Raising meaties on the cheap.

[JoJo 95]

Does anyone know a way to raise meaties to sell without spending more money than you're making. Feed is expensive after while and they usually cause you to lose money.

 

[Tugger1]

Find someone who sells chop. We bought our food this year, next year we are going for chop.

 

[Peruvian]

Huh?

Yes you have to spend money on feed up front but then you have the value of the chicken you raised. How do you loose money?

I paid $105 for 500 lbs of feed for 30 chickens. 29 made it to the freezer for about 130 lbs of whole chickens. I obviously had some other costs (electricity for brooder lights, amortized costs of the tractor & plucker, etc) but $1.35-1.50/lb or so isn't expensive for non-certified organic chicken.

 

[KatyTheChickenLady]

what is chop?

 

[JoJo 95]

bump

 

[crperdue]

It's like the stuff left over after you use the bush hog
or weedeater. Its chopped up greens.

I'd look for a way to get lots of scrap food. School
cafeteria? restaurant? Maybe a produce distributor
has lots of food they throwout that could be feed
to your birds.

But even then your going to have to buy some feed.
Set your price where you do make a profit and
explain to customers why your product is better
than whats in the grocery store. You have to beat
them on quality because they will always beat you
on price.

 

[Jeremy Parker]

I have dual purpose birds and still make money on the few I sell.
I just tell my customers were could they find a better product then i'm selling?

Would you not pay for quality?? I know I would look at the junk you get in the stores??

 

[scubaforlife]

All told, my last batch cost me about $6.50/bird. They averaged 4.5lbs. That's around $1.45/lbs. Not sure what you mean by on the cheap, do you mean free?

 

[eKo_birdies]

like others have said.... set your prices so that you do make money. you are only losing money if you are selling them for less than you are raising them for.

 

[Ariel301]

Get lawn clippings from people who have lawns with no chemicals.
Get scrap food from a school/restaurant/grocery store.
If you have a local brewery or distillery, they will often give away their used grain mash for free--I do this, I get about a ton a month for free, way more than I can use (it makes great compost once it starts to rot, which is fast in hot weather since it is wet) I use it as basically my birds' primary diet with some other stuff to supplement. I feed it to my dairy goats also. It's around 20% protein. The downside at least with mine is that it has to be picked up whenever they have it, which is weekly, and the brewery is a bit of a drive, but we have a group that splits it up and the people who do the driving sell some of it to get their gas money, so it works out great.