!! Chocolate Orpingtons & Chicken Calculator !!

[Sonoran Silkies]

The standard in the UK and the standard in the US are not quite the same. Which standard one prefers if moot if one wants or plans to show here. I do not see anything moral or immoral about it. You may have a reasonable business perspective, but unless you know their actual numbers, it is difficult to do more than guess. Also, I am guessing that they are selling very few, of the birds they actually imported, but are more interested in breeding them with american stock to increase the gene pool and numbers.

 

[tgrlily]

How much does it cost to import each chicken? The quarantine fees are around 600 per bird, i think. I think it may actually cost less to import than to pay $3000 a pair.

 

[smoothmule]

Anyone who thinks they "know" that it's greed that is driving the people who imported the chocolates doesn't have a clue, and that's my opinion. If you all wanted them so badly, why didn't you import them yourselves? It evidently isn't impossible. I think they took a gigantic risk getting them here. The flock they imported could have all died and they would have spent thousands for nothing and to those of you who are complaining it's immoral, I wouldn't even sell to anyone who spat in my face as though it was a dirty deed and rooted in greed, instead of taking their own money and investing in a variety that they wanted to import and choosing to share them. They put them up for auction for gosh sakes, is it their "fault" that the bidding went so high too?. It's no ones business if they had imported them all to keep and eat for goodness sakes.


It's plain ole rude what you all are saying. How can you possibly know what the importer has in mind? How foolish would it be to start selling and lose all that they worked so hard to get here by scattering them everywhere and what happens when someones flock is eaten by racoons, etc.

 

[Groundhighchickenguy]

To each their own. I guess people who can't afford $3000.00 birds will have to wait a while to have a chance at them.

 

[pampered_poultry]

For anyone who wants to go through the trouble ... it is cheaper to import than buy a pair. ....... just saying.

Me personally I would say put the eggs up ,,,,no reserve,,,,, and have the market determine the price...by the auction here - it looks like they are wroth at least $ 70 a piece. I might pay that....Kudos to them if they can get it........

You can want whatever you want - but if the market is not willing to accept the price ... you either will sit on the chicks and raise them or lower the price.

 

[tgrlily]

Quote:
That's what I thought!

I totally agree... the price should be what the market will bear. I find it unlikely that they sell very many at the current prices.

 

[Groundhighchickenguy]

Quote:
That's what I thought!

I totally agree... the price should be what the market will bear. I find it unlikely that they sell very many at the current prices.

I totally one hundred percent agree too!!

 

[onafixedincome]

Oh, for crying out loud and I thought DOG people were bad!

One of the first things a GOOD breeder will do when importing something new is to cross it out with tremendous care to increase numbers and keep quality consistent. They might offer the half-bred progeny of those crosses to those who are too impatient or those who are sufficiently knowledgeable so that more of the new trait is produced and spread around.

Say I imported 10 chickens, total cost $10.000. Would I turn around and sell the chicks for three bucks apiece? Oh, puh-leeze...!

That just makes no sense at all, now does it?

If you want first-generation purebreds, from these imported, tremendously stressed foundation stock, by golly, you're going to pay the appropriate share of their cost to me! I can't know how much production I'll get from them, so each offspring is just as valuable as each of the originals (assuming there's nothing wrong with the offspring and that I'm culling responsibly).

Until I have a flock of animals/birds which is fully the quality and number of the original import, I'm walking on a thin thin edge of losing everything I've put in.

So if I can breed my import roos to my domestic hens (intelligently, remember) to expand the gene pool and the stock available for sale to other ethical and intelligent breeders, I'm likely to do it. Carefully. I'd say that each offspring from this kind of cross would be worth about half of the cost of a straight import--I'm still not out of the woods on having a good genepool and resources.

Now...once I sell some of this hybrid offspring/eggs, I've got some options--there are flocks out there now which have the genes, and I'm not totally screwed if something happens, so the price will gradually go down. They still won't be cheap--that takes time and a LOT of people breeding the same things--but they'll approach a more reasonable cost per bird or egg.

In rabbits, which is my actual area of expertise, I've done just this process--and I've had disasters happen which forced me to use my hybrids to rebuild.

It happens.

If you don't want to/cannot/won't pay the going price

, be patient.

Eventually, it will go down to where you can/will/want to, and then I'll have Chocolate Orpingtons too.

But for now, relax and quit doing the sour-grapes thing, wouldja? Let's just enjoy pictures and discussion of these great new imports!

Please?

 

[hallerlake]

Half a dozen chocolate Orpington eggs currently on Ebay have been bid up to over $500. I'll be curious to see how much higher they'll go.

 

[drdoolittle]

Wow, I didn't know chickens could cost so much! And the eggs-------I sure hope they hatch for whoever wins the bid, that would be scary to pay so much not knowing what will happen. Like the song says, "People are crazy."