I have done some calculations about how much I pay for chicken food vs how much I earn from selling eggs, and it seems that I have about 50% profit. I earn double the amount I pay for food.
I dont have free range chickens, because free range chickens lay eggs all over the place which causes eggs to be lost. Also, free range chickens are lost to predators.
My chickens are in fenced area, and predators cannot get to them.
Now, what do I feed them with?
Some bought chicken feed, some corn and wheat.
However, I reduced those by feeding chickens natural food.
After rain, I collect slugs and feed it to chickens. They love slugs.
I also feed chickens with raspberries and strawberries which happen to grow for free on my land. Now, I was thinking to sell raspberries to buy chicken food, but I figured my chickens deserve some raspberries.
I also plant peas, which I sell to buy chicken food. Its much more cost effective than growing corn.
But what really reduced the cost of food is grass and weeds.
I let grass on my land grow tall. Eventually, it produces seeds. So I collect seeds and feed it to chickens.
I also mow grass and weeds and give it to chickens. Its easy work. It takes about 3 minutes to mow enough grass for 20 chickens when you use scythe.
The hardest work is picking grass seeds by hand, because you have to pull them from grass. But you can, instead, mow grass together with seeds, which is much faster but chickens are a bit less interested in grass seeds when they are still attached to grass.
So yeah, I guess its because of this that my profit rate is 50%.
Chickens gain calcium from grass and weeds like dandelion and stinging nettle, they gain protein from grass seeds and from slugs and earthworms.
