Cost of Raising Meat Birds ~vs~ Store-bought

The guy at our farmer's market sells whole dressed chickens for a flat $12.00 each. No organs, no extras, just a clean fresh chicken that was fed good food, and was humanely raised and processed.

You can make a living selling barnyard birds. The problem is that a lot of the time you're either making money because you have show stock and can sell a chicken for $50 or you're making very, very little per bird and need to sell a lot of them to make your money back.

If you want to make a living selling chickens, ducks, etc then don't expect any sort of profit the first three years. You'll be running things like a business for the most part. The first year or two is spent building up your "inventory" and customer base. The three year mark is sink or swim for businesses and according to most places, two thirds of businesses never reach that point and go under before then.

In theory in three years you'll have already spent money on your buildings, pens and breeding stock. You'll have an idea as to what does and doesn't sell in the area, where you can advertise and what prices you can get.

I refuse to let anyone tell me you can't make money doing something. There are people out there making money selling worms and boxes of dog poo they mail to targets you're annoyed at. Where I work we even sell a really popular book about owls that includes a tiny sample of real owl vomit.

If you can make money selling boxes of dog poo and owl vomit then you can make money selling chickens. Just don't expect it to feel the same as a hobby. You get to fuss with all the annoying little nuances that comes with running a business.

I've spent all this year building up my flocks and spending insane amounts of money. I've made costly mistakes that have put me even farther in the red. I've built and rebuilt my pens, met with people in the area, set up a website and looked in on the local shows. I know what goals I want to accomplish and have an idea as to how to pull that off. I'm scouring the internet looking for more ways to make money (custom made painted eggs and feather calligraphy pens, gold foil quail wishing bone jewelry, etc) and I'm constantly looking for ways to cut expenses without sacrificing quality, like raising our own feed.

Hopefully two years from now I'll be able to consider this a stable source of supplemental, if not complete, income. And if I fail at making it profitable I can always go back to just having fun spending money on my birds

Quote:
I have to say, this post has made me both laugh and think harder than I have in a long time.

EDIT: Found this http://www.alessandraexposito.com/chickenskulls.html Kinda creepy, but really cool.

Sure those are creepy, but beyond awesome.

Now I need to order another batch of Cornish-Rock...

What would they be called? Chickalopes?

wow, those are really neat!

This inspired me to (finally) butcher our extra Barred Rock rooster. In a few days I'll hopefully have pictures of a decorated skull to post up

I still want to order another batch of meat chickens. I just can't get myself to build -another- brooder pen for the space.

Must find a way...

We calculated raising meat birds one year and it came out about even as far as money spent just based on feed. We did not include housing, labor for care and butchering (which we did on our own). The actual feed cost versus buying one in the store was about the same.

A lot of work goes into raising your own meat, so you never really get ahead as far as profit goes for personal consumption. I feel we win because we know exactly what went into our meat and how they were raised, so our family has a healthy meal. That is more important than the costs to me.

Jody

We used scrap material to build a 16x24 chicken house and finished it for $50.
We built a another chicken house out of an large old satellte dish and cut our own logs. Only paid for nails and chicken wire. Used scap wood for the coop.
I am careful to feed my chickens scraps and also have learned what plants on the property can be used for the chickens and rabbits which cut
down on the feed costs.
We used recycled items for feeders and waterers.