- Mar 11, 2012
- 110
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yeah that might be a little low . are you going to raise them to full size ? i read on here or some other forum some 1 was selling for $2 a pound
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since you did all the slaughtering yourself, did you have to be inspected i no in PA there is some clause that if you do less than 1000 birds you don't have to be, but im not sure how it works.When we did meaties, we took pre-orders with a deposit equal to 20% of the total order. I'd highly recommend you do the same. We currently sell chicks, and take deposits from people for those, too--even before the hatch. Otherwise people totally flake on you.
We also sold our birds for $14 each, which was a profit of $1.25/bird after cost of the chick, shipping the chick, electricity and bedding for the brooder, feed, packaging costs, etc. Since we did all the slaughtering and packaging ourselves, we decided that $1.25 wasn't enough per bird to be worth it for us.
edited to answer your original question:
This time of year is always our low point for chicken numbers. Right now we have 51 total birds, which includes three roosters. However, there are 13 chicks in the brooder, a broody hen sitting on four eggs (it's her first time, she only gets a few), 17 eggs in the incubator (that entire hatch is already spoken for, deposit paid), 19 started pullets for pick up in April, and 12 meaties (just for our family) to pick up the same time as the pullets. Also, plans to put a clutch of Marans eggs in the 'bator after this clutch hatches--the current eggs in the 'bator are just there to test the 'bator before I put expensive shipped hatching eggs in there. So, by May, we should go from 51 birds to 95. And then by July, all the roosters and meaties will be gone and we'll be back at 75 birds, which we'll carry through fall until we cull the older layers around October, or whenever they moult.
Here in Ohio, it's totally legal to do the slaughtering yourself if you do fewer than xxx (I forget how many, it's lots) of birds and the customer comes to your property where you did the slaughter to pick them up. It's actually MUCH harder to have someone else do it, because you can't have someone else do the slaughter and then sell the birds unless the processor is USDA inspected, and those places are few and far between.since you did all the slaughtering yourself, did you have to be inspected i no in PA there is some clause that if you do less than 1000 birds you don't have to be, but im not sure how it works.