Arkansas folks speak up.........

[Arkansas81]

Dying chicks is more prevalent up north. My ex sister in law bought my daughter some when she was up north, they all turned out fine except they all were roosters! They all went to freezer camp, that was our first chicken experience. Luckily my daughter was to young to know what was going on. Now shes older so of course she loves every single one of her chickens, never knew you could get so attached to these lil buggers.

Its sad that this law even needed to be created......sad sad sad

 

[FreedomLover]

Since hubby is stuck at home due to medical issues he's been looking for things to do. Especially on cold wet dreary days like today.

Well ... we've been discussing this whole fodder thing and the past couple days (when he's been outside building a new set of rabbit hutches) I've been researching and crunching numbers. So, last night when we were sitting here in the living room, I started showing him some of my research.

I don't want to get into the boring numbers part here, but suffice it to say, that my numbers convinced hubby that hatching chicks and feeding them using primarily fodder until fryer age (i.e. 16-20 weeks) would be so much more economically viable for us than buying chicken at the store or feeding them on chick feed. Needless to say, since he's been home, money has been getting tighter and tighter so we can not afford to go spend $40 or more on an incubator. Well, since I was able to convince him we needed to start incubating and hatching our own, I pulled up the home-made incubator page and started showing him what is required.

He's outside right now searching through our sheds for pieces and parts and gadgets and gizmo's required to build an incubator!

We might be putting some of our fertilized eggs into an incubator come morning!

 

[AmpersatChick]

Never thought I might be interested in hatching chicks, especially since I don't even have my first batch yet, but all this talk and pictures of chicks hatching is making me think it will be in my future!

 

[cmnrallye79]

Freedom lover I'd love to see your numbers.

 

[FreedomLover]

Freedom lover I'd love to see your numbers.

Well, it's all a "theory" at this point and I wouldn't want to get anyone to get mad at me because "she said...." which is why I didn't post my numbers before!

That being said .... I can not verify these numbers. They are all hypothetical and based on strictly numbers I've seen posted elsewhere. Reality, as we all know, likes to throw in curve balls every now and then, and they could be totally off.

Also, I will be "starting" them with chick starter and begin introducing small amounts of fodder within two weeks of hatch. I know they won't eat a full tray of fodder as chicks. However, for the sake of argument I used 14 weeks worth of fodder for my calculations because I'd rather "over-estimate" then "under-estimate". My goal is to get them on "strictly" fodder as soon as possible to cut costs.

My eggs are "free" since I have a rooster who is doing his job admirably. They are just barnyard mix chickens so they aren't really "worth" anything as far as selling, except maybe $2.00 a dozen for eating eggs if I could sell them. IMO it's in our best interest to at least give this a shot!

Here are my "numbers" -

1 bag of chick starter - $15.00
1# of seed per day for 98 days - $30 (based on 2 - 50# bag of wheat seed @ $15)

I am not including any other costs such as electricity, water, etc. Only what it would hypothetically cost to feed them. Oh, and 1# of seed should equal 6# of fodder within 7 days. So 1 tray of fodder (6#'s) should take 1# of seed.

So for $45.00 worth of feed I will hopefully be able to grow 25 chicks to fryer age of 16-20 weeks.

If each chicken weighs an average of 3# dressed, that would give me 75#'s of meat.

And I don't know about you, but to us 75#'s of meat for $45.00 is a bargain!

And, once again .... I can not verify these numbers. They are all hypothetical.

I do plan on tracking this whole process once we get started! I have a blog via the rabbittalk forums and once I get started I'll be posting all the information there. I'll be sure to post a link here when I do.

Oh, and we did go and purchase a couple of parts for making the incubator (total cost $13.87) but I'm not including this cost either, since I'll be using it multiple times.

 

[draye]

Well, it's all a "theory" at this point and I wouldn't want to get anyone to get mad at me because "she said...." which is why I didn't post my numbers before!

That being said .... I can not verify these numbers. They are all hypothetical and based on strictly numbers I've seen posted elsewhere. Reality, as we all know, likes to throw in curve balls every now and then, and they could be totally off.

Also, I will be "starting" them with chick starter and begin introducing small amounts of fodder within two weeks of hatch. I know they won't eat a full tray of fodder as chicks. However, for the sake of argument I used 14 weeks worth of fodder for my calculations because I'd rather "over-estimate" then "under-estimate". My goal is to get them on "strictly" fodder as soon as possible to cut costs.

My eggs are "free" since I have a rooster who is doing his job admirably. They are just barnyard mix chickens so they aren't really "worth" anything as far as selling, except maybe $2.00 a dozen for eating eggs if I could sell them. IMO it's in our best interest to at least give this a shot!

Here are my "numbers" -

1 bag of chick starter - $15.00
1# of seed per day for 98 days - $30 (based on 2 - 50# bag of wheat seed @ $15)

I am not including any other costs such as electricity, water, etc. Only what it would hypothetically cost to feed them. Oh, and 1# of seed should equal 6# of fodder within 7 days. So 1 tray of fodder (6#'s) should take 1# of seed.

So for $45.00 worth of feed I will hopefully be able to grow 25 chicks to fryer age of 16-20 weeks.

If each chicken weighs an average of 3# dressed, that would give me 75#'s of meat.

And I don't know about you, but to us 75#'s of meat for $45.00 is a bargain!

And, once again .... I can not verify these numbers. They are all hypothetical.

I do plan on tracking this whole process once we get started! I have a blog via the rabbittalk forums and once I get started I'll be posting all the information there. I'll be sure to post a link here when I do.

Oh, and we did go and purchase a couple of parts for making the incubator (total cost $13.87) but I'm not including this cost either, since I'll be using it multiple times.

Where do you find chick stater for $15.00? Local co-op has game bird for $17.50 and chick start for 17.95.

 

[caj1985]

Where do you find chick stater for $15.00? Local co-op has game bird for $17.50 and chick start for 17.95.

We have a local feed store that carries feed from a Missouri mill that runs $12 - $14 a bag for layer crumble and unmedicated starter. The only issue with it is there is a lost of really fine crumble so I was having a lot of wastage. I am going to fermented feed which should be perfectly fine with the dust and excellent dry for the newly hatched quail.

 

[cmnrallye79]

Question what is the average butchered weight of your hypothetical chicken?

 

[FreedomLover]

Question what is the average butchered weight of your hypothetical chicken?

Don't know for sure what it will really be, but the document I read on heritage chickens said that the average for a "fryer age" chicken was 2.5 - 4 pounds so I selected on the low side without going to the lowest with 3 lbs. "hypothetical" weight.

Here is a direct link to the document on the ALBC (American Livestock Breeds Conservancy)

http://www.albc-usa.org/documents/cookingwheritagechicken.pdf


Quote:

 

[FreedomLover]

Where do you find chick stater for $15.00? Local co-op has game bird for $17.50 and chick start for 17.95.

The local feed store has un-medicated "game-bird starter" for $15.00.

But even adding $2.50 won't really make so much of a difference in the over-all scheme of things as to knock my hypothetical situation of it's tracks.

Like I said ... this is all hypothetical until such a time as I actually can put it into practice.


However, we are feeding our current batch of chicks, age 7 weeks, approximately 4 #'s of pellets a day. If I can replace these pellets with 4#'s of fodder instead there is a huge cost savings over-all. As a matter of fact, they were introduced to their first little bit of fodder today and they appear to like it!

Pelleted Feed

• 50# @ 15.00 = $0.30 per lb.
• 4#'s @ $0.30 per lb. = $1.20 per day

Fodder Feed

• 45# of Seed is approximately equal to 270#'s of fodder = $22.00
• 4#'s of fodder @ $0.08 per lb. = $0.32 per day

Assuming it takes 2 weeks to completely transition them (probably won't take that long but still) that would equal the following.

Pelleted Feed - $1.20 per day for 14 more days would be $16.80 worth of pellets

I'm not going to increase the amount of pellets being used because they will also be getting fodder during that 2 week period so they will likely be eating fewer pellets. However, I will up the fodder to 6#'s for the last 9 weeks. That will take the cost to $0.48 per day.

Fodder Feed - $0.48 per day for an additional 49 days (at which time they will be 16 weeks old) would be $23.52.

Grand total of feed for the next 9 weeks = $40.32

If I were to feed 4#'s of pellets for 14 days, then 6#'s of pellets for the remaining 49 days it would take a total of 350 #'s of pellets at a total cost of $105.00.

And here's another "variable" to throw into the mix. 6#'s of fodder per 1# of seed is on the low side. It's quite possible that the 1# of seed can exceed 6#'s thus reducing the cost even more.