The chickens are more than paying their way now. We haven’t paid for chicken food out of our own pockets for a couple of months, which is another small step down the road to self-sufficiency.
Why? Because we’ve been selling our eggs. We have a good base of three customers who each buy half a dozen eggs a week. It doesn’t sound like much, does it, but with only five hens in our flock it’s all we can manage.
That chart at the top of the post shows how our egg production has grown this year. We’ve gone up from three hens (of whom two were productive) to five, all of whom are laying, and it’s paying off in more ways than one.
More interesting still is to compare what we’re getting this year with five hens to what our flock of three was laying through the first six months of 2009. The difference is pretty marked.
So, we’ve taken the decision to buy three more at the end of the month, and with a little stash of coins piled up on the kitchen windowsill from our egg sales, we probably won’t have to dig into our own pockets to pay for them, either. The chickens, quite apart from being cute and a nice addition to the garden, are now pure profit.
Of course, if they were smart they’d slow down on the laying, as the more they lay the more incentive there is for us to buy new hens with whom they’ll have to share their house, and we know from experience that they’re not exactly keen on new arrivals.
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Self sufficient chickens! That’s great news. We’ve been feeding our chickens supplemental grain for some time and it often feels as if you’re just paying for eggs. Of course, the point about keeping your own chickens is the NICE eggs, rich orange yolks and no chemicals or hormones involved.