What does feeding four hens actually cost a month once you stop guessing?

Before you change feed, look at how much of it is not going into a hen. I had an open trough and was losing a genuinely embarrassing amount to billing out, spillage and rats at night. A treadle feeder cost me about 60 and my sack went from lasting four and a half weeks to lasting seven with the same four birds. That paid for itself inside a season and the rat problem stopped at the same time.

I weighed it for a month because I got tired of guessing too. Four hybrids went through just under 500g of pellets a day between them, so roughly 120-125g each, and a 20kg sack lasted me a bit over six weeks. Winter pushed that up about 15 percent because they burn energy keeping warm and there is nothing to scavenge. Add a bag of mixed grit and a tub of oyster shell that last months, and my all in feed cost per dozen eggs came out somewhere near what supermarket free range costs. You do not save money on eggs, you buy better eggs and a hobby.

My expensive mistake was treating mixed corn as feed rather than as sweets. I was topping the feeder up with scratch because it was cheaper per kilo, laying dropped off over about six weeks, and I spent a while convinced something was wrong with the birds. Layer feed is formulated around roughly 16 percent protein and a calcium level in the 2.5 to 3.5 percent range for shell building, and corn is neither of those things. Also check your local rules on kitchen scraps before you start emptying the fridge into the run, in the UK feeding catering waste to poultry is not allowed at all.

The 120g figure is a fine planning number but it is not universal, and people quote it like a spec. My two bantams eat visibly less than half what my hybrid does, and a big dual purpose heritage bird eats more and lays a third as often. If you are adding two more, add them on the same feed and weigh a sack rather than trusting anyone else's grams.

Buy the biggest sack your storage will keep dry, in a metal bin, and weigh it once. Everything else is rounding. Treats are the line item that ruins the budget and the eggs at the same time.