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<blockquote data-quote="Tony" data-source="post: 165280" data-attributes="member: 1">Because my wife decided to hatch them during the most expensive time of the year. From June 1 to Aug 31 my electricity more than doubles between 1500 and 1900. First we have to put them in an incubator to hatch the eggs and that uses a constant 60 watts of power. Once they hatch, they have to be under a heating lamp for over a month until they are fully feathered. This heating lamp is 250 watts. I did the math on this, and just the heating lamp costs $70/mo to run. So for 9 chicks, one of which is not going to make it, it comes out to about $9.00 per chick for those that I think are going to make it. And then you have to factor in how many are going to be roosters which are USELESS. so if 50% are roo's, that price just went up to $18/hen. You can go to the nearest farm supply like Atwoods and pick out sexed hens for about $6/hen. So yea, this was a very expensive experiment. Not to mention we had to purchase the incubator which adds even more to the price. So we are now coming up with a plan on how to raise the chickens without using massive amounts of electricity. I see a solar setup in our future if we go this way. The only other way is to leave the eggs under the hens and see how they do with them. At this time, we have 5 roosters in our coop, and we are about to slaughter 4 of them and only leave one. I'm going to enjoy putting those little asshats on my smoker! They beat the crap out of the hens which we have I think 29 of. so there you go, the most expensive hens in the history of chickens...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony, post: 165280, member: 1"] Because my wife decided to hatch them during the most expensive time of the year. From June 1 to Aug 31 my electricity more than doubles between 1500 and 1900. First we have to put them in an incubator to hatch the eggs and that uses a constant 60 watts of power. Once they hatch, they have to be under a heating lamp for over a month until they are fully feathered. This heating lamp is 250 watts. I did the math on this, and just the heating lamp costs $70/mo to run. So for 9 chicks, one of which is not going to make it, it comes out to about $9.00 per chick for those that I think are going to make it. And then you have to factor in how many are going to be roosters which are USELESS. so if 50% are roo's, that price just went up to $18/hen. You can go to the nearest farm supply like Atwoods and pick out sexed hens for about $6/hen. So yea, this was a very expensive experiment. Not to mention we had to purchase the incubator which adds even more to the price. So we are now coming up with a plan on how to raise the chickens without using massive amounts of electricity. I see a solar setup in our future if we go this way. The only other way is to leave the eggs under the hens and see how they do with them. At this time, we have 5 roosters in our coop, and we are about to slaughter 4 of them and only leave one. I'm going to enjoy putting those little asshats on my smoker! They beat the crap out of the hens which we have I think 29 of. so there you go, the most expensive hens in the history of chickens... [/QUOTE]

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