I do not understand the mathematics behind the dilemma. I’m assuming only the firts chicks cost money, because down the line they will breed.
But feeding them, housing them - vitamins and doctoring costs a lot of money.
So anyone with couple or more chickens - how much does it cost to have them on the table? And realistically how many eggs do you get?
Ha ha, it’s easy to get carried away on equipment for sure, I do maple syrup and it’s a huge money pit and I still am no where near having everything to do it like a civilized person with a pump and mainlines to bring all the sap back to the shack rather than carrying buckets hundreds of yards. Some people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or more on everything. Fancy reverse osmosis stuff (can easily be 250k along for a commercial model,) fancy stainless steel tanks and boilers, pressure filters, and so forth.
I guess that isn’t such bad math even just buying the malt. I put in a woodstove though and was going to put a rack over it and malt like in the old days, that was one of the homemade ways.
Apparently barley is hard to malt well, I’ve been strongly discouraged from doing this on brewing forums. Anyway I do still brew but just sugar into liquor with a stove-top still or maple syrup wine. But I prefer Ale, especially Indian Pale.