California - Northern

[caychris]

Many of you know that I was going to school to be a midwife and took a sabbatical to have our last baby. I'm anxious to get started again and have one more big tuition fee left to pay. (It's a biggie too

) Actually, not that bad considering my other option was SF school of medicine and that is truly horrific in price. Not getting a loan is important to me and I don't want to burden my family either. I was considering selling my car but since it's the only transport around here - that really wasn't a viable option

Anyway, I finally figured out how to raise the money with the resources we already have.

I need to sell apx 300 started pullets for $20. The trick is getting enough birds growing all at once to amass the fee instead of saving $20 at a time all year long. My chickens only lay a collective 2 dozen hatching eggs a week but I can set 5 dozen every week in my nice incubator. I had the idea to ask if people are done hatching their eggs if they'd be willing to sell some hatching eggs for a lower price (or donate) to help fill my incubator. I'd like to fill it a tray a week for 9 weeks straight. That should get my numbers up high enough to have all the pullets I'd need to grow out and sell.

Can any of you see a problem with trying this? My goal is to just have chickens for the average back yard flock - egg layers. I have the room and I think if I marketed to the home school and charter school groups that I could sell the chickens pretty quickly. All the young cockerels would just have to get taken to the auction. I don't have the facilities to raise that many for meat myself. Once I was done raising the money for school I would go back to my small breed preservation flocks and focus on breed improvement.

I'd love feedback.

Sounds like a plan. What breeds are you looking to sell?

 

[chiqita]

Many of you know that I was going to school to be a midwife and took a sabbatical to have our last baby.  I'm anxious to get started again and have one more big tuition fee left to pay.  (It's a biggie too  )  Actually, not that bad considering my other option was SF school of medicine and that is truly horrific in price.  Not getting a loan is important to me and I don't want to burden my family either.  I was considering selling my car but since it's the only transport around here - that really wasn't a viable option    Anyway, I finally figured out how to raise the money with the resources we already have.

I need to sell apx 300 started pullets for $20.  The trick is getting enough birds growing all at once to amass the fee instead of saving $20 at a time all year long.   My chickens only lay a collective 2 dozen hatching eggs a week but I can set 5 dozen every week in my nice incubator.  I had the idea to ask if people are done hatching their eggs if they'd be willing to sell some hatching eggs for a lower price (or donate) to help fill my incubator.  I'd like to fill it a tray a week for 9 weeks straight.  That should get my numbers up high enough to have all the pullets I'd need to grow out and sell.

Can any of you see a problem with trying this?  My goal is to just have chickens for the average back yard flock - egg layers.  I have the room and I think if I marketed to the home school and charter school groups that I could sell the chickens pretty quickly.  All the young cockerels would just have to get taken to the auction.  I don't have the facilities to raise that many for meat myself.   Once I was done raising the money for school I would go back to my small breed preservation flocks and focus on breed improvement.

I'd love feedback.

Ok straight out practical here. 3 big questions.
1. Are you sure you can make $ on 20 a pullet? Think feed costs feeding both boys and girls until you can sex them, cost of incubating (this is a lot less for many eggs however) and electric for brooding. Spreadsheet this and make sure.
2. What are you going to do with 300-400 boys? You have to grow out for 2-4 months to sex depending on breed and they are only big enough for soup at that point. You may make more profit selling all at 5 straight run.

3. Can you sell 300 pullets??? We are past prime buying time and sales are sloooow. I could see selling 300 in January when its hard to get chicks or pullets can you hold them that long? People won't buy practical over xmas and no one wants to pay for feed for 3 months over winter knowing they won't get eggs till spring.

Smaller issue. You will get some sexing wrong whats your plan for oopsie roosters if you are done hatching and they ask 2 weeks later?

Those are the practical stuff id answer before putting thousands of eggs jn a bator.

 

[AmyPaperlady]

Dang, the person doesn't have the Marans available right now. The ad was for black Dutch bantams--I just asked about the Marans because they mentioned them in passing. Now I need to decide if I want another light brown egg layer. On the one hand, I want colors. On the other, testing a first-time broody with eggs I've bartered bolted veggies for instead of paying for shipped eggs is quite tempting...

 

[CackleJoy]

Sounds like a plan. What breeds are you looking to sell?

Any LF egg layer or dual purpose chicken whose eggs I can get my hands on. I have SFH (terrible hard to hatch but I'm learning), the CLB, EOB (only 2 hens), Ameraucana's (only the rooster is getting leakage in his hackles so I have to sell those as EE's until I get an SOP replacement), EE's and OE's. The English Orps are not laying yet. Since I only gather about 2 dozen eggs a week and am looking for others I have to be kind of open minded. So I would be willing to hatch ANYTHING that was a good dual purpose egg layer type bird.

Maybe you've seen all the negative comments about chicken flippers?

People who just breed for a profit and don't aim for SOP or improvement of any kind?

I don't want to be known as that person but I did think this would help me raise money in a (kind of) quick manner. I don't have a job

Well except mother of 4 and being part of a doula group. What I'm saying is that I don't have access to a weekly paycheck that isn't already maxed out for the family budget.

If I follow through with this project I would want it known that it wasn't my normal MO. That I was only selling all these random birds to meet my financial quota that that I would be focusing on my 5 main breeds all the rest of the time. The last thing I want to do is create a poor name for myself over a one-time event.

 

[CackleJoy]

Ok straight out practical here. 3 big questions.
1. Are you sure you can make $ on 20 a pullet? Think feed costs feeding both boys and girls until you can sex them, cost of incubating (this is a lot less for many eggs however) and electric for brooding. Spreadsheet this and make sure.
2. What are you going to do with 300-400 boys? You have to grow out for 2-4 months to sex depending on breed and they are only big enough for soup at that point. You may make more profit selling all at 5 straight run.

3. Can you sell 300 pullets??? We are past prime buying time and sales are sloooow. I could see selling 300 in January when its hard to get chicks or pullets can you hold them that long? People won't buy practical over xmas and no one wants to pay for feed for 3 months over winter knowing they won't get eggs till spring.

Smaller issue. You will get some sexing wrong whats your plan for oopsie roosters if you are done hatching and they ask 2 weeks later?

Those are the practical stuff id answer before putting thousands of eggs jn a bator.

All excellent thoughts. Thank you for the points. You've made me follow the thought process out far enough that I think I could create a plan and have it work.

1) we have a local auction that I can take 8 wk old boys to sell. Even if they only sell for $1 each, I'm no longer feeding them. I have 4 barred hens I plan to put under an Ameraucana to create sex linked EEs but that's only 3 extra eggs a day. Still it brings me up to 3 dozen of my own hatching eggs every week. This means I need to find sources for the other 2 dozen a week. I don't want to run a hatcher and will use the bottom of the incubator. So, only a tray a week instead of the entire incubator at once.

The feed costs should be offset because I only need to sell 200 pullets for my exact tuition fee. The extra 100 pullets is to cover the cost of the project. Is that bad to make the project pay for itself AND meet my financial goal? Sounds like asking for cake and to eat it too

I don't know the cost of the electric for incubation but my bill has not changed a lot so I don't think the incubator (it's wooden) is terribly wasteful with energy. Its the heat lamps that I'd like to figure out how to do better with. Do the ceramic things take less energy than the red lights?

Sexing is a problem. If I had more Basque hens I'd do bunches of those because they are sexable really young and hatch like popcorn. I hate sexing mistakes. I will have to think this through some more.

2) I hate hate hate selling chicks. There is so much anxiety when people have one get sick or don't know what they are doing and then they call me wanting me to fix it and oh the drama! You get the point. So straight run kind of sounds attractive (certainly less work) but I'd want a zero call-back policy

3) If I do this I want to shut off the incubator and clean it good before I run it again for 9 weeks straight. Starting it the project at the end of August would mean that I had pullets at POL in January. It would be reasonable to sell those for $30 instead of $20 and perhaps I could offset the cost of feeding them longer. Using JS West feed is about $14 for 50#. The average adult eats an entire bag every 175 - 200 days. A 14 week old pullet should not cost over $7 for feed (for the entire life). Obviously I could not feed organic and make this work.

Noting the cost of the feed means that I would have to get rid of the cockerels asap in order to increase my profit margin. So no sexing mistakes. What are breeds that are easy to sex? McMurray Hatchery charges $17.95 per started pullet, plus shipping. Those are hatchery prices so maybe $20 isn't enough?

I'm pretty sure I could sell all the chickens because when I advertise that I have them, I always sell out to the point of making waiting lists and turning people away. Also in January, with started pullets I'd be ahead of the feed stores.

 

[chiqita]

All excellent thoughts.  Thank you for the points.  You've made me follow the thought process out far enough that I think I could create a plan and have it work.

1) we have a local auction that I can take 8 wk old boys to sell.  Even if they only sell for $1 each, I'm no longer feeding them.  I have 4 barred hens I plan to put under an Ameraucana to create sex linked EEs but that's only 3 extra eggs a day.  Still it brings me up to 3 dozen of my own hatching eggs every week.  This means I need to find sources for the other 2 dozen a week.  I don't want to run a hatcher and will use the bottom of the incubator.  So, only a tray a week instead of the entire incubator at once.

The feed costs should be offset because I only need to sell 200 pullets for my exact tuition fee.  The extra 100 pullets is to cover the cost of the project.  Is that bad to make the project pay for itself AND meet my financial goal?  Sounds like asking for cake and to eat it too     

I don't know the cost of the electric for incubation but my bill has not changed a lot so I don't think the incubator (it's wooden) is terribly wasteful with energy.  Its the heat lamps that I'd like to figure out how to do better with.  Do the ceramic things take less energy than the red lights?

Sexing is a problem.  If I had more Basque hens I'd do bunches of those because they are sexable really young and hatch like popcorn.  I hate sexing mistakes.  I will have to think this through some more.

2) I hate hate hate selling chicks.  There is so much anxiety when people have one get sick or don't know what they are doing and then they call me wanting me to fix it and oh the drama! You get the point.  So straight run kind of sounds attractive (certainly less work) but I'd want a zero call-back policy  

3) If I do this I want to shut off the incubator and clean it good before I run it again for 9 weeks straight.  Starting it the project at the end of August would mean that I had pullets at POL in January.  It would be reasonable to sell those for $30 instead of $20 and perhaps I could offset the cost of feeding them longer.  Using JS West feed is about $14 for 50#.  The average adult eats an entire bag every 175 - 200 days.  A 14 week old pullet should not cost over $7 for feed (for the entire life).  Obviously I could not feed organic and make this work.

Noting the cost of the feed means that I would have to get rid of the cockerels asap in order to increase my profit margin.  So no sexing mistakes.  What are breeds that are easy to sex?  McMurray Hatchery charges $17.95 per started pullet, plus shipping.  Those are hatchery prices so maybe $20 isn't enough?

I'm pretty sure I could sell all the chickens because when I advertise that I have them, I always sell out to the point of making waiting lists and turning people away.  Also in January, with started pullets I'd be ahead of the feed stores.

Looking at that if you CAN do larger batches thus use less electric etc... thats more viable. Your red bulb is more practical over a full brooder. Ceramic is better for smaller batches.

Id recomend vaccinating and doing auto corid at 4 weeks. If you are trying to do shipped eggs your hatch rate goes down and you have less control over your dates. The eggs have to go in when you get them.

Still 30p pullets... I cant even imagine selling that many. And most breeds are not sexable at 5 weeks. And honestly can you sell 300 boys at an auction?

Have you thought about quail? Less cash per sale but shorter time.

 

[CackleJoy]

Looking at that if you CAN do larger batches thus use less electric etc... thats more viable. Your red bulb is more practical over a full brooder. Ceramic is better for smaller batches.

Id recomend vaccinating and doing auto corid at 4 weeks. If you are trying to do shipped eggs your hatch rate goes down and you have less control over your dates. The eggs have to go in when you get them.

Still 30p pullets... I cant even imagine selling that many. And most breeds are not sexable at 5 weeks. And honestly can you sell 300 boys at an auction?

Have you thought about quail? Less cash per sale but shorter time.

I think I just figured out how to get enough of the eggs off our own farm! I'm so excited! If I divide off some of the breakfast makers and put a few brown egg layers in the blue egg laying breeding pens and a few blue egg layers in the brown breeding pens (I have 4 breeding pens) then I can market all the mutts as EE's. It's brilliant. I can increase my egg harvest to 2 dozen PER DAY by doing this. Chickens are getting switched tonight. In 3 weeks the fun will begin

We can still eat whatever we need. The only draw back is the switch in feed and housing will stop the egg laying for a few weeks. Since I plan to wait 3 weeks for the cockerels to have exclusive rights, then I'll be fine. I will also put an EE cockerel in with the rest of the breakfast makers (more of the brown/white girls) that don't get moved. Since they won't be changing homes, I can count on them being more regular with the egg laying. I'm so excited. Not having to bring in eggs will stop a lot of the worry. It's no big deal if I need to call someone local (old customers that I know have roosters) and get a dozen to fill the bator.

I wouldn't take 300 cockerels to the auction all at once. Auction days for small livestock is Friday only. This means as soon as I had sexable cockerels that could be out from under the lights, I'd take them in. I plan to set 5 - 6 dozen eggs every week (one tray full). If I have a 90% hatch rate (those Swedes always bring it down) on 72 eggs, I'd have 64 chicks. If %50 are boys then I'd have about 30 per week (after 8 weeks) that I'd need to deliver. It's an enormous auction. I just took 21 birds and the man didn't even blink. He said they were excellent looking livestock and would sell quickly. They did sell and I averaged $3.6 per bird after they took their commission.

Not great but it bought several bags of feed.

Quail would mystify all of us. My poor husband would choke. Plus, I'd have to buy the eggs.

Thanks to you helping me think this through, this has simply become an intensified hatching experiment here on the farm. Worst case scenario is that I hatch too many boys and don't make all the tuition money as fast as I want.

 

[alibra]

Help! I have a chick that has growths on it's face! It's healthy and active but it has these strange growths! Help!

 

[Kaylish]

I think I just figured out how to get enough of the eggs off our own farm!  I'm so excited!  If I divide off some of the breakfast makers and put a few brown egg layers in the blue egg laying breeding pens and a few blue egg layers in the brown breeding pens (I have 4 breeding pens) then I can market all the mutts as EE's.  It's brilliant.  I can increase my egg harvest to 2 dozen PER DAY by doing this.  Chickens are getting switched tonight.  In 3 weeks the fun will begin    We can still eat whatever we need.  The only draw back is the switch in feed and housing will stop the egg laying for a few weeks.  Since I plan to wait 3 weeks for the cockerels to have exclusive rights, then I'll be fine.  I will also put an EE cockerel in with the rest of the breakfast makers (more of the brown/white girls) that don't get moved.  Since they won't be changing homes, I can count on them being more regular with the egg laying.  I'm so excited.  Not having to bring in eggs will stop a lot of the worry.  It's no big deal if I need to call someone local (old customers that I know have roosters) and get a dozen to fill the bator.  

I wouldn't take 300 cockerels to the auction all at once.  Auction days for small livestock is Friday only.  This means as soon as I had sexable cockerels that could be out from under the lights, I'd take them in.  I plan to set 5 - 6 dozen eggs every week (one tray full).  If I have a 90% hatch rate (those Swedes always bring it down) on 72 eggs, I'd have 64 chicks.  If %50 are boys then I'd have about 30 per week (after 8 weeks) that I'd need to deliver.  It's an enormous auction.  I just took 21 birds and the man didn't even blink.  He said they were excellent looking livestock and would sell quickly.  They did sell and I averaged $3.6 per bird after they took their commission. Not great but it bought several bags of feed.

Quail would mystify all of us.  My poor husband would choke.  Plus, I'd have to buy the eggs. 

Thanks to you helping me think this through, this has simply become an intensified hatching experiment here on the farm.  Worst case scenario is that I hatch too many boys and don't make all the tuition money as fast as I want.

Awesome! You will have to keep us posted on progress.

 

[ronott1]

Help! I have a chick that has growths on it's face! It's healthy and active but it has these strange growths! Help!

Does it look like herpes?