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?
My understanding is that Costco uses their rotisserie chickens as a loss leader. They make it as cheap as they feasibly can, and then they recycle the meat from the unsold ones into as many different prepared products as possible. Probably other stores are just matching their pricing structure.