How much should I charge to incubate eggs?

[Laurieks]

I think I have chick fever....I offered, in an ad for my chicks, to 'custom' hatch for folks who want chicks they can't find locally. I have no idea what to charge.
Has anyone done this? Our elec. is our own solar panels... we make more than we need in the Summer, and it balances Winter, mostly, so it won't hurt our elec bill much.
Thanks!

 

[organicfoltzfamilyfarm]

How much are you charging per egg?

 

[GOSPELSOLDIER]

Then i still would charge the same as anyone else because people dont know that you have solar, any how, you still had to buy it so i would leave price the same and not drop it. If you look at like the hatcherries price that should give you a ball park. But if you are hatching a rare lets say pumpkin husleys from greenfirefarms then i would charge 6 and about another 8or so per egg per hatch u know. and thats not adding shipping and handling i mean you have to pay for them to get recieve them in the first place . so i dunno i would start at least at 20 per chick per hatch.. but again thats me and thats using the pumpkings as an example..there are more expensive out there and from other locations...

this is where i took my figures from http://www.greenfirefarms.com/store/pumpkin-hulsey

they are 75 a dozen 75/12=6.25 Plus lets say 8 dollars of light (if you had a reg light bill) and again im going based on my area.....so thats 14.25 and then you get a profit of 5.75 per chick for turning if you do manually if not for just the agony of hatching a chick..lol its fun but you will always worry about something..is the temp right, did any of your kids neighbors kids cusins kids whatever, did any of them touched them or did your oldest daughter plug her portable ipod music console and unpluged the fan ...lol that happened to my bro,,lol just naming a few u know.

so yeh a 20 dollar per chick sounds good..no?

 

[chickenwhisperer123]

Quote:
That sounds pretty high to me, but I dont know. Maybe prices are lower in NE.

 

[organicfoltzfamilyfarm]

I was going to say only like $2 or $3 more....LOL. Wow $20 for a chick.. No thanks!

 

[Laurieks]

I'm not planning to buy the eggs for them. I can, but I want people to do the research & buy what they want. Unless of course they want my Salmon Fav & Barnevelder chicks.

I just told the first responder $1 a day so 21$ a batch of 1-20 eggs. She wants me to brood them til old enough to go outside. That will be more, and hopefully by then it will be warm out so it will only be 3 or 4 weeks.
AND, I told her I've had 28-56% hatch rates so far on shipped eggs. No guarantees. So, yikes, if I had a 5% hatch of 20 eggs it WOULD be $21 a chick. *Knocks on wood*!
I'm not trying to make big $.

 

[farmin'chick]

Just be sure you collect for at least the eggs up front -- buyers sometimes change their mind over the time period. I actually prefer to hatch for shares on hatched eggs.

 

[Barred Rocker]

Just my 2 cents I think $2 or 3$ per egg sounds fair. Considering they could just buy chicks somewhere for not much more than that.

 

[chickeydee]

I do not think 10.00 to 20.00 is high if it is a rare breed . I would pay 10.00 to 15.00 . I pay 21.00 for a day old chick from a friend of mine because I knew she had to do the work and supply everything .

 

[muddstopper]

Just to share some research on cost. We recently hooked up a watt meter to our incubators just to get a feel for how much power we use and the total electrical cost. What we found that it didnt make any difference whether the incubator was full or only had a few eggs in it, the electrical cost is pretty much the same. Based on our power rate of $0.13kwh the total cost to run the incubator was $5.80 for 21 days. Your power rates might be different and you incubator more or less efficient than the one tested. If you divide this number by the number of chicks that actually hatch you will have a close number as to how much the electricity cost. Our incubator holds 144eggs. If all of them hatch the cost per chick would be $0.04 per chick. Now if we only filled one tray, the cost per chick would be $0.12 per chick. Of course, if you only hatched out one chick then the cost to hatch out one would be $5.80. One or 144, the cost to incubate is the same, but the more you hatch, the more you can spread your cost out.

Only you can price the time you spend careing for the eggs while in the incubator, but this must also be included in your cost of doing business. All incubators, even the home made ones, have a upfront cost to purchase or build, this cost can be spread over the expected life of the incubator and the number of hatches you expect to incubate. To get all the way to that expected lifespan of the incubator, it is going to require some maintainance, fans, heat strip, thermostats, they all go bad over time and must be replaced. Something has to be priced in to take care of that maintanace.

Many times I have seen people in business price their services to cheap, they think they have low overhead because their equipment was given to them, or they already own the equipment. If you dont figure in the replacement cost of your equipment, sooner or later that piece of equipment is going to wear out and need to be replaced. At that point in your buisness, you will discover that you havent priced into your cost of doing business enough profit to replace your worn out equipment and either you stop doing business, or you spend money out of your pocket to replace your worn out equipment. Once you take the money out of your pocket, you have lost your previous profits and are now right back to the point where you first started your business, broke and trying to make money based on prices that wont allow you to make enough money to cover expenses.

One hard rule in business, its easier to lower prices than it is to raise them. Second, its easier to lay on the couch and watch tv, than it is to work your tail off for nothing. If the job is worth doing, its worth getting paid for. If they aint willing to pay, let someone else do the work.

Hatcheries sell all kinds of chicks everyday for pennies, if you are incubating run of the mill common chicks, dont expect to charge much more than a hatchery will sell similar chicks for. On rare breeds, you can and should charge more for the service.