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?
If you have the space they are easy pets. How many eggs depends on the breed. But 3- 5 eggs a week is usually the range. I’ve had outliers that would lay 6 a week.
In summer mine would eat hardly any food, I could gomonths off a 50lb bag as they would just eat everything in the yard. Problem with them free roaming like that is “predators”. We have coyotes and foxes here in Tennessee. Never once has a fox or coyote killed one of my chickens. Every chicken I’ve ever lost has been a neighborhood dog that has gotten loose.
So you have to ask yourself, how many chickens do you allow the dog to keep coming back and killing before you shoot the dog? Will you shoot the dog? If you don’t think you could shoot them, then you can’t protect them. Because the dog will get out again, it knows there are chickens there it can play with/kill.