How much does it cost to raise chickens?

Have you ever wondered exactly how much it costs to raise chickens? Not just a few chickens either, I'm talking a LOT of chickens. Like, say....80! Raising chickens isn't cheap, and I often see people complaining about how much chickens cost. So how much does it cost to raise chickens?

Since I'm done doing my business taxes for the year I happen to have all these numbers handy. Some may surprise you, others may not. For example my bedding cost was much lower then I had thought it would be. Chicken feed was higher *sigh*. 

We didn't have any big expenses like new coops or incubators this year so this is a good example of a 'normal' year. I can't say for sure exactly how many chickens and guineas we had though, but the number always hovers somewhere near 80. 

So this is the summary of my poultry care expenses of 1 full year.

Cost of raising chickens

This picture shows the cost for feed and bedding. Now granted, I spent $137.91 of my feed costs on chick feed. I hatched around 600 chicks and not all of them left right away. I had to feed them while they were here, and that bill was much higher then I'd like it to be. 

This doesn't include the free bags of lettuce from a local restaurant, or countless loaves of stale bread and mushy fruit that neighbors gave us. It also leaves out kitchen scraps, what I gave them from the garden and the corn patch they decimated when they found a hole in the garden fence. Bad silkies!