Now this is urban chicken farming! Image by flickr user quinn.anya
A quick look look at some stats that make urban chicken farming in your city work (or not):
Number of chickens raised annual for meat and eggs: 50 billion
Percentage of world’s poultry meat raised using intensive farming techniques: 74
Worldwide chicken to human ratio: 16:9
Number of varieties of domestic chickens: 150
Hours of sunlight chickens need to lay healthy eggs: 14
Number of eggs a hen can produce in a year: 300
Year chicken farming was banned in Toronto: 1983
Number of current Canadian cities permitting chicken farming: 6
In US: 86
Number of members on BackyardChicken.com: 19,000
Cost to buy a baby chick: $0.25
Egg laying hen: $25
Number of eggs laid per week per chicken: 7
Cost of building your own chicken coop: $150-250
Cost of buying your super trendy designer chicken coop to impress your other chicken farming friends: $3500
Time to recuperate cost of schmancy chicken coop assuming you have 3 chickens laying 21 eggs at week while a dozen eggs cost $3: 13 years (math below)
Avoiding the mess of slaughtering your own chickens cause you’re a city slicker who really doesn’t know much about raising and killing farm animals: Mobile Slaughterhouse
Cost per head: $75 (maybe a little less for chickens)
Eggs per week: 21 eggs x 52 weeks = 1092 eggs/year —- Cost per egg: $3 / 12 eggs = $0.25/egg —- Cost of Chicken Coop: $3500 —- Number of eggs to make up for coop: $3500/$0.25 = 14,000 eggs —- Time needed to recuperate recoup coop: 14,000 eggs/ 1092 eggs/year = 13 years