G'Day from WA

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WELCOME TO BYC
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FROM SUNNY QUEENSLAND.
Only a backyard keeper myself.
I don't know that anyone really makes money from chickens & they are certainly in short supply just now.

Commercial enterprises are rarely in a chicken's best interests & often rely on breeds that are meant to be replaced every 2 years & die early from reproductive issues. Ethically I couldn't recommend those breeds.

However, something you might like to consider, is breeding rare & endangered chicken breeds. Not only would you get eggs, you would have a nice little sideline in rare breeds.

I'd be cautious about running chickens in a new orchard too. They can be incredibly destructive & small trees would need to be protected. An established orchard would be a different matter.

Bear in mind, if you are on property & free ranging through an orchard, you are very likely to lose birds to predators: hawks, foxes, snakes, even monitor lizards. That can be very costly.

We keep native bees along with our hens & are about to do our first induction. We'll know after that how feasible our honey output will be. :)

All these things take time to establish. I wish you the very best in your enterprise & hope it goes well for you.
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DobieLover said:
I'm afraid that BYC is geared towards the joys of owning chickens on a small non-profitable scale, not commercial. Commercial practices are not looked upon positively here as they are geared towards maximum productivity at a minimal cost to maximize financial gain. The vast majority of us want what's best for our flocks, not our wallets so very few, if any of us make any money.
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Thanks for the welcome all.

Fear not, I have no visions of intensive chicken/egg farming- I am quite against it myself. I have in mind that the chickens will be one leg in a holisitic organic/free range orcharding setup. Primarily I'm looking to utilise them as free range weed/pest control (fruit fly is worry here) and as feathered soil improvers. The eggs will turn up anyway, as is natural, but just as a by-product of their main job. I guess I mentioned "commercial" because I anticipate a flock size suitable for an orchard to be larger than the average backyarder. I can't possibly eat all the eggs and it seems wasteful to compost them so sales to cover supplementary feed costs and set aside some pennies for the next coop/arbour is about the height of my ambitions. I'm supposed to be semi-retiring, its low-effort all round here!
As I said I'm still in the research phase- if research shows I'd have to whip my hens up one field and down the other to run a farm I'd never start in the first place! If you can't be kind to your animals and give them a truly good life you shouldn't be near them. (Honestly, in my heart of hearts, I think I'll probably be a bit of a rubbish farmer because I'll just be spending all my money doting on the hens!) :)
 

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