February 2003 Chickens

The chickens are laying like crazy. These are pullets. They came as 2-day-old baby chicks in the mail back last summer in July. Every day our 8 and 7 year old daughters washed out their water and feed trays and gave them clean feed and clean water. At night we turned a heat light on above them, and the chicks would cluster in a tight little group to sleep. It’s hard to believe those little fluff balls are now full-grown chickens laying eggs.
They began laying in October. Just a few small eggs at first. Then more and larger eggs. Now we get 20 full-sized eggs each day from 28 hens, which means most chickens are laying an egg each day.
Now that the eggs are full-sized, we can start selling them. In the winter we sell them at a health food store in Salmon and direct to a few families. This summer, we will take our extras to the farmer’s market.
The eggs are different than the ones in the store. For one thing, they often come from the henhouse with poop on them. The girls have to wash them. They are different on the inside too. The yolks are a deep orange color instead of yellow like most store-bought eggs. This is because our chickens eat alfalfa hay as well as cracked corn in the winter and grass, lots of bugs and some grain in the summer. Green plants contain carotene (the same stuff that makes carrots orange, and the prime source of vitamin A in our diets). When chickens eat a diet high in carotene, their eggs contain lots of carotene too. The eggs also taste and smell different (much better, we think). Chickens that produce most grocery store eggs live in cages inside a chicken house and eat carefully-controlled diets high in grain. They produce a lot of eggs this way very efficiently and cheaply. Our chickens wander around outside, finding bits of stuff to eat in addition to the ration we feed them. They have to be let out in the morning and closed in at night, and all the nest boxes have to be searched for eggs. Less efficient, but it’s a good life for a chicken.
We can sell the eggs locally for $1.25 per dozen. Our family eats 20 of the eggs each week. Feed costs $6.50 each week. How much money do the girls make each week for their work of feeding and watering the chickens and collecting the eggs? If it takes them 10 minutes each day to do this work, how much money do they make per hour of work?
At the farmer’s market in Boise we can sell the same eggs for $2.50 per dozen. Now how much money do the girls make?
Running a ranch requires thinking about things like that every day. How much does it cost? How much can it make? Right now we are considering selling some of our bred mother cows (which will have calves in March and April). Which should we sell? (They will bring different prices.) How many should we sell, if any? When should we sell them? When you make the right decision, you make money (at least a little!). When you make the wrong decision, you often lose money (sometimes a lot!). It’s all about math!