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Assumes about 120g of feed per hen per day and 250 eggs per hen per year (falling with age and in winter), plus roughly GBP 80 a year for bedding, grit and worming across a small flock. Coop, run and fox-proofing are the real up-front cost. Registering flocks and avian flu housing orders: check current GOV.UK poultry rules.
What The Chicken Keeping Cost Calculator Works Out
- Feed cost per year: hens x 120g a day x 365, divided into 20kg bags at your price. Four hens eat about 175kg of layers pellets a year, nine bags, roughly GBP 125. Kitchen scraps are legally restricted (catering waste may not be fed to poultry in the UK) and treats dilute the calcium and protein the eggs need.
- Eggs per year: hens x 250, a first-year average for hybrid layers, valued at the shop price you would otherwise pay. Four hens in their prime lay near a thousand eggs, worth around GBP 300 at free-range prices.
- Running total vs egg value: egg value minus feed and GBP 80 of bedding, grit and worming, plus the cost per egg. The running ledger usually favours the hens; the purchase ledger is another matter.
- Feed per hen and eggs per hen (advanced): the two rules of thumb the simple mode hard-codes. Bantams eat 80 to 100g; large breeds 150g. Point-of-lay hybrids approach an egg a day; pure breeds often manage 150 to 200 a year.
- Sundries (advanced): edit the GBP 80 a year for bedding, grit, worming and the odd red-mite treatment; a bigger flock or a deep-litter run will cost more.
- Coop, run, hens and years to spread (advanced): a decent coop, a fox-resistant run and the birds commonly cost GBP 300 to GBP 800 up front. Spreading that over five years turns it into an annual charge so the all-in cost is honest.
- Hen-sitter (advanced): holidays need someone to let the hens out and shut them in, the running cost no calculator usually prices. Enter the days a year and a daily rate.
- All-in cost per year and true cost per dozen (advanced): feed, sundries, hen-sitting and the amortised setup, divided by the eggs, compared with the shop price. Home eggs are cheap only after the capital is forgotten, which every keeper cheerfully does.
- Payback (advanced): how long the running surplus takes to repay the coop, run and hens, or a warning that it never does at these figures.
- Year-by-year table (advanced): laying falls with each moult and each winter (light drives laying), so the table scales eggs to 85% in year two, 70% in year three and down to 30% by year six while feed stays flat, with the cumulative position after the setup cost. Hens live on for years past their productive peak as pets with a pension. All poultry keepers in Great Britain must now register their birds, even a garden trio, and housing orders during avian flu outbreaks legally confine flocks under cover.
Source and further reading: GOV.UK: poultry registration and avian flu rules.