Feeding Chickens – How Much Does it Cost to Feed Chickens?

The cost to feed chickens will be one of the main costs associated with raising chickens.

Many people want chickens in order to have fresh eggs, but in order to know if it it worth raising chickens you should find out what the cost to feed chickens is.

Although the cost to feed chickens will vary based on what you are feeding your chickens as well as a few other factors which we will discuss, you should be able to come up with a ballpark figure.

Feeding Chickens – Type of Feed

First, you will need to decide what type of feed you will be feeding your chickens.  The cost of feed for chickens can vary quite a lot based on if you are feeding regular chicken feed or a non-GMO organic chicken feed.

In general, you can get a 50 pound bag of regular chicken feed for about $12 – $15.  Non-GMO organic chicken feed will run you about $30 per bag for 50 pounds.

So, you can see that feeding chickens organically will about double your cost of feed.

Amount of Feed per chicken per day

A standard sized chicken will consume about 1/4 (or .25) of a pound of dry chicken feed per day.  This amount is for fully grown chickens.

Younger chicks will obviously eat less as they are smaller.

Of course, if you free-range or feed fermented feed you may end up feeding your chickens less each day.

But for our purposed we will use the 1/4 of a pound estimate.

So, what is the Cost to Feed Chickens?

If you are feeding your chickens regular chicken feed, the cost to feed your chickens will be about 7 – 8 cents per day.

The way to figure this out is to find the cost per pound of feed ($15/50lbs).  Regular feed costs about .30 cents per pound.

Next, figure out how many pounds of feed a chicken will eat per month.

To do this take .25 (amount per day) and multiply by days in the month (30).  This tells you a chicken will eat about 7.5 pounds of feed per month.

Your chickens need something to eat from. How about a DIY chicken feeder?

Next, find out the cost to feed a chicken per month.

You can do this by multiplying pounds of feed per month (7.5) by cost of feed per pound (.30).

This tells you that the cost to feed a chicken for one month is about $2.25.  You can then divide that by 30 to find out the cost per day.

If you are feeding chickens organic feed, the cost will be about double this.  The cost to feed your chickens per day will be about .15 cents.

Organic feed costs about .60 cents per pound.  You’ll still be feeding your chickens 7.5 pounds of feed per chicken per month.

So, the cost to feed a chicken per month on organic feed is $4.50.  

Here are a few more ways to cut down on your chicken feed cost.

So, how much will my entire flock cost to feed?

To find out how much it will cost to feed your entire flock of chickens, you can just multiply the cost per month (or per day) by the number of chickens you have (or intend to have).

There are also always ways to cut your chicken feed cost, that way you can reduce your feed bill (or add some extra chickens 😉 )

We also like to give your girls some treats from time to time.  We like these flock blocks.  We also give our girls scraps out of the garden 🙂

Want to learn more about chickens?