150 Lbs of Chicken!

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Are these live weights or dressed weights?

Completely cleaned and about to be wrapped. They go from the scale to the butcher paper.

This is a good question because I was thinking about "weighing the bird" and something I have to figure when I think about homegrown cost compared to grocery store chicken cost is that I cut WAY more off the bird before I weigh it, namely, I hack the neck quite deeply and I remove the tail thing and abdominal fat. I'm thinking the weight of a grocery store bird is including the neck and inners that come stuffed inside, right? All that and more is gone from my birds when I weigh them.

Before I embarked upon this project, a friend told me that his homegrown birds usually yielded enough meat for his family of four to have two meals... I just BBQ'd a 7.5 pounder tonight, 7.5 pounds by my standards, and that is absolutely enough meat for MY family of four to have three meals. My six year old doesn't go much for chicken but my nine year old eats every bit as much as I do. I always joke to the six year old that when he gets bigger he will be able to join our He-Man-Chicken-Eaters-Club.
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Question is 25 birds X 9 weeks = 150 lbs of meat - so the question is this how much feed did it take from start to finish to get these birds this size - How many / much total Lbs FROM day one to processing FOR THIS TOTAL OF BIRDS FOR 9 WEEKS


I 'm just trying to see if I'm in the same range bracket more or less
but I only have feed infront of them for 8 hrs a day and water 24/7

Thank Al.

Just doing some guessing here…lets say each bird eats around 2 pounds of feed a week (which is more than my layers eat but they also forage) and I pay around $14.00 for a 50 LB bag of feed.

So 9 weeks x $14 = $126 of feed and $126 ÷ 150LB of meat = 84¢ a pound.

Then you will have to add in the cost of the bird…which is usually around $1.50 per bird x 25 = $37.50

$37.5 ÷ 150 = 25¢

84¢ + 25¢ = $1.09 per pound

So a 5 pound bird would cost = $5.45

Edited to fix a miss calculation.
 
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BettyR,

While you were figuring that out, I think I was sitting in a boring meeting at work doing the same thing. I used end-of-season feed prices which were closer to $16 per bag in my area, and I added in the cost of the birds and shipping which was $41. I came up with somewhere between $1.30 and $1.70 per pound.
 
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Yes prices are going to vary depending on location and retailers will charge what the traffic will bare. I live in a small farming community and the traffic here won't bare much...the $14.00 I quoted for a 50 pound bag of feed is higher than what I actually pay....I thought I was leaving wiggle room in there but I guess not.
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I don't know about other states but in Texas the chickens have to be processed at a USDA inspected facility in order to be sold to the public.

I personally don't sell any meat but I do know of other people in my area who raise organic style chickens that do sell their chickens in a co-op along with grass fed beef, pastured pork, lamb and goats. We get our beef and pork from them...I've never tried the goat and I hear it's very good...I may give it a try someday.
 
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You'd be surprised how fast that meat will go though. I did 22 birds in the spring, and we are almost out of meat (just me, my wife, and a baby.) Luckily, I have 25 more in the tractor right now!
 
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Yes, the weight of the roaster/broiler at the store includes all the stuff they 'stuff' inside AS WELL AS up to 10-12% of a brine solution injected into the bird to make it more juicy. If you look on the package it will say how much a percentage of the weight is water injected.

Great job - I have 23 of the vultures out there now with another 5 wks to go before processing day...
 
"vultures".... I like that. I thought they ate such an amazing amount in comparison to our laying birds that I started telling my wife, "I'll be back inside in a few minutes. I have to go feed the pigs!"
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