Starting a pastured poultry business...

[rainplace]

Quote:
Would you share more of the economic and permitting specifics? I'd be interested in hearing them. Did you do any marketing? Where are you selling them? (Right now we are farm pick-up only.) Is there a thread I can look at where you've written it down and I missed it? Link it! I want to know!

Under our current permit we cannot sell more than 1000 birds in a single year. http://agr.wa.gov/Marketing/SmallFarm/DOCS/6-PoultryProcessingAndMarketingRegulations.pdf

 

[rainplace]

Quote:
Good luck!

 

[PotterWatch]

Quote:
Would you share more of the economic and permitting specifics? I'd be interested in hearing them. Did you do any marketing? Where are you selling them? (Right now we are farm pick-up only.) Is there a thread I can look at where you've written it down and I missed it? Link it! I want to know!

Under our current permit we cannot sell more than 1000 birds in a single year. http://agr.wa.gov/Marketing/SmallFarm/DOCS/6-PoultryProcessingAndMarketingRegulations.pdf

Luckily, we are allowed to sell up to 20k birds per year as outlined in the USDA's producer/grower-20,000 limit exemption (the State of California allows us to use the USDA guidelines without any permits or other hoops to jump through), though we don't plan on coming anywhere near that number. I haven't started a thread specifically to outline our operation at this point. If you click on website under my name, that takes you to our farm website.

We haven't done any marketing at this point other than contacting some local CSAs and letting them know of our existence. Most of our customers have come to us through word-of-mouth. We have a couple pick-up locations for people to get their birds since we have drawn people from a fairly large area. We are right at the crux of four different counties with one more just a bit further south, and we are one of only three farms that we know of selling a similar product on a similar scale. So far, we have sold out of birds many weeks before they are actually ready. I hope that trend continues! We tried getting into some farmer's markets but found resistance from county health departments. The counties want us to be inspected but of course, we aren't inspected because of the size of our operation. We have abandoned that avenue at this point because of those difficulties.

Our costs are currently around $10/bird not including what we have spent on equipment such as our plucker, scalder, processing tables, tractors and brooders, or the labor involved in getting them market-ready. We sell ours for $4.65/lb for whole birds. The birds are raised on organic feed and are put in tractors on pasture land at 3wks old (we also offer soy-free with a minimum order of 30birds for some local groups that really want soy-free chicken). We process around 7.5-8wks old and get an average of 5 to 5.5lbs dressed weight. At this point it really is a family farm with mainly myself, but also my husband, and our two children doing the work. We do have some other help ready for when we are processing many more birds every week.

I have raised meat birds for our personal consumption for a few years but this is our first foray into raising them for profit. So far, we have been doing well and I think with the current demand for organically and pasture-raised local chicken, we should be able to get our goal within a year.

 

[rainplace]

Wow, I didn't realize the laws were so different. We cannot sell off the farm or more than 1000 birds until we have a WSDA inspected facility, basically a commercial type kitchen for evisceration, cooling and packaging.

I like how how you contacted CSA's in your area as a way to get your product out there. I also like your "food hosting" idea.

Once we can sell our birds off the farm, I believe our sales will increase significantly.

Thank you for sharing more about your operation. I look forward to the day you outline more.

Quote:
Would you share more of the economic and permitting specifics? I'd be interested in hearing them. Did you do any marketing? Where are you selling them? (Right now we are farm pick-up only.) Is there a thread I can look at where you've written it down and I missed it? Link it! I want to know!

Under our current permit we cannot sell more than 1000 birds in a single year. http://agr.wa.gov/Marketing/SmallFarm/DOCS/6-PoultryProcessingAndMarketingRegulations.pdf

Luckily, we are allowed to sell up to 20k birds per year as outlined in the USDA's producer/grower-20,000 limit exemption (the State of California allows us to use the USDA guidelines without any permits or other hoops to jump through), though we don't plan on coming anywhere near that number. I haven't started a thread specifically to outline our operation at this point. If you click on website under my name, that takes you to our farm website.

We haven't done any marketing at this point other than contacting some local CSAs and letting them know of our existence. Most of our customers have come to us through word-of-mouth. We have a couple pick-up locations for people to get their birds since we have drawn people from a fairly large area. We are right at the crux of four different counties with one more just a bit further south, and we are one of only three farms that we know of selling a similar product on a similar scale. So far, we have sold out of birds many weeks before they are actually ready. I hope that trend continues! We tried getting into some farmer's markets but found resistance from county health departments. The counties want us to be inspected but of course, we aren't inspected because of the size of our operation. We have abandoned that avenue at this point because of those difficulties.

Our costs are currently around $10/bird not including what we have spent on equipment such as our plucker, scalder, processing tables, tractors and brooders, or the labor involved in getting them market-ready. We sell ours for $4.65/lb for whole birds. The birds are raised on organic feed and are put in tractors on pasture land at 3wks old (we also offer soy-free with a minimum order of 30birds for some local groups that really want soy-free chicken). We process around 7.5-8wks old and get an average of 5 to 5.5lbs dressed weight. At this point it really is a family farm with mainly myself, but also my husband, and our two children doing the work. We do have some other help ready for when we are processing many more birds every week.

I have raised meat birds for our personal consumption for a few years but this is our first foray into raising them for profit. So far, we have been doing well and I think with the current demand for organically and pasture-raised local chicken, we should be able to get our goal within a year.

 

[Mrs. Mucket]

Rainplace, I'm not sure where you live, but I think there are a couple of mobile WSDA poultry processors (Pierce and Skagit/Island counties?) and some private farms that have WSDA poultry processing facilities. Sometimes it is just $1 per chicken to use them and then you can sell poultry away from your farm with the appropriate local permits. Your extension office might know where the nearest processor is.

 

[rainplace]

Mrs. Mucket :

Rainplace, I'm not sure where you live, but I think there are a couple of mobile WSDA poultry processors (Pierce and Skagit/Island counties?) and some private farms that have WSDA poultry processing facilities. Sometimes it is just $1 per chicken to use them and then you can sell poultry away from your farm with the appropriate local permits. Your extension office might know where the nearest processor is.

We don't have access to one in our county. We're trying to get one built, but I don't know if it's going to happen, and we're not holding our breath. If we can get the toilet issue solved, we have a building to put one for our own use. I still don't know why we can't use a composting toilet or a porta-potty. Everyone washes their hands before touching anything anyway...​