Since I was a young boy, I have always wanted to have a farm, even though I have no farming experience or family involvement in farming. Four years ago, nearing retirement, I knew that I was reaching the point of no return: either do it now or it would be too late. So, while most yof my friends were contemplating moving to the Southwest or taking up more golf, my wife and I bought seven acres just north of Denver and I began to farm. I learned by doing and by keeping my eyes and ears open. I read a lot. I visited other farms. Immediately I realized I wanted to raise food as naturally as possible. Why put all that effort of morning and evening chores and daytime work into an inferior product?

I also loved giving farm tours to anyone who was interested in coming out to the farm. It seemed a novelty to my friends as well as to me to be doing something so fundamental and yet out of keeping with my business and academic background. Quickly my thinking evolved into more serious consideration of my role as a husband of the soil, plants, and animals on the farm and then onto Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, and Michael Pollan-type thoughts of principles of sustainability. I gave a few talks to local groups and my thinking evolved further.

Keeping Track Of The Costs

There is a huge disconnect between our food and food supply and what we need as healthy people, and it has all occurred in just the last half century. It is so alarming that I feel compelled to share my experience. From the beginning I kept detailed spreadsheets on all farm activities, the most extensive being my data on producing eggs, the product I started with four years ago. I begin with an overview of our farm and an account of the cost of production and then move to the implications for our future.

All Happy Farm practices promote healthy soil, plants, and animals. Livestock (sheep and goats) live entirely on pasture grazing and are rotated among fields frequently. Pigs and chickens are also rotated from field to field every few weeks. All animals are heirloom varieties. The chickens forage on green fields, eat organic feed and get plenty of exercise. The egg yolks are Halloween orange, due to the high carotene content from the hens eating greens. Salt and pepper are an affront to both the hen who laid the egg (I presume) and one’s taste buds.

The Cost of Pastured Eggs

I generally have 75 to 100 hens. I buy cohorts of day-old chicks. I keep the hens in groups of 15, 25 or 30 per yard or coop to prevent the confusion and fighting that tends to occur among larger groups. Predators are a major problem upon which I will elaborate later. I use portable corrals and mobile tractors so that the chickens are safe and have fresh, green forage whenever the season allows. I buy supplemental feed in bulk (a ton at a time) which is corn-free, soy-free and organic. No antibiotics, pesticides, or synthetics are used for any plant or animal.

The cost categories for my calculation are the following: the chicken, shelter, mobile tractor, feed, utilities, labor, packaging, transportation, land, and supplies. For all items the calculated cost is associated with a dozen eggs. For capital items, the costs are amortized over the anticipated usable life of the property and adjusted for the number of eggs originating from that item. I deliberately used conservative numbers to build a stronger case.

The Chicken

Buying 25- or 50-day-old chicks through a commercial house costs about $3.20 per chick. As the chick must be raised for six months before it lays its first egg, feed costs for the first six months are part of the cost of acquiring an egg-laying hen. Although a small chicken eats less than an adult chicken, the protein content and, thus, cost per pound, is higher. I calculate 20 pounds at 54¢/pound for a feed cost of $10.80, a conservative estimate. So, the cost of the chicken is now $3.20 plus $10.80 for a total of $14.

Not all chicks survive to adulthood. Mortality depends upon lots of things and the mortality rate of my chickens is higher than average because of my initial inexperience and ignorance. For the calculations here, I use a standard ten percent mortality rate due to suffocation, fragility and genetic flaws, which brings the cost to $15.40.

Estimating egg laying rates is difficult, and rates vary according to weather conditions and seasons and bird variety. Commercial bird breeding houses advertise chicken varieties yielding 200, 230 and even 250 eggs a year, but none of my purchases have given such stellar results. In the summer, absent extreme heat, my best egglayers, Leghorn hens, produce two eggs every three days. Barred Rock lay one egg every other day. Buff Orpingtons lay an egg every three days. Other varieties yield similar rates. Hot weather, cold weather, changing the membership of the group of birds living together or moving them to an unfamiliar setting are examples of stressful situations for them that will reduce egg laying. As the days get shorter and colder, production drops drastically to as low as a third of summer yield.

One winter I used lighting for a few hours a day and kept egg production from falling below 50 percent of summer production. Using lighting more extensively would keep production up even more. The industry standard for “natural” lighting conditions requires at least six hours of darkness. I have yet to find a farmer who does not use lights for at least some of the night, but it is not natural. Chickens need a rest from laying and need to conserve vitality while molting. If there ever were a case for seasonal pricing, natural chicken eggs would be the perfect choice. Food costs go up during the winter because there is no forage and because the birds need more energy to stay warm. This happens at the same time that egg laying diminishes drastically. Yet I have never observed any seasonal fluctuation in egg prices.