Last Year’s Numbers
It’s a new year and I know that some of you guys like the numbers and data as much as me so I’m going to share my income/expenses from 2024 with you. Before I get to the numbers, I’m not complaining, just stating the facts for our operation. My goal when getting chickens was for them to feed themselves through egg sales and give me something to do. They’ve definitely done both of those things so I’m happy. I just wanted to share the numbers with you because they might not be what you’d expect.
My expenses for 2024 totalled just about $1900 so I’m going to round to $1900 to make things a bit easier. This total includes bedding, feed, medications, medical supplies, vet care, feeders/waterers and some replacement chicks/pullets. It does NOT include housing costs, I’ll likely never make back what the coops cost so I’m not counting those costs. This amount also does not include my time.
My egg sales for the 2024 year totalled $2090.
$2090 in sales – $1900 in expenses = $190 “profit” for the year
Now, I put profit in quotations because, really, I didn’t really make money at all. Here’s why: I average about 90 minutes a day working on the bare bones chicken care. That includes literally the bare minimum of cleaning everyone’s coop each day, feeding and watering them, letting them out and putting them to bed. It does not include time spent building coops, fixing fences, running out to check on them/collect eggs multiple times a day, time spent treating medical issues and doing preventative care or anything else that I do related to their care. It’s just the bare minimum amount of time I need to spend to keep them clean and fed. In the summer it takes about half that time to do those tasks and in the winter it can be twice that time if there’s snow and ice removal to be done so it averages out to roughly 90 minutes a day.
If I paid myself $15.20/hour, minimum wage here in Nova Scotia, my labor costs would be $8,360 per year. Add the expenses to that and you get $10,260 per year (and, remember, we still haven’t paid a cent towards building the coops/pens and that doesn’t actually cover all the time I put in either). We produced 478 dozen eggs this year meaning that the cost to produce those eggs was actually $21.46/dozen. 
It’s a good thing I work for free because those would be some expensive eggs!
So, with the $190 “profit” I had for the year, how much did I actually get paid this past year?
A whopping 52¢ per day! Crazy, right?
Again, I’m not complaining at all. These numbers are exactly what I expected them to be and I’m thrilled that keeping my chickens only costs me my time – something I am willing and able to give freely. I have people say to me all the time though that I must be making lots of money because I sell so many eggs. I do sell a lot of eggs but, the reality is that, I’m not really making any money at all. I am, however, providing fresh eggs to my community and also improving both my mental and physical health by caring for them and that’s worth an awful lot more than money to me.
This year expenses will be higher than last as I did quite a bit of expanding here last year. We have A LOT more chickens now. Income will hopefully also be higher to balance things out. If I can ring in 2026 with similar year end results to this year I’ll be happy. I just need those birdies to pay for themselves, anything extra is a bonus.
