Cost Breakdown for Setting up Backyard Chickens {+ TOUR My New Chicken Coop!}
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My red headed baby Daniel and I getting a peek in our new chicken coop.
(Yes, he’s a red head! The first one out of seven.)
I’m talking a lot of chicken lately since we received our mail order baby chicks. For several years I’ve wanted to get back into raising chickens and enjoying farm fresh eggs and this was finally the year. As I’ve shared pictures of our chicken adventures on Instagram, several readers have asked me for a cost breakdown for raising chickens.
In fact, just the other day on the Jamerrill Stewart Community Facebook page a reading friend asked, “I’d like to know your start-up cost with getting your chickens settled, Jamerrill. If you don’t mind my asking, I’d be interested to know how much it takes to get it going.”
We spent Saturday working on the new chicken coop and yard. ? Hopefully the chickens like it!
My Cost Breakdown to Set Up Backyard Chickens
So this is where some ladies will go cross-eyed, because you know, there are so many ways to get chickens set up cheaper than I have done. We’re going to go over inexpensive ways to set up backyard chickens in a few minutes. In classic Jamerrill style, I traded any hope of keeping the chickens an inexpensive project for the reality of actually accomplishing the goal with the limited time and energy I have in my current season.
Chicken Set Up Costs
From the beginning
Mail Order Baby Chicks $87 – this was a really neat experience that I share in this video. We ordered the 6 Rhode Island Reds and 6 Barred Rocks from MyPetChicken.com. They shipped the chicks out the day they were born and we had them within 24 hours!
Baby Chick Care and Set Up $150 – we had two large containers that we shuffled the baby chicks back and forth in. We raised them in our upstairs bathroom for about the first two weeks. The weather started to get really nice after that and we moved them to an outdoor cage, where despite one heavy rain storm, they have stayed. When we first set them up they needed a heat lamp, Flip Top Poultry Feeder, Plastic Poultry Complete Waterer, and Chick Starter Feed.
You can order a Baby Chick Starter Home Kit
There’s also these neat baby chick brooders available.
10×10 Chicken Coop $1800 – this is where raising chickens and getting farm fresh eggs can suddenly become an investment. I looked at several chicken coops online including the 12FT Wood Chicken Coop, Barn Chicken Coop, and the Extreme Hen House Chicken Coop. All of these coops were very cute. Several of them only advertised to fit 4-10 chickens. I wanted to start with anywhere from 12-18 hens. I ended up going into a local builder and having my chicken coop built. Included in the cost of the chicken coop was free delivery and setup. I also got to pick the colors, which is half the fun. I felt like it was a quality product that I could use for our chickens for many, many, years to come.
Gabriel, Liam, and Amelia, playing in the chicken coop!
Fencing and supplies to make a giant chicken yard $800+ – Part of the trouble I had with my flock of chickens five years ago was I couldn’t keep them properly contained. I loved to let them free range through the field. They willingly came into their yard and coop area in the evening. However, I didn’t have a roof on their yard and couldn’t figure out how to do so at the time. I was always chasing chickens (I was also pregnant with baby#5, Liam Joseph, at that time).
This go-round with chickens I wanted to have a fully caged yard with a wire roof. Daily free ranging is great, but this way when I want to put the chickens up, they will stay put up. I bought two 10×10 dog kennels, which made a huge 20×20 caged area. My husband and older sons ran wire across the top. My husband also bent and added additional conduit to the roof to keep the wire from sagging.
Additional chicken expenses $87 – Now that the hens are getting ready to move into their “Chicken Palace” as my husband calls it 😉 I purchased a Large Capacity Automatic Waterer, and a Hanging Metal Poultry Feeder. I’ve also begun feeding them Chicken Finisher food and adding in treats of dried mealworms.
How YOU can set up your chickens so much CHEAPER!
Now that I just shared my current cost breakdown for setting up our new flock of backyard chickens, let me encourage you. You don’t have to spend $3,000 to get your chickens set up. There will most likely be a several hundred dollar cost depending on just how frugal you want and need to be. Here are some tips to get your chickens set up for as low cost as possible.
Craigslist, Freecycle, and Facebook
When I had my first flock of chickens about 5 years ago, I bought the entire set-up for around $175. That included a nicely made homemade chicken coop (the couple we bought it from made the chicken coop out of wooden pallets), chicken feeders, metal wire fencing with metal stakes, and 35 chickens. I found this chicken deal through a Facebook post from a couple who was moving to a new rental that didn’t allow chickens. A year or so later, when my blogging started to become a business, I turned to Freecycle to give away most of my chicken flock. If you’re looking to save a ton, and have some time to work social media sites and local savings lists, you might find chickens for super cheap or even free!
Build Your Own Chicken Coop
Just like the couple mentioned above, you can build a fun chicken coop out of wooden pallets. You can also read books such as Building Chicken Coops For Dummies, DIY Chicken Coops: The Complete Guide To Building Your Own Chicken Coop, and How to Build Chicken Coops.
WATCH THE VIDEO TOUR + Setup of My New Chicken Coop & Chicken Yard
Click here to watch the video tour of our chicken coop setup!
Share how you’ve set up your chicken coop in the comments below!
