Your costs will depend largely on how you house and feed them, and your losses due to illness or preditation. I got 52 turkeys (ordered and paid for 50, the sent 2 extras) and butchered 45 in 5 months. I have raised broilers and butchered all of them, and I have lost up to 10%. I think I'm lucky or doing well as I have heard of much greater losses. Plan the growth for a time when heat is not extream for your area as the broilers do not tolorate that. If it gets hot feed them only at night, and to make it easy for me (shift worker) I do this right from the start of them not having 24 hour feed. Probably for the birds this is the easy way too, they never have to adjust.
Selling, well I could sell more chicken than I could raise at $3/lbs. Broilers generally you get 2:1 ratio on your grain so if your feed cost is say $10 a 50 lbs bag (just to pay you the gas to bring it home and make the math easy) you would get 25 lbs of meat out of that which would be about 4 or 5 of your chicks started if you count in losses. You could sell that meat for $75 and after you take off the $10 for the feed and $7.50 for chick costs your left with $57.50 to pay your electric bill, the vitamins for the water (I found losses too high without this) and your equipment wear. So yes it's viable but it's a special market and it's alot of work. I process myself as there is no one close here to do it for me, if you want that done out you have to pay aout $2 each so you would loose another $8 or so in that.
Once someone has had a farm raised chicken they will not go back to the bulk raised store bought. If you want to ensure that extra taste buy some high quality alfalfa hay and shake out the leaves for them daily so they can munch on that, or raise them in movable pens and let them graze pasture. Your feed costs total will not go down however as they will take longer to bulk up so eat less grain but for a longer time to get to the same weight.
Selling, well I could sell more chicken than I could raise at $3/lbs. Broilers generally you get 2:1 ratio on your grain so if your feed cost is say $10 a 50 lbs bag (just to pay you the gas to bring it home and make the math easy) you would get 25 lbs of meat out of that which would be about 4 or 5 of your chicks started if you count in losses. You could sell that meat for $75 and after you take off the $10 for the feed and $7.50 for chick costs your left with $57.50 to pay your electric bill, the vitamins for the water (I found losses too high without this) and your equipment wear. So yes it's viable but it's a special market and it's alot of work. I process myself as there is no one close here to do it for me, if you want that done out you have to pay aout $2 each so you would loose another $8 or so in that.
Once someone has had a farm raised chicken they will not go back to the bulk raised store bought. If you want to ensure that extra taste buy some high quality alfalfa hay and shake out the leaves for them daily so they can munch on that, or raise them in movable pens and let them graze pasture. Your feed costs total will not go down however as they will take longer to bulk up so eat less grain but for a longer time to get to the same weight.
