How Much Does It Cost to Keep 6 Hens for a Year?

“Free eggs” is the joke every chicken keeper hears, usually while carrying a bag of feed that was not free at all. So what does a small flock actually cost to run for a year — and what does that make each egg worth?

This guide answers with the most common backyard setup: 6 laying hens. It uses the same figures as the FlockCalc calculators throughout. A laying hen eats about 0.25 lb of feed a day, which is about 7.5 lb a month. The worked example prices feed at $25 for a 40 lb bag and uses a laying rate of 5 eggs per hen per week. Change those two inputs for your own prices and breeds and the method stays exactly the same.

Feed is the running cost. Everything else — bedding, grit, oyster shell, treats, the occasional replacement hen — matters, but feed is usually 70–80% of the running cost. Get the feed maths right and your yearly estimate will be close.

The planning figure is steady across feed companies and extension guides: a laying hen in lay eats about 0.25 lb (roughly 110 g) of layer feed per day. That is about 1.75 lb a week and 7.5 lb a month, per hen.

For 6 hens, multiply up:

• Per day: 6 × 0.25 lb = 1.5 lb
• Per month: 6 × 7.5 lb = 45 lb
• Per year: 45 × 12 = 540 lb

That yearly figure surprises people, but spread over 365 days it is just that same 1.5 lb a day, whether the hens lay well that week or not. Hens eat roughly the same amount all year — it is the eggs that vary, which is why your cost per egg moves with the seasons.

For comparison, younger birds eat less. The feed rates used in the Chicken Feed Calculator are about 0.08 lb a day for chicks up to 6 weeks and about 0.16 lb a day for growers from 7 to 17 weeks, before they reach the layer rate at 18 weeks and over. If you raise your hens from chicks, your first-year feed bill will be a little lower — but you will also get no eggs until they come into lay, so most keepers budget on the layer figures.

Here is the complete calculation, step by step, using the default prices from the calculator so you can check it against your own feed store.

Step 1 — Feed used. 6 hens × 7.5 lb per month = 45 lb per month. Over 12 months that is 540 lb.

Step 2 — Bags needed. Bags are 40 lb in this example, so 540 ÷ 40 = 13.5 bags per year. In practice you will buy 14 bags and end the year with a part bag in the bin — a good problem to have.

Step 3 — Feed cost. 13.5 bags × $25 = $337.50 per year, or $28.13 per month. That monthly figure is the one the calculator shows: 45 lb of feed priced from a $25 / 40 lb bag is $28.13.

Step 4 — Eggs collected. At 5 eggs per hen per week: 6 × 5 = 30 eggs per week, about 130 eggs per month, and 30 × 52 = 1,560 eggs per year. That is 130 dozen.

Step 5 — Cost per egg. $28.13 a month ÷ about 130 eggs a month = about $0.22 per egg, which is $2.60 per dozen, feed only.

So the headline answer is: keeping 6 hens costs about $337.50 a year in feed at these prices, and produces eggs at about $2.60 a dozen before you count any extras. Against a $4 store dozen, that is the comparison the calculator makes — and it is an honest one only if you also think about the extras in the next section.

Run your own bag price and laying rate through the Cost Per Egg Calculator and you will get your version of every figure above in one go, per egg and per dozen.

Feed only is a useful baseline, but it is not the whole bill. The calculator has an optional monthly costs field precisely for this: bedding, grit, oyster shell, and treats make up most of the rest of the running cost, along with the occasional replacement hen.

The clean way to handle these is to add what you actually spend as a monthly extra, because bedding use depends on your coop system and treats depend on your self-control. For example, $10 a month of extras makes your total $38.13 a month, about $457.50 a year, and lifts your cost per dozen from $2.60 to about $3.52 at the same laying rate. Small monthly extras move your cost per dozen a lot, because they are divided by the same eggs.

One-off setup costs — the coop, fencing, feeders and drinkers — are deliberately not included in the calculator. Spread over years of eggs, they add a few cents per egg, but in your first year they will dwarf the feed bill. That is normal, and it is why honest keepers separate “what the flock costs to set up” from “what the flock costs to run.” This article is about the running cost.

Look at the cost table on the calculator page and you will notice something odd: whether you keep 2 hens or 20, the cost per dozen stays flat at the same feed price and laying rate. Feed and eggs both scale with flock size, so they cancel out. What actually moves your cost per egg is the feed price and the laying rate — not the number of hens.

The laying-rate presets used in the Egg Production Calculator show how wide that swing is:

• High producers — hybrid layers and Leghorns — average about 5.5 eggs per week.
• Standard layers — most backyard breeds — average about 4.5 eggs per week.
• Heritage and dual-purpose breeds average about 3.5 eggs per week.

Take the same 6 hens and $28.13 monthly feed bill, and drop the rate from 5 eggs a week to the standard 4.5: monthly eggs fall from about 130 to about 117, and cost per dozen rises from $2.60 to about $2.89. At the heritage rate of 3.5, you collect about 91 eggs a month and each dozen costs about $3.71. Breed choice is a bigger lever on your egg price than flock size ever will be.

It also changes through the year. Hens eat roughly the same in winter but lay fewer eggs then and during moulting, so cost per egg rises in those months and falls in spring. Use a realistic yearly average — 4 to 5 eggs a week for most breeds — rather than a spring peak, or you will budget for eggs that never arrive.

You cannot negotiate with a hen’s appetite, but the calculator’s guidance points to where savings actually live:

• Buy feed in larger bags or on offer. The bag price is one of only two numbers that move your cost per egg, so a cheaper bag is a direct saving on every egg.
• Store feed dry and rodent-proof, and cut waste. Feed that spills, gets wet, or feeds the local mice is feed you paid for that made no eggs. Raised feeders and sealed storage are usually the single biggest saving available.
• Choose productive breeds if cheap eggs are the goal — or accept the higher per-dozen figure as the fair price of keeping heritage birds you enjoy. Both are legitimate; just know which one you are doing.
• Keep hens through their best laying years, knowing a young flock’s feed bill arrives before its eggs do.

What will not help is adding more hens to spread costs. The per-dozen figure does not fall with flock size: more hens means more eggs at the same unit cost — great if your household eats them, a false economy if it does not.

Six hens eat 540 lb of feed a year. At $25 for a 40 lb bag, that is about $337.50 a year, producing about 1,560 eggs at 5 eggs per hen per week — roughly $2.60 a dozen before extras. Add your extras honestly, use your real bag price, and pick a realistic laying rate. Then check your version in the Cost Per Egg Calculator — under a minute, and it beats finding out from your feed receipts in December.