Chicken Cost Calculator: Setup, Monthly Running Cost and Cost Per Dozen
Feed is the running cost; the coop is the real cost. Enter your flock and your own prices and this separates the two, then gives the number people actually want: what a dozen eggs costs you.
Two costs that behave completely differently
Ask what chickens cost and you get a monthly feed figure. Ask anyone who has actually built a coop and you get a different answer, because the coop is usually more than the first two years of feed put together.
Those two numbers behave nothing alike. Feed scales with the number of birds and never stops. Setup is paid once and then spreads thinner every month you keep going. Averaging them into a single cost per month hides both.
| Example | Feed | Running cost | Eggs | Running cost per dozen | One-off setup | First-year total | First-year cost per dozen | Bags of feed a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 hens, year-round average | 20.89 $ per month | 28.89 $ per month | 104 per month | 3.32 $ | 636 $ | 983 $ | 9.42 $ | 12 |
| 6 hens, peak lay | 20.09 $ per month | 28.09 $ per month | 143 per month | 2.35 $ | 636 $ | 973 $ | 6.79 $ | 11 |
| 6 hens, short days or moult | 23.30 $ per month | 31.30 $ per month | 39 per month | 9.61 $ | 636 $ | 1,012 $ | 25.87 $ | 13 |
| 3 hens, second-hand coop | 10.45 $ per month | 15.45 $ per month | 52 per month | 3.56 $ | 195 $ | 380 $ | 7.30 $ | 6 |
| 12 hens, year-round average | 41.79 $ per month | 55.79 $ per month | 209 per month | 3.21 $ | 1,272 $ | 1,941 $ | 9.31 $ | 23 |
| Time of year | Feed eaten (lb/day) | Eggs laid (per week) |
|---|---|---|
| peak | 0.25 | 5.50 |
| average | 0.26 | 4 |
| winter | 0.29 | 1.50 |
Intake follows the quarter-pound-a-day figure standard in US and UK extension feeding guidance for a standard-size laying hen (roughly 110-120 g), raised for cold months because birds burn more feed holding body temperature. The lay figures are the widest-varying numbers here and no source gives one answer: a first-year hybrid in spring can beat 6 eggs a week, an older heritage bird averages under 3 across the year, and a hen in full moult lays nothing for weeks. The winter row assumes no supplemental lighting. Note the direction of the two columns in that row - feed goes UP while eggs go DOWN. That is the whole reason winter eggs are expensive, and it is the part cost articles usually leave out.
Assumptions and limits
- Every price here is yours to enter, because none of them are stable. Feed prices move with grain markets, and a coop is anything from a free pallet build to four figures.
- The lay rate is the biggest source of error in any flock budget, not the feed price. A hen laying 5 a week versus 2 a week changes the cost per dozen more than doubling the price of feed does.
- Running cost covers feed, bedding and grit. It does not cover vet care, mite treatment, replacement waterers, fencing repairs after a predator visit, or the value of your time.
- Hens do not lay forever. Production drops noticeably after the second or third year while feed intake does not, so a flock kept for eggs alone needs replacements budgeted every few years.
- The first-year figure spreads setup over twelve months. Spread the same coop over five years and the per-dozen number falls a long way, which is the honest way to look at a coop you intend to keep.
Why winter eggs cost several times what summer eggs cost
Switch the season selector and watch the two columns of the table move in opposite directions. Birds eat more in cold weather - they are burning feed to hold body temperature - while short days and the annual moult cut laying to a fraction of the summer rate.
The result is not a small seasonal wobble. The same flock, the same feed bill give or take, produces roughly a quarter of the eggs. That is where the winter cost per dozen comes from, and it is why a flock that looks cheap in June looks like an expensive hobby in December.
Supplemental lighting is the usual answer, and it does work, but it moves the problem rather than removing it: a hen carries a finite number of ova, and a bird pushed through winter tends to finish her laying life sooner.
What the per-dozen number is actually telling you
The running cost per dozen is the fair comparison against a shelf price, because by then the coop is a sunk cost. For most backyard flocks it lands somewhere near ordinary supermarket eggs and comfortably under pasture-raised organic ones.
The first-year figure is the one that surprises people. Include the coop and year one is rarely under two or three times the shelf price, whatever the flock size. That is not an argument against keeping chickens; it is an argument against justifying them on price. The reasons that hold up are the ones money cannot buy at a supermarket: eggs traceable to a bird you can see, birds that turn kitchen scraps and bedding into garden compost, and knowing exactly how they were kept.
Where flock size does and does not help
Feed, bedding and eggs all scale almost perfectly with bird count, so the running cost per dozen barely moves whether you keep three hens or twelve. The saving from a bigger flock is entirely in the setup: one coop, one waterer, one run fence, spread over more birds.
Which is why getting a couple more is cheap and getting chickens is not. Adding two hens to an existing six-bird setup costs the price of the birds and their feed. Starting from nothing costs the coop.