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Baby chicks cost $6 at a supply store, but I can get a rotisserie for $5? What is the real cost of having chickens? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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I do not understand the mathematics behind the dilemma. I'm assuming only the firts chicks cost money, because down the line they will breed.
But feeding them, housing them - vitamins and doctoring costs a lot of money.

So anyone with couple or more chickens - how much does it cost to have them on the table? And realistically how many eggs do you get?

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[–] 4 points 1 week ago (1 child)

You could save money with brewing your own beer, you would just need a good source of barley and malt it yourself. The malt is too expensive to save much if anything on making beer.

The mormans or latter day saints forget which are all about stockpiling, and they operate bulk stores to prepare for the end of times or whatever, and they sell 50 lb sacks for a decent price I hear, but there aren't any near me.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Malt is the absolute cheapest part of brewing beer, I buy 55lb bags of it for $80 CAD (so like 40-60 USD), and there are multiple shops near me I can buy from. You only need a pot, a big ass mesh bag, a carboy/airlock, and a bottle capper if you don't have swing top bottles.

    To make 5 gallons of basic ass beer (yields like 48-54 bottles) you need 8-10lbs of grain (1lb of which is the fancy $2/lb malt; and 2lbs of which can be subbed for minute rice if you are doing an adjunct ale). You need 1, maybe 2oz of hops (hallertau is $2.50/oz). Yeast is $4-8 but is a 1 time cost because it's reusable. To make an IPA your malt cost is 25% higher and your hop cost is like 4x

    The economics are actually great, but that's fully contingent on you 1) placing no value on your time, and 2) not getting hooked and spending thousands on a stainless steel, PID controlled electronic brewing system, or a 4 tap home draught system (I did both)

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago*

    Ha ha, it's easy to get carried away on equipment for sure, I do maple syrup and it's a huge money pit and I still am no where near having everything to do it like a civilized person with a pump and mainlines to bring all the sap back to the shack rather than carrying buckets hundreds of yards. Some people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or more on everything. Fancy reverse osmosis stuff (can easily be 250k along for a commercial model,) fancy stainless steel tanks and boilers, pressure filters, and so forth.

    I guess that isn't such bad math even just buying the malt. I put in a woodstove though and was going to put a rack over it and malt like in the old days, that was one of the homemade ways.

    Apparently barley is hard to malt well, I've been strongly discouraged from doing this on brewing forums. Anyway I do still brew but just sugar into liquor with a stove-top still or maple syrup wine. But I prefer Ale, especially Indian Pale.

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