What a chicken taught me about economics
The eggs in my local supermarket have tripled in price in a year. Even the caged eggs have a price tag that should come with a ransom note. Avian flu in the southern states of Australia has seen tens of thousands of commercial chickens slaughtered. For the remaining nervous suppliers, it is now a seller's market. So, a couple of months ago I scratched some figures on the back of an envelope and told my husband, "I've done the sums. We'll get a return on our investment with nine chickens."
"Nine?" he asked, bemused.
"Exactly nine. This is statistically the number of chickens that naturally form into clusters or family groups according to studies of commercial barn hen behavior. Happy hens lay more eggs."
"Well, you've done your research."
"This is based on a two-year return and selling a dozen eggs per week to cover grain costs," I added for good measure.
Two hours of You Tube analysis and I thought I was set. I had worked out costs for hens, a home-made chicken tractor to house them, feed and an average egg output of five eggs per week per bird over two years.
Economic principles teach us that when one sector of the market goes up it can have a ripple effect on other, related sectors. It seems I wasn't the first one in my area to decide that purchasing point-of-lay hens was suddenly a good idea.
I couldn't get Isa Browns, the breed that lays the most eggs according to my research. Demand had exceeded supply to the point of a collapse in the Isa Brown market. Instead, I purchased nine Line bred New Hampshire hens. They were not just pure bred, they were line bred, the breeder informed me as she shoved the first flapping, screeching bunch of chestnut feathers into my arms. Being line bred apparently justified the much higher price tag for these nine supermodels. I reminded myself that I had built in a buffer on my ROI and all would be fine.
It turns out that line bred is a polite word for being in-bred. It is all about meeting show standards. Oh, and the egg outlay of these exceptionally beautiful hens is expected to be 3 eggs per week each on average. As my sums required 18 eggs, I figured I should still break even. I wasn't sweating on it yet.
We changed our minds about keeping them in a chicken tractor because, well, not for economic reasons. It was just so nice to watch them run and flap about after seeing how they had been crammed in together in their previous home. Other people in our area had chickens free ranging around their house. Why not us?
This is where Scarlet Houdini O'Hara comes into the picture.
She is the prettiest of my flock and she knows it. Her deep russet red, copper and black plumage shines as if each feather contains its own inner light. It's all too easy to get suckered in by her looks but here is a bird of uncanny intellect.
On the first day of free ranging my little flock did stay near the house but the next day Scarlet was gone. After hours of searching in the dark with a flashlight, we gave up on ever seeing her again. At feeding time the next morning, she was skulking about outside the coop like a teenager returning after a night on the town.
Neighbors advised clipping her wings. We refused. Instead we set to work building a chicken run big enough for running in. Many trips to the hardware store followed. I threw caution to the wind. This would be a chicken run for flapping and even flying in. Le Coop de Chill, we called it. Chicken heaven.
Only Scarlet Houdini O'Hara didn't think so. If the slightest breeze ruffled those pretty feathers, she was gone...with the wind. Higher and higher we built those walls. So, she went under. The more gaps we filled, the more she found. Not content to escape on her own anymore, she would incite a stampede taking the whole flock with her. She was now the alpha chicken.
I should mention that chicken feed has also gone up exponentially on my initial figures?-?that whole ripple effect I told you about earlier. So has chicken mesh, chicken feeders and the special supplement meant to encourage egg laying.
Many weeks on we got our first egg. It was Scarlet's. I watched her lay it, standing on the side lines cheering her on. Perhaps we connected in that moment when her eyes looked into mine and I congratulated her on being a woman now. Yeah, nah, probably not.
After a python took two of our ladies in just over a week, leaving me in a wobbly state of tears, we decided we needed a better coop. Besides the ones in the hardware store looked like little cottages with their pitched roofs and Georgian windows. Never mind the price tag. Our ladies did start laying more eggs though. I suspect the lack of pythons had more to do with it than the Georgian windows. That brings us to today. At this point, 10 weeks into the project we have a total of 14 eggs on the balance sheet and over a thousand dollars invested. I estimate that we would need these hens to lay 3300 eggs to break even. Yet when I let them out each morning and watch them stretch and flap, I linger a while. Watching chickens is great therapy so in other ways I am seeing a rich return on my investment.
Scarlet Houdini O'Hara and her harem remind me that economics is not a science. At best it is a flawed and highly optimistic set of calculations kicked into the dirt and trampled on by humans and chickens alike, each with their own agendas. It is a parody of how we think we will behave but seldom do. Yet we continue to navigate the world with all its absurdities and complexities thinking that we can manage, even control this chaos with theories of how we will behave in a given scenario. Despite my longing for answers through the prism of economics, it is hardly surprising that with so many moving parts, economics alone will get it wrong more often than it gets it right.