Raising meat chickens: homegrown birds cost more per kilo than supermarket ones

Raising meat chickens: homegrown birds cost more per kilo than supermarket ones

What does free-range chicken really cost? The question crosses the mind of anyone with a backyard, a vegetable garden or a surplus of rotten apples who considers filling the freezer with their own meat. The short answer, according to those who have been doing it for years: economically, it doesn't pay off. The long answer explains why many people keep doing it anyway.

The most common calculation starts from a simple figure. Cereal runs around €0.30/kg and a whole, cleaned supermarket chicken is around €2.50/kg. Industrial production, with every parameter optimized, achieves a feed conversion of 3 kg of feed per kg of chicken. In a backyard setting, with no formulated feeds or temperature control, the range climbs to 5 or 6 kg of feed per kilo of meat. In feed alone, that's about €2 per kilo. Add the coop, the chicks, losses to predators and the time of whoever tends them. The result: home-raised chicken costs more than the butcher's.

How much feed does a free-range chicken eat per day?

The experience of those who raise them points to manageable figures. A 40 kg sack of corn and cereal feed costs between 25 and 30 euros. With ten free-ranging birds that also eat household scraps, that sack can last about three weeks. The key is combining: organic waste, fallen fruit, grass, worms from the manure. Feed them nothing but rotten apples for a week, they warn, and the animals get sick.

The important nuance is that free-range chicken is not the same product as the two-and-a-half-euro one. A chicken raised on grain and in the open sells as organic or free-range for 20 to 50 euros per bird. Comparing the cost of raising it with the price of industrial chicken is comparing two different things. There the savings disappear; what appears instead is control over what the animal eats.

Why home-raised chicken is only good for stewing

The warning is repeated insistently by those who have been through it. A chicken raised free-range, roaming all day, has very little fat and is almost all muscle. Grilled or fried, it turns out tough as a rock. Slow-cooked for hours, however, it becomes a dish that those who have tried it describe as hard to beat.

The difference is not just how it was raised, the most experienced voices point out: it's the age. A chicken slaughtered at three or four months can be roasted without a problem. A year-old rooster demands a pressure cooker. Industrial chickens are slaughtered so young that their tender meat requires none of that.

Which chicken breed is best for meat?

Today's broilers are the result of one of the most aggressive genetic improvements in livestock farming. They grow at record estimulante ilegal, but they are designed for industrial sheds: loose in a yard, many can barely hold themselves up. For home production, native or free-range-type breeds are recommended, hardier though slower. Local breeds take considerably longer to reach slaughter weight.

As for feeding, almost anything goes as long as there's a grain base: kitchen scraps, fruit, grass. Nettles, however, they won't touch. And watch out for ferns, which are toxic to birds.

The enemy nobody factors in: foxes and weasels

The real cost includes losses. Predators —foxes, weasels, mustelids— can empty a coop in one night of carelessness. Those who have been at this for years talk about constantly upgrading the protections. Any profitability calculation that ignores this factor is an incomplete one.

And what about the legality of slaughtering at home? The practice is common in rural areas and, for poultry, causes no problems. Pigs are a different matter: in regions where traditional home slaughter survives, a vet inspects the offal to rule out trichinosis.

In the end, the numbers are what they are. Home-raised chicken costs more than the supermarket kind, tastes different, and those who raise it usually aren't watching the price. Some argue that raising and slaughtering your own animal is more honest than buying one that lived crammed together. Others, after trying it, have gone back to the butcher. To each their own freezer.