My grandson has chickens, we love the eggs but it really isn’t all that cost effective if you don’t feed them a lot of leftovers.
I used to have chickens and I didn’t feed them much I let them out during the day and I kept a light in their pen and they had all the bugs they could eat.
Our barred rock girls and Mr. and Mrs. Turkey eat their weight in ants and weeds now. We set them on an ant hill and well...poor ants!
Supplement the diet with weeds from the garden. That really helps cut down on the feed needed.