Given that we are very inefficient chicken keepers and get a lot more out of our flock than just chicken meat, and that we're just doing this exercise to see where it takes us, let's just halve that. Let's say $47.00 per roast chicken.

Then let's halve it again because our chickens, although they vary in size a lot, can be up to twice the size of the supermarket one. So now we're at $23.50.

(Our chickens are also twice as tough as supermarket ones -- we could put that down as a benefit measured in extra jaw muscles. True story -- the book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art says that as our food has become more tender and we have had to work less and less at chewing it, our airways have shrunk and our faces have changed, and not towards the rugged outdoor look.)

Regardless of its chewing value, in dollar terms our chicken is still two and a half  times the price of the supermarket variety. 

The real value of a chicken 

I just tried to put a dollar value on a roast chicken from a back yard flock, but there's no way to factor in the intangible value of the multitude of other things that a home grown roast chicken is connected to.

Just to list some of the benefits our own family has experienced from raising our own chickens (obviously a limited view point but it'll do for demonstration purposes):

• Our deep litter chicken coop provides finished compost by the wheelbarrow load. And when we let them out to forage in the afternoons, the flock provides free farmyard/garden sanitation (manure spreading and insect control).
• When our children were small, caring for broody hens and clutches of eggs gave them meaningful biology lessons. Mama hens and fluffy baby chicks kept them occupied for hours at a time -- and not the way a screen does. And the still little forms that didn't make it out of the nest taught them that life comes hand in hand with death, and that sometimes outcomes are beyond our control. 
• Our chicken flock is also a source of meaning, purpose, and dignity for us. It enables us to put food on the table that we're proud of, that we've been intimately involved with, that we've grappled with the ethics of.
• Our chicken flock helps us feed ourselves in an "additive" way--with things like increased soil health and quality of life as by-products--instead of in an "extractive," industrial way.
• Our chicken raising experiences have helped us grow in our sense of responsibility and stewardship toward the land and lives that link directly to what's on the ends of our forks. 

One way to sum it up would be to say that a homegrown roast chicken on our table represents a journey from squeamish, and clueless (aka, easily led and largely dependent on others) towards capable, confident, and able to contribute -- even if its just by feeding ourselves a little more and relying a little less on unethical and unsustainable industrial agriculture.

Related reading 

Here's a page that links to all my other chicken-related posts, about keeping chickens (and their environment) healthy and happy and also about chicken behavior and what chickens have to do with calling in a kinder, more connected world.

"Regenerative Food Systems vs Industrial Agriculture: Why We Need More Hands in the Soil"

"One Small Serve" - home grown food on a small enough scale

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