When it comes to raising your own meat birds to stock our freezer, I often get asked if it is worth it or not. The answer for my family is a resounding YES but that isn’t the answer for everyone. Read on to find out why we think it is worth raising your own chickens for meat and then decide for yourself.
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“I don’t know how you do it”
We hear this A LOT. We aren’t sure if we hear it more from our age of folks (late 30s) or from our parents’ generation (who were raised DOING THIS!!).
My husband is a hunter. Not for sport but for meat. He doesn’t hunt anything that we can’t put in the freezer and on our dinner table.
Raising our own dinner in our backyard is the next best thing to hunting it. It’s guaranteed food! It’s a few weeks growing it out then a few hours loading the freezer.
In short: it’s worth it to us.
First things, first… what does “worth it” mean to YOU?
Are you thinking about the price of birds, materials, feed, etc. to raise your own chickens?
Or are you considering the cost of your time freedom to raise them?
Perhaps you’re wondering if the time and mess to process a bird is worth it?
What does “worth it” mean to you and your family? Below, I’ll explain what it means to ours and you decide if that resonates with you and your family’s values or not.
Here are the reasons we believe it is worth raising your own chickens for meat:
1. Quality Control
When it comes to raising your own chickens for meat in your own backyard, you have complete control over the process.
- You get to choose their feed (organic, non-GMO, soy-free, etc).
- You get to choose their living arrangements (pasture-raised in a tractor, confined to a chicken run, free ranged in an enclosed pasture, etc).
- You get to choose the breed (cornish cross, red ranger, dual purpose laying hens, etc).
- Or any combination of these options!
2. Food Security
Raising your own meat birds, provided you have a reputable hatchery to shop from, means you can provide your family with protein. We choose Dahline Poultry.
It means you can keep your freezer or pantry full at all times.
This means if a time comes when you can’t get to a grocery store or they are out of stock of what meats you need, you have the skills and means to process your own chickens for nourishment.
3. Price Per Pound
Granted, I haven’t purchased a whole roaster chicken from the grocery store in over a year. However; the last time I purchased an organic chicken from a grocery store chain, it was $15 for a 3.5 pound bird. If you’re mathing, that’s $4.28 per pound. That purchase was also in early 2023. As we well know, at the writing of this blog post in June 2024, inflation is real and has hit hard. Some prices are beginning to drop some but not much.
That chicken was also not marked as pasture raised. It very well could have been locked into extremely close (and poopy) quarters with other chickens BUT FED organic feed.
May 2024 was our third round of meat birds in one year. We are doing a spring and a fall set to stock our freezers. Some people choose to fill their freezers one time a year with a larger flock to raise and process at once.
This last round I kept up with feed costs better. We did not have to purchase much else this round save for a bag of wood chips and 2 new waterers because the winter ice broke a few.
Cost breakdown for raising meat birds
Not including those costs into these figures– just birds and feed. We were able to raise this round of birds for this:
- Cost of birds plus their shipping fee: $87.58 for 30 birds, 31 were sent, 2 were lost, 29 total birds dressed on processing day.
- Cost of feed plus taxes: $231.86
- Grand total cost: $319.44 for 170.95 pounds of meat in the freezer
- PRICE PER POUND: $1.87 per pound for pasture-raised meat
For fun, take a little internet search journey. Here is a search engine phrase to use: “organic, pasture raised whole young roaster chicken 2024” and see what prices it yields. WARNING: hang on to your jaw before it drops.
4. Ethical Treatment of Animals
Before animal activists come for me, I have already said above that my husband hunts for food; not sport.
We are meat eaters.
I spent 4 years of my life as a vegetarian then pescatarian after reading “Skinny Bitch” in 2007. The reason for me was an emphatic “ethical treatment!!“.
Once again a meat eater, I’ve discovered for majority of the carnivorous world, the saying goes “out of sight, out of mind”. Meaning this: people generally do not think or care about how the animal was raised or treated before it was harvested.
But we do.
We choose to raise our birds with the utmost care and concern. I’ve lost a few biddies and one fully grown meat bird so far. Not too bad for having received over 115 birds in a year.
- There have been times when I have nursed failure-to-thrive chickens and sick chickens (heart failure symptoms) back to health.
- There have been baby birds raised inside my home in a box being fed feed-sprinkled yogurt for extra protein.
- There have been hourly checks on a grown bird to make him drink water and give him pets and prayers as he passed on.
- There have been trips into the rain and wind to secure tarps over tractors to provide even more weather protection to an already protected enclosure.
- There have been separations of bullies to prevent fighting and death of other birds.
- There have been multiple trips to refill waterers on super hot days and to adjust tarps for extra sun and heat protection.
There has been love poured into the raising of these birds that will one day nourish my family through that love provided on a dinner plate.
Ethically raising and harvesting birds in a loving, grateful, and calm manner is very important to Johnson Home.
5. God provides
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1:26, NKJV
God gave humans dominion over animals. He provides for our needs. He gave us everything we would need in The Beginning.
It is up to us, humanity, to steward the land and the animals well.
Have you decided if it is worth raising your own chickens for meat?
Maybe you’re done reading this now, thinking “nope. Still not for me.”
Or maybe you’re extremely intrigued and ready to go for it. I say DO IT!
To our family it is absolutely worth raising our own chickens for meat and pray we are blessed to continue to do this for many more years.
More on raising your own meat birds
Here are a few more blog posts on our meat bird journey:
How we raised 68 birds on less than 1/2 an acre
DIY a $5 killing/processing/hugging cone (keeps birds calm during harvest)
How to build a chicken tractor
How to use up the entire whole roaster chicken (zero waste chicken!)
Have you raised your own meat birds? Share in the comments your experience!
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