How Much Do Chickens Cost? First-Year and Ongoing
By ChickenGearGuide · Updated August 2026
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Quick Take
Here's the shape of it. The birds are the cheap part. Day-old chicks run a few dollars each, and even point-of-lay pullets aren't a big number. What costs real money is the setup, and inside the setup it's the coop. A decent prefab coop is far and away the biggest single line item you'll buy, ahead of the feeder, the waterer, the hardware cloth, and the bedding combined. Once the flock is up and running, the ongoing cost is mostly feed, and feed works out to a few dollars per hen per month, give or take how much your birds waste and what you pay a bag.
The trap is the coop. It's the line item almost everyone under-budgets, because the chicks are what you get excited about and the coop is what you find out the price of later. And here's the part the "raise your own eggs" pitch skips: once you count the setup, backyard eggs rarely pay for themselves, at least not in the first year. Feed roughly tracks a store egg carton over time, but the coop is a sunk cost you don't earn back on eggs alone. Keep chickens because you want to, not because the math beats the grocery aisle.
The three buys that decide your first-year and ongoing cost, and how to keep each one down: See picks ↓
The clean way to think about the cost of chickens is to split it in two: what you spend once to get set up, and what you spend forever to keep them going. Those two numbers behave completely differently. Our take, after pricing this out more than once, is that chickens are a cheap hobby to run and a not-cheap one to set up, and the coop is where the money goes.
The setup number is a lump: a coop, a feeder, a waterer, some hardware cloth to make the run safe, a bag or two of bedding, and the birds. Most of that lump is the coop. The running number is small and steady, and it's almost entirely feed. So the biggest lever you have over the total isn't shaving a few dollars off a bag of crumble, it's buying the coop once and buying it right, because that's the number that dwarfs the rest.
We're going to talk in ranges, not exact prices, and that's on purpose. Coop, feeder, and drinker prices move, feed prices swing by region and by season, and your birds will eat and waste more or less than the average. We haven't tracked every one of these costs across years ourselves, and prices vary a lot by region, so we'd rather give honest ranges than a false exact figure. A guide that hands you a single tidy total is guessing. This guide gives you the shape of each cost and points you at a calculator for the one number worth getting exactly right, which is feed.
The upfront setup: the coop is the big one
Everything you buy before the first egg is your setup cost, and it's front-loaded onto a handful of items. The coop dominates. After it, in rough order, come the feeder, the waterer, enough half-inch hardware cloth to seal the run, and a bag or two of bedding to get started. Add small odds and ends like a feed scoop and a nest-box liner and you have the list. None of the smaller items comes close to the coop, which is why the coop is the number that decides whether your setup feels cheap or steep.
The one setup mistake worth avoiding is buying more coop than your flock needs, or a coop rated for twice the hens it can really hold. Our coop size calculator works out the real bird count from the floor space, so you buy the size you need instead of paying for capacity that isn't there.
The birds themselves are the cheap part
This is where new keepers overestimate. Day-old chicks are a few dollars each, and a starter flock of a handful of them is a small share of your total setup. You pay more for point-of-lay pullets, the near-grown birds that'll start laying within weeks, because someone else carried the cost and the risk of raising them through the fragile early stage. That premium can be worth it if you want eggs sooner and would rather skip brooding.
One thing that quietly changes the price is sexed versus straight-run. Sexed chicks, sorted so you get the pullets you actually want, cost more per bird. Straight-run is cheaper because you take pot luck on the mix, which means you may end up raising and rehoming roosters you can't keep. For a small backyard flock the sexed premium is usually money well spent, since a straight-run bargain can turn into half a flock you can't use.
The ongoing cost is mostly feed
Once the flock is settled, feed is the main recurring cost by a wide margin, and it's a small, steady one. A useful planning figure is that a standard laying hen eats on the order of a quarter pound of feed a day. That's the starting point, but it's a floor, not a ceiling, because an open feeder loses a real slice of that to spillage, damp, and wild birds and rodents helping themselves. Waste can push the effective feed bill up by a fifth or more without a single extra hen eating a single extra bite.
Feed is the one cost worth pinning down exactly, because it's the number you pay every month for years. Our feed cost calculator takes your flock size, the price of your bag, and the waste you're willing to assume, and gives you a monthly figure that's yours rather than an internet average.
After feed, the running costs are minor. Bedding gets topped up and swapped out on a schedule that depends on how you manage the coop, and it's a modest, predictable line. Beyond that's the occasional cost, the unplanned one: a bird that needs attention. It doesn't come up often for a well-kept small flock, but it's fair to know it exists so it doesn't blindside your budget.
The winter add-ons
Cold weather adds a small seasonal cost that catches first-year keepers off guard. The main one is keeping water from freezing, which usually means a heated waterer or a heated base under the drinker you already own. It's a one-time buy that earns its keep every winter after, because chipping ice out of a frozen drinker twice a day gets old fast. Depending on your climate you may add a bit of extra bedding for warmth, but resist the urge to heat the coop itself, which creates more damp and risk than it solves.
Do backyard eggs actually save money
Usually not, at least not in year one. This is the part the hobby pitch skips. Once you fold in the coop and the rest of the setup, the eggs from a small backyard flock cost more than the same eggs from a store for a good while, because you're paying off a big upfront lump against a slow trickle of eggs. Feed can roughly break even against a carton over time, so the running cost is close to a wash, but the coop is a sunk cost you don't claw back on eggs alone.
None of that is a reason not to keep chickens. It's a reason to keep them for the right reasons: better eggs, birds you enjoy, control over how they're raised. Just don't budget as though the eggs are free, because the coop already spent that money.
How to keep the cost down
Three moves do most of the work. First, right-size the coop instead of overbuying, so you aren't paying for space and capacity your flock never uses. Second, cut feed waste, because feed is the cost you pay forever and a no-waste feeder is the cheapest way to shrink it. Third, buy the coop once and buy it well, since the expensive mistake is the coop you replace, not the coop you paid a fair price for the first time.
Two of those three are covered by the picks below, and the third, protecting your feed from the rodents that turn a bag into an all-night buffet, is its own small project. Our guide to rodent-proof feed storage covers the containers that keep mice and rats out of the bag, which is money straight off your ongoing feed bill.
And when it comes time to actually choose the coop, the single line item that decides your setup cost, our best chicken coop guide ranks what's worth buying and calls out which listings are sold for twice the hens they hold.
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