Raise your own chickens and get free eggs!

[Westoftown]

We started raising our own small flock of chickens this year(6), and currently get so many eggs we can hardly eat and give them away.
Plus the birds themselves become like pets, with their own personalities.  Kids love them, and can't wait to check for eggs.

I have found the maintenance and care to be minimal.
Look forward to any other stories from readers, questions, or great ideas on raising your own birds!

[solon]

Chicken diapers. That is all.

http://www.mypetchicken.com/catalog/Diapers-and-Saddles/Chicken-Diaper-p494.aspx

[GizmoTX]

Someone has turned this into a business: http://www.rentthechicken.com

[KS]

Another perspective to consider (she is also pretty frequently here on the MMM forums so maybe she'll end up weighing in on this thread):
http://www.nwedible.com/2013/05/you-absolutely-should-not-get-backyard-chickens.html

[BPA]

I can buy them cheaper than I can raise them.  I always feel a bit guilty buying them from the store and not my boyfriend's father who sells them only to recover the cost of keeping them. 

[Emilyngh]

We started raising our own small flock of chickens this year(6), and currently get so many eggs we can hardly eat and give them away.
Plus the birds themselves become like pets, with their own personalities.  Kids love them, and can't wait to check for eggs.

I have found the maintenance and care to be minimal.
Look forward to any other stories from readers, questions, or great ideas on raising your own birds!

We have chickens.   My overall advice is that you are interested in them for a pet: good idea.   If you are interested in them because you care very deeply about knowing the exact conditions your eggs come from: good idea.   If you are interested in saving money, unless you eat a ton of eggs and would otherwise buy only super fancy cage-free organic: bad idea.

We spend about $16 a month on feed for our 8 chickens.   So, if we ate a dozen eggs a week (we get more eggs from our chickens than a dozen a week, but you only save money on what you'd otherwise buy, not extras that we usually give away), we'd have to buy $4 a dozen eggs to break even with just their food.   And we move their fence around, so they basically free-range eat bugs, so confining them more would cost more.  This is not including the startup costs (about $400 for us for their housing and fencing), costs of dealing with any issues (eg ours peck feathers and we give them a protein supplement to try to help) or other unexpected issues/costs.   And ours are currently laying, we'll have several years at the end of their lives when they no longer lay but need to be fed and cared for.

Plus, they're one more thing to worry about caring for everyday, arranging care for when on vacation, etc.

IME chickens are a good example of several things that I romanticized about a "simple" life that actually turned out to complicate, rather than simplify, our lives.    With that said, there's a part of me who gets a little joy every time I look out and chickens in our yard, and I think it's a fun part of DD's life.   But, I do not think we'll be getting more chickens as these age.

[YK-Phil]

There are many alternatives to commercial chicken (and other livestock) feed for the homesteader, such as weeds (duckweed, dandelion, etc), grass and ryegrass, leftover or unuseable plants from your garden, wheat sprout, buckwheat, chickpeas, etc., unsellable vegetable and fruits from your local grocer or small farmer next door, apple trees, dogwood, cherry, and rasberries, pulp from your local veggie/fruit juice bar, bugs and worms from the compost pile, etc. and whatever other edible plants grow in your area. You may not find enough to feed our entire coop entirely out of your harvest, but it will definetely and significantly cut on your feed cost.

[Indio]

I have chickens, ducks and turkeys. They don't save me money, but I know what they are eating. It is important to me to feed my family organic, healthy food. To save money on feed, I grow sunflowers and amaranth to supplement their winter diet. I used to get leftover veggies that stores couldn't sell as fowl feed, but the stores decided it was easier to compost than put it aside.  My neighbors give me all of their compost scraps because the turkeys eat more like pigs than birds, but I will be eating one of those turkeys in a few weeks. In Spring I raise chickens just for meat. They taste so much better than buying the organic roaster that might cost $30.

[rocklebock]

We had urban chickens for a while. The eggs were the best and they're pleasant little creatures, but per emilyngh, there's no way it was a money-saver and it was one more thing to fuss over. We also found that the chicken coop attracted rats, and raccoons love to kill/maim chickens for fun - everyone I know who's had chickens in our area has lost some to raccoons. Jerks. Anyway, we ended up giving them away to some folks who have a proper gentleman's farm.

[GuitarStv]

As long as you're comfortable caring for the chickens for the many years they will not produce any eggs, or slaughtering them at that point I see no problem with this.

[Cromacster]

We started raising our own small flock of chickens this year(6), and currently get so many eggs we can hardly eat and give them away.
Plus the birds themselves become like pets, with their own personalities.  Kids love them, and can't wait to check for eggs.

I have found the maintenance and care to be minimal.
Look forward to any other stories from readers, questions, or great ideas on raising your own birds!

We have chickens.   My overall advice is that you are interested in them for a pet: good idea.   If you are interested in them because you care very deeply about knowing the exact conditions your eggs come from: good idea.   If you are interested in saving money, unless you eat a ton of eggs and would otherwise buy only super fancy cage-free organic: bad idea.

We spend about $16 a month on feed for our 8 chickens.   So, if we ate a dozen eggs a week (we get more eggs from our chickens than a dozen a week, but you only save money on what you'd otherwise buy, not extras that we usually give away), we'd have to buy $4 a dozen eggs to break even with just their food.   And we move their fence around, so they basically free-range eat bugs, so confining them more would cost more.  This is not including the startup costs (about $400 for us for their housing and fencing), costs of dealing with any issues (eg ours peck feathers and we give them a protein supplement to try to help) or other unexpected issues/costs.   And ours are currently laying, we'll have several years at the end of their lives when they no longer lay but need to be fed and cared for.

Soup?

Yea, isn't this the point where you eat them?

Some of the best chicken I have eaten were my brother's chickens that were kept in his back yard.  Even all the hip free range organic grass fed paleo gmo free store bought chicken, and surprisingly even chickens bought directly from a free range farmer did not compare to my brothers chicken which was butchered and cooked the same day.

[Emilyngh]

We started raising our own small flock of chickens this year(6), and currently get so many eggs we can hardly eat and give them away.
Plus the birds themselves become like pets, with their own personalities.  Kids love them, and can't wait to check for eggs.

I have found the maintenance and care to be minimal.
Look forward to any other stories from readers, questions, or great ideas on raising your own birds!

We have chickens.   My overall advice is that you are interested in them for a pet: good idea.   If you are interested in them because you care very deeply about knowing the exact conditions your eggs come from: good idea.   If you are interested in saving money, unless you eat a ton of eggs and would otherwise buy only super fancy cage-free organic: bad idea.

We spend about $16 a month on feed for our 8 chickens.   So, if we ate a dozen eggs a week (we get more eggs from our chickens than a dozen a week, but you only save money on what you'd otherwise buy, not extras that we usually give away), we'd have to buy $4 a dozen eggs to break even with just their food.   And we move their fence around, so they basically free-range eat bugs, so confining them more would cost more.  This is not including the startup costs (about $400 for us for their housing and fencing), costs of dealing with any issues (eg ours peck feathers and we give them a protein supplement to try to help) or other unexpected issues/costs.   And ours are currently laying, we'll have several years at the end of their lives when they no longer lay but need to be fed and cared for.

Soup?

Yes, this is one way for others to minimize overall costs.   However, IME, since chickens really don't save money compared to cheap eggs in the store, many that do it have pet and/or animal welfare motivations and as such, this really isn't an option for them.   We're vegetarian and very close to vegan other than the eggs, and well, we'll be keeping non-laying pet chickens until they die from old age.

[senecando]

In Madison, you cannot butcher chickens in city limits. So, I guess you either drive them out somewhere (probably not), or keep 'em forever.

[Cromacster]

In Madison, you cannot butcher chickens in city limits. So, I guess you either drive them out somewhere (probably not), or keep 'em forever.

What an odd city ordinance.  This is why people have backyards and garage doors :)

[senecando]

In Madison, you cannot butcher chickens in city limits. So, I guess you either drive them out somewhere (probably not), or keep 'em forever.

What an odd city ordinance.  This is why people have backyards and garage doors :)

For a while you couldn't have chickens at all. I imagine when they starting allowing it, they added the no butchering bit at the same time.

[mrsggrowsveg]

Chickens are definitely a money saver for us.  We raise pigs and the only grain our chickens get is what is leftover from the pigs.  They also roam around our farm and eat bugs.  During the winter we sprout fodder for them to eat since they don't roam much in the cold.  I don't think I could go back to the flavor of grocery store eggs.  We have found a way around the issue with not knowing what to do with older hens.  We hatch out our own eggs every year and then sell the 1.5 year old hens at a premium on CL before their production goes down.  We have repeat customers because our crossbred hens are so hearty and productive.

The hardest part about raising chickens, especially in the country is loosing them.  We have lost entire groups of chickens at once to a predator in their coop.  Coming home to a chicken massacre is absolutely heartbreaking.  Luckily, since we started letting our large dog out a night we haven't lost many to predators.

[Cromacster]

In Madison, you cannot butcher chickens in city limits. So, I guess you either drive them out somewhere (probably not), or keep 'em forever.

What an odd city ordinance.  This is why people have backyards and garage doors :)

For a while you couldn't have chickens at all. I imagine when they starting allowing it, they added the no butchering bit at the same time.

I can more or less understand not allowing them entirely, as most cities have ordinances against having livestock.  I guess the thought of butchering them made some people sad? Or as loophole through the livestock ordinance. 

I find it curious that my city ordinance allows one to own 4 hens, but no roosters.  When they were drafting the ordinance, people were worried about the noise roosters make.  Well guess what, hens still crow.  My brother has only hens and they make a helluva lot of noise (granted he typically has 12-16) and they crow at all hours.

[BooksAreNerdy]

We built the coop from scrap building materials.

Spend about $12/mo on feed for 6 hens.

Get 18-24 eggs a week. We can easily eat 8 eggs in a meal.

We would have to buy 8 dozen eggs a month at $3/dozen to break even. While we have not consistently purchaswd that many eggs in the past, We sure do eat more eggs now than ever before. Seems like a healthy conundrum.

In the past, we had several more hens and we would hard boil the extra eggs and feed them to our meat chickens, which saved on feed for those birds.

They are not pets to us and I've never noticed them to have a personality. They do lay delicious eggs and make good meat. However, I'd much rather have a Cornish cross meat bird than an old hen to eat.

We have hens that lay light brown eggs, dark brown eggs, and blue eggs. The colored eggs are a neat perk you won't see in the grocery store.

[MoneyCat]

Anybody out there just sell their eggs at a farmer's market to hipster Millennials obsessed with cage-free, organic, fair trade, locally-produced (whatever other buzz word) eggs?  You could probably mark them up by 400-500% that way.

[senecando]

Anybody out there just sell their eggs at a farmer's market to hipster Millennials obsessed with cage-free, organic, free trade, locally-produced (whatever other buzz word) eggs?  You could probably mark them up by 400-500% that way.

I think you mean "fair trade".

[OSUBearCub]

I find it curious that my city ordinance allows one to own 4 hens, but no roosters.  When they were drafting the ordinance, people were worried about the noise roosters make.  Well guess what, hens still crow.  My brother has only hens and they make a helluva lot of noise (granted he typically has 12-16) and they crow at all hours.

My mom has a hobby flock of about 36 hens and two beautiful roosters (Goldy and Big Money).  There's a physiological difference between a rooster's crow which is designed to carry for communication purposes and a hen's adapted crow due to lack of roosters.  A really good example of a hen's crow can be found here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1swRJdEtH0#t=39).  It's a lot quieter.  This usually only develops later in life when there are no rosters in the flock.  That said, if you're in a city lot, it may still raise the hackles of your yuppie neighbors a few feet away.

The cost savings can be increased by eating some of the actual hens.  Once they stop laying, the birds do tend to be significantly tougher than we've been raised to expect.  The chicken you get from the grocery is only about 2-6 months old and bred to grow massive, under-exercised muscle. The French solved the tough hen problem centuries ago when they developed coq a vin.  Likewise, an all day simmer in chicken soup is a less fussy way to address the issue.

Rats tend to be an issue of you keep the hens caged for feeding.  If you can let them out and scatter the feed on the ground, it's not nearly as enticing to a rat as a stash in the corner of a dark hen hutch.  Also, the bugs a chicken will peck along with the feed give the yolks a richer flavor and deep yellow hue.  The gravel will add a minor bit of mineral content to help harden the eggshells and aid in the digestive process in the hen's gullet.

***STOP READING IF YOU'RE SQUEEMISH***

This is going to upset some folks but I feel it bears significance on the issue.  Chickens are really easy to kill.  Now, while you may not be permitted to "butcher" a chicken in the city limits, it's really quite neat, tidy, and humane (if you're sure-handed and quick about it) to kill the chicken prior to transporting it to a nearby butchering facility. (Just look online and you'll find the quick 1-2 snap method I'm referencing.)  Mom isn't a fan of plucking and butchering so she puts 2-3 chickens down and then transports them to an Amish lady down the street who plucks and butchers for $5 a hen.

[Hotstreak]

In Madison, you cannot butcher chickens in city limits. So, I guess you either drive them out somewhere (probably not), or keep 'em forever.

Option three, probably the most practical:  Break the law.

[The_path_less_taken]

I have three chicken coops, probably about 30 or so hens right now. Not sure exactly as I think they've contracted Mareks disease, which is very sad...probably from wild birds. Currently losing maybe one a week or so to this disease.

I also have about 16 ducks.

Got them all for the eggs. Started out with organic feed which was insane, switched to regular feed which is still pricey.

Can you make money at it? No. Unless you're a farm, buying grain in bulk, etc. Do NOT get a rooster! I had one I raised from a chick attack me one day: his spur went through a rubber knee high boot, heavy jeans, heavy wool socks...all the way to the bone in my leg. Nasty fuckers, roosters.

But I hadn't eaten store bought eggs for years and just did last week....accck! No flavor! Pale yellow. Tiny.

And those WERE the $6.99 organic free range...OMG what do just regular eggs taste like? So, will probably buy vaccinated chicks this spring.

Westoftown- Chickens require at least 13 hours of light entering their eye in order to produce the hormone necessary for egg production. In winter if you don't leave a light on to provide that, you'll be lucky to get two eggs from 30 hens...in the dead of winter not even that.

If anyone is thinking of getting chickens this site (no affiliation) will be your bible, as it's got everything from how to build your own coop, best breeds for certain production, help with diagnosing diseases etc:
backyardchickens.com

[Gilead1986]

There is a certain reassurance you get from having livestock, it must be a primal thing; probably akin to owning land.  That said, I could buy rabbit meat cheaper than what I raise it for, and less headache of maintenance.  Livestock are like children, they own you.   

[TGod]

We got 6 chickens this summer (4 a bit older and 2 point of lay). We had to pay for them, 10$/chicken, so cost us 60$, we converted a section of a small garden shed into their coop and used materials we had to make a run outside for them. I think the only money we spent was on a sheet of plywood and some hardware wire. It costs us about 15$/month to feed them, plus scraps. We get 4-6 eggs/day. I've started selling a couple of dozen/month for $3.50/dozen so we get a bit of cash back. Generally eggs in our neck of the woods for fresh, farm eggs at a local market are about 4.25$/dozen unless one of neighbours was selling for less but they were always hit and miss. So with what we eat and sell we end up ahead egg cost wise.

We got them so we would have a consistent supply of eggs for eating and baking. I was tired of wanting to bake something and realizing we didn't have any eggs.

When I first got them I though we would end up having some sort of chicken retirement complex, but we've changed our minds. We don't eat mammals or birds, but for my part that is mainly to do with how meat is raised in production farms, and now it is easier to just not eat meat regardless of free-range or hunted meats. My chickens are going to have a good, healthy life, and at the end of their laying life they will be given to my parents to go into the soup pot.

[Westoftown]

Thanks for all the comments!   I agree that this will not be a money making proposition for us.  They require some care, and the money I've spend on the enclosures and coop will never be offset by the free eggs.  Still, I think its a very grounding way to show children where food comes from, we also try to raise our own tomatoes, and other vegetables, herbs, etc. 

And, as the children have named these chickens I'm sure we'll keep them versus eating them when they no longer produce eggs.  They are more like producing pets, but I have been surprised at how fun they've been.  Chickens each have a unique personality.  Ours can free range with us when we're outside - they don't run away, and can be they are tame enough to be picked up and held.

Not for everyone, but its been a good experience for us.  I have an office job and its a nice change to clean the coop, water them, collect eggs, etc. when I get home.  The biggest problem is having someone to care for them when we go out of town.

[Greg]

Having chickens roaming the yard can get messy, but there are other benefits.  They're great at keeping the yard flea and tick free for instance!

I've had layers and raised meat birds as well for years, currently have a layer flock of 12.  We had fewer but were given a few when a friend's flock was being whittled down by a raccoon.  We have an electric fence and so haven't had this problem for a while.  We don't let them roam because they will hide their eggs, dig at the garden and other planting areas, and poop on patios and other walking areas.

No, not a money maker, though you can sell your summer season excess to friends/family for a few bucks.  Can't buy eggs as good anywhere else.  It's pretty good to know you get your eggs from a healthy, happy hen.

[MgoSam]

Absolutely cool concept, I've looked into it and will seriously research it in a few years when I will be in a better situation. The way I imagine I would look at the expenses is to consider that the eggs they will lay will be better than the most expensive eggs at Whole Foods, and then factor in the unquantifiable value of eating the fruits of your labor. Then I would factor in potential to sell some of the eggs to recoup some of the costs, though I may trade them instead for other things. Like beer

[jamal utah]

We have been raising 5 chickens since February and its been a great experience.  We spend about $15 every 1.5 months for feed and get 4 - 5 eggs a day (~3.5 dozen a week).  We eat a lot of eggs (~ 4 -5 a day) and give some to the neighbors.

If you assume that a cheap carton of eggs is $2.50, obviously the free range eggs are more expensive, we are offsetting  more than $400 worth of eggs that would otherwise have been purchased at the store.  Like I said, we eat a lot of eggs.  When we subtract out the cost of the food, we come ahead by $200 a year.

If you don't spend a ton on building your coop this can definitely be an economically advantageous endeavor.

[MooseOutFront]

I want to get a pair, but the thought of one more thing keeping me from being able to be out of town is the tie breaker at the moment.  How many days could you leave them alone?

[jamal utah]

We just left our 5 chickens for 5 days without incident.  When we go out of town we just max out their water and food and have a neighbor pick up the eggs.  My neighbors love the eggs so they are happy to do it.  Takes them about 2 minutes to walk into the back yard and grab the eggs.

[The_path_less_taken]

I want to get a pair, but the thought of one more thing keeping me from being able to be out of town is the tie breaker at the moment.  How many days could you leave them alone?

The biggest factor for their safety is a VERY secure coop: because everything eats chicken. So you'd need a coop/run that had a roof for sure if you were leaving them.

And depending on temp, you could theoretically leave them as long as you wanted. I have a 5 gallon feeder in two of the coops. Good for a week, theoretically although in real life they're messy and scatter the feed around a bit. But if they were hungry enough they'd root around and pick it up. You could leave that and a big pumpkin and they'd be fine. You can get free big buckets (with lids if you want them) at almost any grocery store bakery and make a ton of waterers.

There are no end of people who would be willing to come get your eggs in for you in exchange for some. If you're more the hermit type, consider this: it's illegal throughout most of Europe to refrigerate eggs...because it makes it harder to tell how fresh they are. I regularly eat eggs left out on the counter a week in the summer, maybe two in the winter.

So if temperatures were mild you could eat the eggs left in the coop (assuming it's well built, and ventilated) for a week or more. Or if it were over a week, feed them back to the chickens.

***Note: there's a reason the term "bird brain" is a pejorative. They are not very smart, and somehow manage to get themselves in trouble in even the most secure coops. I had one that apparently stumbled getting off a roost and hooked it's toe in strut...poor thing hung upside down for who knows how long before I came out in the morning. Broke it's toe but survived. I have had one drown in a water bucket so now put stuff to keep them from doing that.

Had a duck (nicknamed "Soup", because I said next time, baby...) who got stuck in a water bucket twice. In the winter. When I was working 18 hour days. If they thrash around like that for hours they rub the oil off their feathers and become water logged and can freeze/drown. I had to blow dry the stupid thing. Twice.

Used up every curse word I know.

[MooseOutFront]

ha!

If I can leave 'em several days at a time no problem then I may be back on board with this.  Could certainly find people to come check on them, but don't want to have to find somebody every time we're gone for a 3 day weekend.  Sounds like that wouldn't be a big issue.

[jamal utah]

ha!

If I can leave 'em several days at a time no problem then I may be back on board with this.  Could certainly find people to come check on them, but don't want to have to find somebody every time we're gone for a 3 day weekend.  Sounds like that wouldn't be a big issue.

Its not, especially if you only plan to have 2.  We get 4 - 5 eggs a day, so unless someone comes by to grab them they will pile up pretty fast.  However, if you are only getting  1-2 eggs a day I would think that you could leave them unattended for 3 - 4 days no problem.

[bye-bye Ms. FancyPants]

We have 6 - Less work then a dog, slightly more work then a cat. And they give back - its a good deal :)

[jengod]

For a family on the edge, home chickens are absolutely not the frugal-est choice. Eggs from Target and Walmart are absolutely going to be your winner if you are looking for lowest protein costs.

In every other way, home chickens provide astonishing value. The combination of general charm (pets-with-benefits interest and "chicken TV" entertainment), food product (unbeatable egg and meat quality), compost service (cf http://www.nwedible.com/2013/02/the-crappy-composters-secret-to-perfect-compost.html), household waste management and educational benefit to children make them a worthy investment indeed.

It costs some money and some time to create a satisfactory home chicken situation, but it is absolutely worth it IF you have the room in your backyard, your schedule and your budget.

[Westoftown]

I have three chicken coops, probably about 30 or so hens right now. Not sure exactly as I think they've contracted Mareks disease, which is very sad...probably from wild birds. Currently losing maybe one a week or so to this disease.

I also have about 16 ducks.

Got them all for the eggs. Started out with organic feed which was insane, switched to regular feed which is still pricey.

Can you make money at it? No. Unless you're a farm, buying grain in bulk, etc. Do NOT get a rooster! I had one I raised from a chick attack me one day: his spur went through a rubber knee high boot, heavy jeans, heavy wool socks...all the way to the bone in my leg. Nasty fuckers, roosters.

But I hadn't eaten store bought eggs for years and just did last week....accck! No flavor! Pale yellow. Tiny.

And those WERE the $6.99 organic free range...OMG what do just regular eggs taste like? So, will probably buy vaccinated chicks this spring.

Westoftown- Chickens require at least 13 hours of light entering their eye in order to produce the hormone necessary for egg production. In winter if you don't leave a light on to provide that, you'll be lucky to get two eggs from 30 hens...in the dead of winter not even that.

If anyone is thinking of getting chickens this site (no affiliation) will be your bible, as it's got everything from how to build your own coop, best breeds for certain production, help with diagnosing diseases etc:
backyardchickens.com

We have 6 hens and they lay on average 2-3 per day.  Some days none, some days 4 or 5.  Even in January in Arkansas.   As far as leaving them alone, 3 days would be ok, but if you're gone a week you'll need someone to get the eggs, water them, etc.

[kpd905]

I think I just need to have one of you chicken people as a neighbor so I can barter for some fresh eggs without any of the responsibility involved.

[anon-e-mouse]

We currently have 2 chickens in an average sized town.
Kids love collecting the eggs and the birds have unique personalities.
Once in awhile, we'll 'bribe' the neighbors with fresh eggs.
They don't mind the sounds since my neighbors are all elderly and most grew up on a farm.
Our chickens are pretty quiet most of the time but get squakey when it's egg layin' time.

For us, it is a very positive experience.

[cdochow]

We've been raising chickens for 4 years now and find them to be a good investment, at least in the Seattle area.  We sell eggs for $6/dozen and have a huge waiting list of customers wanting to buy from us (similar eggs sell for $7 - $9 at the local farmers market).  The customers come directly to our house to pick up the eggs and provide their own egg cartons so our only ongoing costs are feed, grit, oyster shells and bedding material.

We've been tracking every penny spent on the chickens since Jan 1, 2014.  Over the last ~14 months our average cost to produce one egg is 29 cents and slowly decreasing (96% of that is feed costs).  That's roughly a 70% ROI, although the total revenue is not huge since we only have 22 hens.  We could save a lot on feed costs if we went for a cheaper brand but one reason we have so many customers is that we use a high quality corn-free and soy-free feed from Modesto Milling.  We're greatly expanding our garden this year (50+ fruit trees, dozens of berries, hundreds of sunflowers, etc) so hopefully we'll be able to cut purchased feeds cost substantially in the future.

Besides the eggs, and eventually meat, the chickens more than make up for their costs in the services they provide in our garden.  We use them to clear areas in preparation for new garden beds, to clean up existing beds at the end of the season, to dispose of our kitchen scraps, mix our compost pile, control insects, spread wood chips, etc.  Since getting chickens we've been able to downsize our yard waste can and garbage can and reduce our monthly collection fees from the city.

We also think the chickens are extremely entertaining - even after 4 years I still crack up every time they come running at full speed across the yard to get treats.  Our neighbors also love them and we have friends and family swing by often to visit (the neighborhood kids even find and save worms to feed the hens).  This also means that we have multiple people volunteering to be chicken sitters any time we leave town.  We've left the hens alone for 6 days w/o any problems but I feel a lot better when someone checks on them daily.   

Chickens definitely aren't for everyone and it takes some time to get your setup optimized but we've found it to be both enjoyable and profitable.

[BuffaloStache]

...Besides the eggs, and eventually meat, the chickens more than make up for their costs...

I'm very interested in getting chickens of my own and have read a lot about it. Most people tend to think that a ~5 year old laying hen had such low quality meat that it isn't worth it. Do you currently harvest any of your chickens for meat? Or do you simply raise Capons or other chickens specifically for meat?

[jengod]

...Besides the eggs, and eventually meat, the chickens more than make up for their costs...

I'm very interested in getting chickens of my own and have read a lot about it. Most people tend to think that a ~5 year old laying hen had such low quality meat that it isn't worth it. Do you currently harvest any of your chickens for meat? Or do you simply raise Capons or other chickens specifically for meat?

I butchered an old laying hen last year. Meat was tough as nails--we couldn't even get a knife through her, but a day in the crockpot and the meat was fine shredded for tacos and chicken sandwiches. Chickens slow down egg production significantly at a certain point, so for us, occasional butchering is the logical, efficient way to open up spaces in our coop for younger layers.

[Elle 8]

I'm thinking of getting a couple chickens.  Think I'll name them Sam an' Ella.

[Elle 8]

Aw, nobody got the joke?  Sam and Ella, get it?  Salmonella?!

[oldladystache]

Yes, we got it.

[Metric Mouse]

In Madison, you cannot butcher chickens in city limits. So, I guess you either drive them out somewhere (probably not), or keep 'em forever.

What an odd city ordinance.  This is why people have backyards and garage doors :)

For a while you couldn't have chickens at all. I imagine when they starting allowing it, they added the no butchering bit at the same time.

I can more or less understand not allowing them entirely, as most cities have ordinances against having livestock.  I guess the thought of butchering them made some people sad? Or as loophole through the livestock ordinance. 

I find it curious that my city ordinance allows one to own 4 hens, but no roosters.  When they were drafting the ordinance, people were worried about the noise roosters make.  Well guess what, hens still crow.  My brother has only hens and they make a helluva lot of noise (granted he typically has 12-16) and they crow at all hours.

Right? I'd be much sadder having to live next to crowing birds than the slim chance of seeing them butchered over my back fence or in the garage across the street...

[Rotax]

I also have backyard chickens and can testify to your experience. You can also save money on feed by letting them free range a bit. I also found that when I built them a feeder that they could not scratch in, I saved about 25% in feed costs because they didn't waste as much making it last longer.

[TMBear]

We've been raising chickens for 4 years now and find them to be a good investment, at least in the Seattle area.  We sell eggs for $6/dozen and have a huge waiting list of customers wanting to buy from us (similar eggs sell for $7 - $9 at the local farmers market).

Similar story here, though we currently have only 16 chicken + a rooster. We charge $5 per dozen, and I think the break even price for me would be about $3-3.5. People are definitely queueing up for eggs, though I only sell them to my colleagues.
I think the key for profitability is the feed with doing everything yourself being the second (I saw chicken coops up to $1K on craigslist). Chicken themselves can be as time consuming or as self-contained as you want them to be - no matter how much we neglect ours they still look happy and lay eggs. For us it started as a pure hobby with doing as much as possible ourselves - from eggs borrowed from a neighbor that we put into an incubator to selling the eggs and butchering roosters (first batch of chicken will follow them soon).
They were good pets for us, especially for kids (seeing a chick hatching worth all the troubles we got through), but the novelty gradually wears out, especially when we had 20+ birds at some point, now for me they're just farm animals. Earlier we tried to optimize the feeding cost (let them roam, got spent grains from a brewery), now we're trying to cut the time spent (got an automatic chicken coop door, automatic waterer). Some problems are yet to be solved (e.g. with Seattle rains our chicken run became a mud pool).
My advice would be to get just a few chicken and see if chicken math works for you. I wouldn't hope for much profit unless you get a thousand of them (for us with all initial costs settled down I think it's only $20-ish a month), with the traditional approach (buy coop, buy a couple of chicken, buy feed, buy...) you wouldn't get any.

[Rotax]

I like my chickens as pets and for the eggs but sometimes I don't have a ton of time to take care of them. I've got them set up with 40 gallon kids swimming pool for water and 1 bag of feed lasts them about a month with my homemade silo feeder so it's awesome to be able to leave town and know they can survive and thrive happily without me sometimes. My dad adopted the same set up and it really take a lot of the day to day work out of it. Walmart sells the kids pool for like $8 and some people use them to cool their dogs off in the summer.

[The Guru]

We just left our 5 chickens for 5 days without incident. 

You should get a couple more birds; then you could leave town for a week.