Any good advise for starting a chicken farm?

[easteregger96]

I don't know if this is the right place to post this but, my husband brought something up to me the other night. He said "hey watya think about starting a chicken farm?" I thought it was a good idea but we don't know where and how to start. We have a 40 acre farm and my husband is getting where he is not going to be able to work much longer(because of health problems) so he came up with the idea so we would still have an income and do something we like. With 3 kids still in school we can't exactly go into retirement. Neither of us is old enough yet( only in our 30's). We would like to have several thing available on our chicken farm like selling fertilized eggs, selling chicks, selling meat birds, selling full blood breeds. Any help would be appreciated. We live in Indiana. There is also a possibility of us being willing to raise chickens for big companies too( where they provide the chickens, eggs,etc. and pay us to raise them for them).

 

[CluckyJay]

Have you thought about maybe free-range eggs? It would probably require a lot of work for lots of chickens. You could probably sell to a few large or small stores.

 

[CluckyJay]

You could use chicken tractors to keep the birds safe but it would take a lot of moving them around to fresh ground. That or a few really good livestock dogs. You'd need to fence it the property though. Those dogs can take off in a flash.

 

[CluckyJay]

You could even branch out into specialty turkey and duck, too. Maybe even sell some point of lay hens as well.

 

[ECBW]

Wow, sorry to hear about your situation. I would only suggest that you really check the numbers before investing in a full scale venture. The chicken farmers in my area all have other jobs. Many do so they can have health benefits. Chicken/egg farms just do not pay enough.

 

[Oregon Blues]

You've never heard the joke that goes like this:

If I had a million bucks, I'd just keep farming until it was all gone.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Mac in Wisco is a regular here. During the server move, I think his second BYC page, showing his 2000 hen operation got lost, or most of it.

Anyhow, If you just having a chit chat in a virtual world, this thread is fine. But if you want real world guidance, advice, and maybe take a field trip to see what Mac does and how he does it, you might want to pm him and open a conversation. Mac and his wife a both retired military, so they have pensions, but their operation is indeed profitable. That is where I'd start if I were serious about any business operation. I spend lots of time observing and taking scrupulous notes at folk's places who are already doing it successfully.

Otherwise, things like this are merely pipe dreams and/or hobbies, which are nice too.

 

[Randy]

You want to know how to make a small fortune with a chicken farm. Start out with a large fortune.

On a more serious note if your husband is having healh problems and can't work I'm hope you are prepared to work your butt off cause runing even a small scale operation is nothing but work work work.

 

[EweSheep]

2x

Mac in Wisco is a regular here. During the server move, I think his second BYC page, showing his 2000 hen operation got lost, or most of it.

Anyhow, If you just having a chit chat in a virtual world, this thread is fine. But if you want real world guidance, advice, and maybe take a field trip to see what Mac does and how he does it, you might want to pm him and open a conversation. Mac and his wife a both retired military, so they have pensions, but their operation is indeed profitable. That is where I'd start if I were serious about any business operation. I spend lots of time observing and taking scrupulous notes at folk's places who are already doing it successfully.

Otherwise, things like this are merely pipe dreams and/or hobbies, which are nice too.

 

[easteregger96]

Mac in Wisco is a regular here. During the server move, I think his second BYC page, showing his 2000 hen operation got lost, or most of it.

Anyhow, If you just having a chit chat in a virtual world, this thread is fine. But if you want real world guidance, advice, and maybe take a field trip to see what Mac does and how he does it, you might want to pm him and open a conversation. Mac and his wife a both retired military, so they have pensions, but their operation is indeed profitable. That is where I'd start if I were serious about any business operation. I spend lots of time observing and taking scrupulous notes at folk's places who are already doing it successfully.

Otherwise, things like this are merely pipe dreams and/or hobbies, which are nice too.

thank you I might do that.