Worse, factory-farmed products generally retail for less than it would cost you to grow them yourself. Few people today would be happy with the more or less free output of old-time chicken flocks, which were basically starved most of the year but made enough of a comeback in the spring and summer to produce some eggs and meat for free. Also, a lot of the all-foraging diet of these old-time flocks consisted of grain spilled from horses and cattle and garbage thrown out the back door. Modern households and farmsteads produce far less edible waste than they used to, so an all-foraging diet works worse than ever.

What happens is that the cheapest way is the one that seems the most expensive: buy high-quality chicks, feed them as much high-quality feed as they want, and take good care of them generally. Range provides supplemental, seasonal nutrition on top of the base you get from chicken feed.

Do you have any ideas that make the cost of raising poultry more affordable? For the backyard chicken farmers like myself, raising your own grain isn’t an option, but letting them wander the yard for bugs and grass is. I would guess that the old-time farmers who lived through the Depression would have a thing or two to say about this topic.