There was the starter feed, the bedding sawdust, the heat lamp, straw, thermometer, feed bowl, water bowl, medicine to keep 'em from getting sick and on and on... We finally got out out of there with my wallet lighter by 80 dollars! Hummm.... got to lay a lot of eggs girls to make up for that, chickies, LOL!
Then there was having to build a chicken tractor to house them. Look.... I'm gonna make a long story short and just say I built one and it cost about six hundred dollars or so all told. If you add that to the other 80 dollars you come amazingly close to 100 dollars per chicken. :-O
Now.... These girls can lay about 25 dozen eggs a year (each) so... with the price of free range egg between 1.50 to 3.00 per dozen we'll just say we count 2.00 per dozen and so the hens will give us their cost back in two years. Now I haven't counted the ongoing cost of feed here but by now... you get my point. This is not a solid investment where yo will make or even save money on eggs!
Knowing all this now, would I still do it? Absolutely for a lot of reasons.
First, I enjoyed the whole process from hand raising the tiny chicks for six weeks in a cardboard box in the living room, watching the dogs and our cat get to know them.
Second: I got to build a chicken Tractor and although we are on a budget I managed to build a pretty good one.
One of the innovations I made with this project was a wheel lift system to make it easy to move this somewhat bulky tractor. (pictured below)
Another innovation is the water system.
It can get pretty cold here in North Carolina in the winter so I installed a 2.5 gallon water tank made of 4" PVC pipe in the upper section of the tractor. (see picture below)
The PVC tank has heat tape wrapped around it and when plugged in to 120 VAC it turns on at 35 deg F and off at 45 deg F. This will give enough residual heat to the upper section to keep the chickens warm and the water from freezing in really cold weather.
Hope you like it!
Good job, but you neglected to mention our "dumpster diving" every two weeks in order to up size their living quarters!!
ReplyDeleteHi, I found you online while building my own chicken tractor. Mine is going to have to be parked somewhere instead because of weight and door placement... Next time, I will make one like yours. I have to laugh about your cost comments and having chicks in the home to meet dogs and cats - we are doing the same thing! I love these little chicks!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post, including the engineering diagrams for the tractor lift system. It took me a while staring at the diagrams, before I realized that my issue was that the pivot point needs to be higher than the wheel axle when the wheels are down and the tractor is raised, and the pivot point needs to be lower than the wheel axle when the wheels are up and the tractor is on the ground.
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