Backyard Chicken First-Year Cost Calculator

What does it actually cost to start keeping backyard chickens?

The honest range in the US in 2026: $400 to $2,000 for the first year, depending almost entirely on how much you spend on the coop.

The breakdown for a typical 6-hen starter flock:

Cost-per-dozen uses the same basis as the calculator above: 74 dozen eggs in year one for 6 day-old chicks (240 eggs/hen, scaled to about 7.4 months of laying once you subtract the pre-lay weeks).

The median for a basic but functional setup lands around $650 to $800. The calculator above turns these ranges into your specific number based on flock size, bird source, and housing choice.

A note on these ranges. Budget estimates on chicken blogs swing from “practically free” to well over $2,000, and both extremes describe real setups. The difference is almost always the coop, not the birds.

Be clear about what is behind our numbers: the dollar defaults in the calculator are our own market estimates, not published figures. Extension services largely do not publish backyard-flock budgets — the exception we found is University of Maryland Extension’s small-flock layer budget, which is written for a 100-hen flock rather than a backyard six, so its per-bird economics do not transfer directly. What it does give us is a structure to check against, and our defaults sit inside the ranges published by current market cost guides. Where those guides and our figures disagree, the Sources section below says so. If prices in your area look very different, the contact page is at the top.

Why the coop dominates the budget

The coop is where most of the financial variation lives. A basic DIY coop built from reclaimed lumber and basic hardware cloth costs $150 to $300. A quality prefab from a farm supply store that actually fits the birds it claims to fit costs $400 to $800. Custom-built coops go higher.

The trap: cheap prefab coops. A $150 coop marketed for "up to 6 chickens" typically fits 2 to 3 comfortably. When you overstock it, birds get sick, pecking increases, and you eventually spend more fixing the problem than a better coop would have cost. The Coop Size Calculator gives you the actual square footage needed before you buy, and the Coop Construction Cost Estimator turns that square footage into a materials budget with a prefab comparison, so you can see which route is actually cheaper for your flock.

Day-old chicks vs started pullets — the real cost comparison

Day-old chicks cost $3 to $8 each at most hatcheries. Started pullets (16 to 20 weeks old, about to lay) cost $15 to $35 each. On a per-bird basis, pullets look expensive. On a total-investment basis, the math is more interesting.

Which breed you pick moves the per-bird figure roughly two-thirds as much as the source does: common laying breeds sit at the bottom of that chick range, rare or specialty breeds well above it. Worth settling before you order — our breed directory lists every breed we cover with eggs per year, climate tolerance, and temperament side by side.

With day-old chicks: add brooder setup ($30 to $90), starter and grower feed for the first 18 weeks, and 18 to 22 weeks of waiting before your first egg. With pullets: no brooder, no waiting, eggs in 2 to 6 weeks. One limitation worth knowing — the calculator takes a single flat monthly feed figure and does not distinguish starter from layer ration, so if your starter costs more per bag than your layer feed, the first few months will run above the estimate.

If your goal is eggs as soon as possible, pullets are frequently worth the premium. If you enjoy raising chicks, the experience has value the calculator doesn't capture.

Year 2 changes everything

Most people are surprised by how much cheaper year 2 looks. Setup costs don't repeat. If year 1 cost you $750 total, year 2 costs only the ongoing feed, bedding, and supplies — roughly $350 to $450 per year for a 6-hen flock. That is a very different economic picture.

This is why the break-even calculation in the Egg Production Calculator uses year 1 and year 2 figures separately. The first year is the investment year. From year 2 onwards, the flock is just a monthly operating cost.

What this calculator does not include

A few real costs that are hard to predict:

Veterinary care. Backyard chickens don't visit vets often, but a respiratory illness in a flock or a prolapsed vent can mean a $50 to $200 vet bill. Some keepers never see one. Others see one in year 1.

Predator-proofing upgrades. After your first predator loss, most keepers spend $50 to $200 improving their setup. Hardware cloth buried in a predator apron, a better latch, motion-activated lights. Budget for this mentally even if the calculator doesn't include it.

Your time. Daily chicken chores take 10 to 20 minutes. At minimum wage, that is $600 to $1,200 per year in labor. Most keepers don’t count this because they enjoy it, but it is a real economic input. University of Maryland Extension’s small-flock budget allows 30 minutes a day once egg washing and packing are included, and concludes: “It is obvious that valuing labor would keep most small flock producers from raising layers if they were doing it for economic reasons.”

Electricity. The calculator prices the brooder lamp and a heated waterer as hardware but not the power to run them. A brooder lamp runs more or less continuously for six weeks, and a heated waterer or de-icer runs through every freezing night. Neither is large, but neither is zero — the Winter Water Heating Cost Calculator prices the waterer side.

Birds that die, and birds that stop laying. This is the largest gap in the model, and it works against the year-2 figure above. Maryland’s extension budget assumes 10 percent mortality over the life of a flock and builds it into the egg yield — some of the birds you buy will not be laying at the end of year one. Nor do hens lay at their first-year rate indefinitely: our own Egg Production Calculator applies about 75 percent of first-year output in year two and around 60 percent from year three, and a hen lives several years beyond her productive life. Maryland writes its budget on a two-year flock lifespan for exactly this reason, noting that keepers who hold hens three or four years find “egg production will diminish dramatically”.

So read the year-2 figure on this page as the best year, not a permanent state. A flock kept long enough needs replacing, and that means paying for birds again, brooding again, and waiting out another five months before the new cohort lays — the first-year numbers repeat, minus the coop. The calculator does not model any of this.

Common mistakes that inflate first-year costs

1. Buying a coop sized for the marketing claims, not the actual bird count. The calculator tells you what you need before you buy.
2. Buying day-old chicks when you wanted eggs quickly — 5 months of waiting plus brooder costs add up.
3. Not budgeting for the first molt at 14 to 18 months. Production pauses, you still pay for feed.
4. Skipping the quality feeder. A $15 open tray feeder wastes 20 to 30 percent of feed to scratching. On this page’s $23 monthly feed default that is $4.60 to $6.90 a month, so a $40 anti-waste feeder recovers the $25 difference in roughly four to five months, and its full price inside a year.

Where to go next

Once you have your first-year budget estimate, these calculators connect directly:

• The Coop Size Calculator ensures your coop budget goes toward the right square footage, not the wrong prefab.
• The Coop Construction Cost Estimator prices out a DIY build against prefab options for your exact dimensions.
• The Feed Consumption Calculator gives you a precise monthly feed cost to replace the default estimate above.
• The Egg Production Calculator uses your first-year total to compute when the flock breaks even on the grocery bill.
• Not sure how many hens to budget for? The Eggs Per Family Calculator sizes the flock to your household first.

Sources

A caveat before the list, because it is the honest headline: extension services do not, as a rule, publish backyard-flock budgets. They publish nutrition, housing and disease guidance in depth, and almost nothing on what a six-hen setup costs. We found one genuine exception, and it is written for a flock sixteen times the size of this page’s default. Everything else below is a market cost guide, cited as such.

• The one extension enterprise budget: University of Maryland Extension — “Economics of Small Poultry Flocks”, and its Small Flock Layer Budget (100 hens, 2 years) by Dale M. Johnson. Housing startup $1,500 (coop $1,000 plus $500 electric netting), feeders and waterers $100, chicks $2.25 each, and a total cash expense of $1.60 per dozen across two years. Three assumptions matter more than the dollar figures, and we have used all three: “Out of two years, 180 days are required for raising chicks and molting. Production is calculated as 550 days x 100 hens x 70% yield. A 10% mortality over the life of the flock is factored into the egg yield.” It is written on a two-year flock lifespan because keepers who hold hens longer find “egg production will diminish dramatically”, and it allows 30 minutes of labour a day, concluding that “valuing labor would keep most small flock producers from raising layers if they were doing it for economic reasons”. Johnson is explicit that it rests on his own experience and conversations with producers, and that “small flock production is highly variable”. Note the scale: 100 hens buys efficiencies a backyard six does not have, so its $1.60/dozen is not a figure a six-hen keeper should expect to match.
• Market cost guide, not research: ChickenStarter — “How Much Does It Cost To Raise Chickens For The First Year?” Puts a 4–6 bird first year at $700–$1,900, averaging $1,115, split as budget/DIY $700–900, pre-built coop $900–1,200, premium $1,500–2,000+. Coops: DIY with reclaimed materials $100–300, basic kit $500–1,000, quality $1,000–2,000. Chicks $2–5 common and $5–30 rare; started pullets $15–25. Monthly for 5–6 hens $40–98. Years 2–8 average $805 a year. It also runs a five-year all-in figure of $1.98 per egg against 20–40 cents at the store, and states plainly that “raising backyard chickens will not save you money on eggs”.
• Grocery egg prices: USDA Economic Research Service, the same source our Egg Production Calculator uses. Wholesale prices approached $5.37 a dozen in late December 2022 and the national retail average peaked near $4.82 in January 2023, with the all-time record of $6.23 in March 2025. Egg prices are volatile enough that any single comparison figure dates quickly — which is part of why we take a price from you rather than hardcoding one.

Where we sit against those. Our shipped defaults produce a first-year total of $932 for six hens, inside ChickenStarter’s $700–1,900 range and just under its $1,115 average, and a year-2 running cost of $432 against their $805 — ours is lower because their figure is for a larger flock and includes categories we exclude. Our monthly $36 sits at the bottom of their $40–98. Read that as our defaults being on the lean side rather than as a disagreement.

What is ours rather than published: every dollar default in the calculator (birds $5, coop $350 prefab / $200 DIY, feeder $20, waterer $20, brooder $30, other $50, feed $23/month, bedding $8, misc $5), and every cost range in the prose and FAQs. The 240 eggs per hen figure is the most consequential number here, since it divides every cost. It is not itself a published figure, but it is chosen to sit mid-range in Penn State Extension’s 200–260 for egg-type birds and to match the standard-layer tier in our own Egg Production Calculator. It was 280 until this revision, which was above Penn State’s range and made eggs look cheaper than they are. One deliberate inconsistency remains across our own pages: the Feed Consumption Calculator uses 230 for its cost-per-dozen figure, cited directly to Penn State as the mid-point of 200–260. Both sit inside the same published range and the 10-egg gap moves our year-2 figure by about 15 cents a dozen, but the two pages are not identical and we would rather say so than let it pass unnoticed. Our Eggs Per Family Calculator also uses 240 for a standard layer, but as a peak-season rate with a winter reduction applied on top, so its effective annual figure is lower again. The year-one proration (0.62 chicks, 0.92 pullets, 0.75 rescue) is our arithmetic from the page’s own 18–22 week point-of-lay figure, following Maryland’s method rather than its numbers. The currency rates are fixed and undated.