Roast chicken for dinner last night. It was good.

The nine Rosses came back as 47 pounds of whole chicken; my wife stood on the bathroom scales, holding bags of chicken to get the count. I kept rough track of the food it took to raise them - about $50 worth (would have been cheaper without the delay caused by the lack of electricity in the barn), plus $16.50 to have them all processed. I didn't count electricity. I also didn't count my labor, because it's a joy for me to keep chickens and with the related health benefits (exercise and the lowering of my stress levels when I'm in the barnyard), I should be paying more to keep them.

Anyway, crunching the numbers, it worked out to $7.50 per bird. My wife said this was a little more expensive than whole chicken at the supermarket, but on the other hand, we know what went into these chickens.

But I broke it out another way and figured we paid a total of $1.50 per pound of bone-in chicken. My wife: "Well, it's higher than buying wings and drumsticks, and a lot lower than buying breasts."

Overall: Worth it? Yes.

Lessons Learned: I'm going to do meat birds differently next time. I plan to buy straight runs of dual purpose chooks this spring and cull the roos when they get to be of eating age, along with retiring some of the older members of the laying flock. These will all be active ranging chickens, so not much will change there.

But if I go with a straight meat bird, whether through purchase from a hatchery, or winning chicks from the local poultry processor at the fair, things will be different. With their tendency to eat a ton and befoul the coop, I have decided to raise meat birds in a chicken tractor - a wonderful invention that lets them get grass under their toes and bugs to eat, but also lets you move them around frequently. Benefits to chickens - fresh air, sunshine, varied diet, more hygienic conditions. Benefit to yard - ground scratched up, bugs and weeds eaten, fertilizer left behind.

So this spring I plan to raid my father-in-law's supply of scrap lumber to build one. An 8' x 4' tractor would support ten chickens with three square feet per bird (plus a small nest box area for them to get out of the sun). After walling off the new goat stall and building a gate, I should be ready for it.