I've had a wee rough look at the costs of rearing these to produce hatching eggs/chicks.
Theres a bit of guess work involved so i'll err on the high side as most of us are going to be keeping them outside so they'll eat more than the Ross guide shows
I've done it for 10 female/2 males.
Purchase cost - £42
Feed cost to point of lay (22 weeks) - £75
thats based on 12 birds eating 150Kg (Ross guide says 116Kg) at roughly £50 per 100Kg of feed
From point of lay onwards I've taken the feed consumption as 200g per bird per day, guide says 169g
I'll be feeding them standard layers or breeders ration which I can buy at roughly £9 for 20Kg (£450/tonne)
I'll count their laying period as 40 weeks (for ease of calculating), from 22 weeks of age through to 62 weeks of age.
So each bird will eat 200g per day, 1.4Kg per week, 56Kg in 40 weeks, (i'll round it up to 60Kg)
60Kg x 12 birds = 720Kg so £330
So in total we're looking at around £450 in purchase and feeding costs to 62 weeks.
The Ross target is 175 hatching eggs per female over the 40 weeks, I'll be happy with 150 and that should be fairly easy to achieve.
So 1500 hatching eggs should cost us £450 to produce (30p each)
An 80% hatch rate should be achievable and would give us 1200 chicks (38p each)
Broiler hatching eggs seem to sell for around 80p - £1 each and chicks £1.50 - £2 or more each, so plenty scope to recoup some or all of the costs by selling excess eggs and/or chicks.
I've rounded up and erred on the high side for everything so hopefully we can do it slightly cheaper than that.
I've not counted incubator or brooder costs but mine are all done in the house so the cost can come from the house heating bill