Beginning a Poultry Farm/Hatchery - Thoughts and advice?

[Prairie Hills Homestead]

Hello all! So I started my breeding career with labrador retrievers. I raise and breed them but I will be honest. The cost to raise quality labs or dogs in general is astronomical. With that being said, I have found a love for another animal... chickens.. I am thinking of turning them into a business.
I own 7 acres (option to buy another 30 acres) and plan on building 8-10 10x12 coops with 10x30 runs for 30 birds each. I want to offer these breeds -
Black Copper Marans - selected for the darkest eggs I can find and breed continually, secondary to SOP
Silver Leghorns - for striking plumage color and prolific eggs
Blue Australorps - again color and prolific layers
Whiting Blue (yes I know they are a hybrid, it will take some time to breed to what I want and continue to produce) - color of egg and prolific layers
Meyer's Sapphire Jewel, same thing as the Whiting true blues.
Crosses between the blue layers and BCM and Blue Australorps and Blue layers -

I am looking to have about 250-300 birds.
I plan on selling eating eggs, hatching eggs, day old chicks, feathered out pullets and cockerels, laying hens and roosters when swapping out or new layers come up.
I know I need my NPIP certification and looking to get my commercial one so I can sell retail eggs.

Has anyone done this in here and if so would you mind offering advice or your opinions? I am in South Central Montana. There aren't many hatcheries around here. Some are but I don't plan to offer the same birds so I am not truly competing with them.. like someone wants silverrudds? I don't carry them but ****** does.

Thanks in advance!

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I had to shut mine down. Not enough demand, couldn't get the prices I needed to break even after accounting for taxes licensing and all the rest. Ultimately not worth the hassle. Perhaps not the best resource to go to for advice. But yes, the above is true. Risk big, potentially lose big.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I'll add further that start up costs now are about as high as I've ever seen, not much better than last year (except lumber prices) - so the time to recoop your investment will be that much longer, or insurmountable over a reasonable time frame should prioces return to near prior levels. Gasoline has fallen (so transport costs are down). When the war finally ends in the Ukraine, feed prices should return to normal. AI winds down in the US? Egg supply will come back.

OTOH, if this is the "new normal", it may look completely brilliant to get in now and sell a premium product, assuming you can capture enough of the local market to sell ll you produce.

My crystal ball is notoriously unreliable.

 

[SourRoses]

I'm not sure if it still applies, but when I was young, I read some advice in a fiction series that had some generally good tidbits at times (ok, it was a horse series ), that stuck with me.
Regarding the plethora of horse farms in Kentucky. It went something like...

The farms that built up slowly, gaining experience, bloodlines, and reinvesting the profits back into the farm infrastructure, they survived the downturns and stood the test of time.

The farms that were launched quickly, mostly on credit, so that they had to turn a profit quickly or fail... well, they failed.
Any one incident (fire, illness) or period of economic downturn could be the end, and the owners were ruined.

Now I'm not sure if this still applies to the modern world. I got all my business education from horse books
Some startups nowadays seem able to launch on a wing and a prayer and somehow make it. Do we know how many fail?
Rather than saying "don't", I'm encouraging you to consider how. Huge investments from the get-go may not be logical.

Here's where, in my own life, I try to find a super logical, strategic thinker to bounce things off of.
I think @U_Stormcrow might fit the bill. Consulting fees may apply (hehe).

 

[Percheron chick]

My concern would be shipping. How to efficiently get birds out. What's the nearest hub? Does everything go to Salt lake or Denver adding an additional day in transit? Do you physically have to deliver them to the airport? I was shocked to learn that Privett makes the 2 hour drive to Lubbock Texas to get chicks on planes. Do you have staff and time to do that? Most of the big hatcheries are off the beaten path so they make it work but the coordination has to be a full time job. I'd start with just shipping hatching eggs and whatever you can sell locally. Work hard on quality and prove your birds worth.

 

[Silexian]

You seem to have a good plan. You are correct in offering breeds were you are not directly competing with hatcheries and farm and home stores. Peoples interests in colored eggs is staying fairly steady. So another good business idea. In my operation. Even though more people now prefer silver barnevelders over gold. The desire for a dark egg layer, to add color to their egg baskets. Is outweighing the feather color preference, for now. So even though I prefer the gold barnevelders and have put a lot of work into them. I have found some quality silver barnevelders. So I will start offering silver along with my gold barnevelders. Demand will determine how much I expand or shrink the two flocks. Wishing you the best in your business venture. It will definitely be a roller coaster ride. Hopefully you get to put your arms up and yell with excitement. More than you have to lean over the railing.

 

[Prairie Hills Homestead]

I'll add further that start up costs now are about as high as I've ever seen, not much better than last year (except lumber prices) - so the time to recoop your investment will be that much longer, or insurmountable over a reasonable time frame should prioces return to near prior levels. Gasoline has fallen (so transport costs are down). When the war finally ends in the Ukraine, feed prices should return to normal. AI winds down in the US? Egg supply will come back.

OTOH, if this is the "new normal", it may look completely brilliant to get in now and sell a premium product, assuming you can capture enough of the local market to sell ll you produce.

My crystal ball is notoriously unreliable.

I definitely understand that one! I am grateful to have the ability to build the coops and runs and I can always re-use them. I am also extremely grateful for a local farmer who mixes his own chicken feed and it is inexpensive and amazing. Straight from his own land and crops.

 

[Iluveggers]

I think the Whiting True Blue is actually a breed, not a hybrid. (Just not an APA breed). They should breed true.

 

[Sally PB]

I would think the first step would be to find out what licenses/permits you'd need in your area for what you want to do. Were I you, I'd buy that other 30 acres, for sure.

 

[raingarden]

My concern would be shipping. How to efficiently get birds out. What's the nearest hub? Does everything go to Salt lake or Denver adding an additional day in transit? Do you physically have to deliver them to the airport? I was shocked to learn that Privett makes the 2 hour drive to Lubbock Texas to get chicks on planes. Do you have staff and time to do that? Most of the big hatcheries are off the beaten path so they make it work but the coordination has to be a full time job. I'd start with just shipping hatching eggs and whatever you can sell locally. Work hard on quality and prove your birds worth.

We used to ship fancy goldfish from Hawaii all over the country. Once we were set up with FedEx they would pick the boxes up at our door. Overnight to the West Coast and Second-Day everywhere else. Without FedEx we would not have had a business.

So I started my breeding career with labrador retrievers. I raise and breed them but I will be honest. The cost to raise quality labs or dogs in general is astronomical. With that being said, I have found a love for another animal... chickens.. I am thinking of turning them into a business.

I'm sure the cost of a good lab makes dogs look like a pretty darn good business to a chicken breeder.