Making Bucks from Clucks

These five reasons might be why you're losing money on your chickens.

- RACHEL PORTER

On the livestock-raising scale, you can venture into chickens relatively easily without excessive expense or facility requirements. Often, they're hailed as gateway animals for kids and families seeking the hobby-farm lifestyle.

However, chicken math hardly ever adds up to covering the costs of raising them through just laying eggs for the owners. This leads chicken-keepers to look for ways break even or perhaps profit from raising chickens.

While poultry is not a get-rich-quick scheme, there are ways to generate revenue. The first step to making money is always to make sure you aren't losing it. We'll cover five ways chicken-keepers are losing money by the day, how to stop the bleeding and maybe even turn a profit.

UNWISE FEEDING

Here is a checklist of feeding strategies to maintain the lowest cost possible for feed.

DON'T WASTE FOOD & WATER: Secure all feeders and waterers down to the ground or against the wall. Your goal is to consider how to have zero waste, while keeping the equipment mouseproof, foolproof (so the chickens can't knock it over) and dry.

If your chickens are messy eaters and drinkers, they could be wasting feed and water, losing you money and time.