours every week. I can’t.
I remember seeing a youtube video that broke down the economics of eggs, and you need like 35 chickens before your economy of scale begins to compare to the price you pay at the grocery store.
I don’t know if that figure was counting assumed labor on the part of the homesteader though.
Probably since the feed price doesn’t start scaling down until you order pretty extreme amounts. Well I guess if you also consider the capital expenditure of building the pen and buying the hens and then look at a 5 year ROI then you do need a few and the larger you build the cheaper it gets per hen, generally speaking.
I think it depends very heavily on how you raise the chickens. And what you value - nutritional value or raw cost.
For example, if you compost all your house and garden scraps (veg scraps, clippings, bread, grains, pet food leftovers, pretty much any household biodegradable scrap) and let the chickens access the pile to dig out goodies they want to eat and scratch bugs out of? Healthy chickens, minimal feed cost through whatever months they have access to bugs and scraps, and their nitrogen rich waste enhances the compost to help it break down faster and make veg growing more efficient. Feed is more of a supplement then, and the chickens give you more than just super healthy nutrient rich eggs (plus you can eat them when they can’t lay anymore which you don’t get out of the raw price of eggs). If you can work it out so they always have access to a pile warm enough to not freeze or let the bugs die off, with enough fresh material (maybe from neighbors in exchange for some eggs here and there if you don’t produce enough on your own), that really can make up a substantial part of the diet, reducing the break even point by a lot.
Sure, it’s probably not going to be outright cheaper food, unless you have solar for coop heat and can source cheap feed (spent grain from a brewery, for example). But it is more efficient and more nutritious food, and a lot more humane than most factory farming. Plus being even partially self sustaining really does help reduce the hold corps have on us, which is always a win.
