How much do you sell meat birds for?

[JIGGLYPUFF]

I was thinking of buying chicks to sell for meat and wanted to know how much I should sell them each.

 

[Twistedfeather]

I've only sold them by 4-H market and with 4-H market chickens it's about whether you get buyers beforehand. Which is true, if you can get clients who might be interested beforehand you can get birds according to the interest that people might have and then some extra. Then look at what a chicken might cost at your grocery stores or with someone who sells meat chickens as well because everywhere it might be different. You could sell them as a whole or sell them by the pound. Are you planning on doing heritage meat birds or the rapid growing cornish cross? Cornish Cross are often seen on the shelves of the grocery store because they can be butchered at the seven to eight week mark.

 

[JIGGLYPUFF]

probably a Cornish cross

 

[cmchickens]

Are you selling them as chicks? I sell mine for $2.50 each as chicks. I get them in bulk, keep as many as I want and sell the rest. There aren't many places to get chicks locally, and the few places that sell chicks are expensive. At $2.50 each, I make a little money, the buyer saves a little money, everybody is happy. They go fast.

 

[JIGGLYPUFF]

no, going to sell them butchered

 

[jaj121159]

Selling butchered meat birds require a little math on your part. First add up all of your costs; the price of the chick, amount of feed to be fed to each bird, the cost of feed per pound, the cost of production and butchering costs. Hyperthetical example. chick cost $1.50 ea. Average feed consumption is 18 lbs for a 4 lb bird. Feed cost is $029 per pound, and you pay $2.75 per bird to butcher. Production costs is more difficult to measure. It can include your cost for facilities like did your build tractor coops out of recycle materials or new? How many bags of bedding do you use for brooding or raising? Do you have to drive 50 each way to get your birds processed? Do you want to be compensated for your time, etc. Do you have to buy and pay to register a certified scale? To you have to get a permit to sell the birds and/or store your birds in your freezer? Are you selling at a Farmers Market and have to pay a stall fee?

Continuing the hypothetical... chick is $1.50, feed is $5.22 per 4lb. bird, and you pay $2.75 to butcher so you have $9.47 into your 4lb. bird before you add the production expenses you figured at $0.60 per bird so your cost is a total of $10.07 per 4lb. bird. Now bring in your market factors. Does your local grocery store sell comparable birds like Smart Chicken, Purdue etc? In my area Smart Chicken sells for $2.59 per lb. What is the demographics of your market? Are they people raised on farms that remembers raising chickens for meat as kids and how great the chicken tasted? Are they young professionals not wanting factory raised meat? Does your market have the money to pay for locally raised chicken? How much do you think all the effort is worth on your end?

Rounding your cost down to $10 from the example above leaves a break even price of $2.50 per pound. Add a buck per pound so your consumer price is $3.50 per pound means you take in $14.00 per bird leaving you what could be considered a $4.00 per bird profit on a four pound bird. This is basically the costs I have been working with over the past five years. My processor went out of business last year so I decided to get my own equipment and get my processing facility licensed. I have scheduled enough outside birds to pay all of my costs for the equipment and licenses, My profit for my own birds will go up about $3 per bird and the cost of feed is cheaper this year so I'm looking at about $8 profit per bird at the same retail price.

You can get really detailed on the production costs figuring in land cost, electric costs, percentage of property taxes, etc. Which I don't right now because I have a number of other money generating things going on like processing, raising and selling produce, breeding, hatching and selling layer chicks, raising layers and selling eggs, etc.

Your local market is also going to have a big impact on your price. In some geographical areas the chicken I sell for $3.50 per pound could go for $2.50 or $6.00 per pound with basically the same production costs. This example should give you an idea on how to calculate your cost of production and setting your prices. Hope it helps.

 

[WildfireSmitty]

I am getting $3.75/LB CDN for dressed birds. Averaging 9lbs.

That is on a basic home milled feed.

 

[Heychickchick]

I have someone interested in live, at processing age, Cornish Rock birds.... How would I price those to sell?

 

[pintail_drake2004]

I sell my Cornish cross for $15/bird at 4.5-5# processed.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have someone interested in live, at processing age, Cornish Rock birds.... How would I price those to sell?

How much money do you have in them? Cost of chicks plus cost of feed. Any permits or licenses required?

Are you building or buying anything especially for these birds that you won't be using again? If you are, those costs should be recovered, probably depreciated over time. Say you plan to do this 10 times, then charge 10% each time. If you already have facilities that's a sunk cost, no need to recover it. This part can get complicated.

How much is your time worth? If you are raising a few extras for others, probably not much. If you are raising them for others and none for you then more. Will they pick up or do you deliver them?

Do you want to make a profit or are you doing this as a favor or out of friendship?

To me it's not an easy calculation, too much guessing involved. Good luck with it.