If you raise meat chickens and turkeys to sell, what do you charge?

[snewman]

It didn't take as long to cook as I had expected. We have a convection oven, which speeds things up considerably. It actually took only about 7 hours. I was worried because I didn't get it in the oven as early in the morning as I had intended, and it didn't go in until almost 10:00 that morning, but we made it! I put it in a lasagna pan, and put two of the plastic turkey bags around it, veggies and herbs in the cavity (roasted without stuffing, so that sped things up a bit), and it was AWESOME!! I was so proud of it. I still have two more 34 lb birds in the freezer. I'm not sure when I'll have occasion to cook that big a bird again. Now I kind of wish I had parted them out, but they just don't look as impressive that way!

 

[NC chicken man]

I get $4.00 per lb for chicken and $5.00 per lb for turkeys.

 

[CARS]

Quote:
Thanks for posting that site. My wife and I needed a good laugh

I agree, there is no way I could do that. I feed a family of 5 on about a $100.00 a week (eating at home). I couldn't even afford their 5lb. bag of pig tails!!!


I am going to go for broke (or maybe just broke) this spring and ask $1.90 lb. for whole chicken, and $3.90 lb. for whole Turkey. Going to steal someones down payment method too. 30% down and only 50% return if the order is canceled. Pre-orders only. No sense in leaving an extra freezer running all summer for the same $$$$.

 

[CTChickenMom]

Quote:
Thanks for posting that site. My wife and I needed a good laugh

I agree, there is no way I could do that. I feed a family of 5 on about a $100.00 a week (eating at home). I couldn't even afford their 5lb. bag of pig tails!!!


I am going to go for broke (or maybe just broke) this spring and ask $1.90 lb. for whole chicken, and $3.90 lb. for whole Turkey. Going to steal someones down payment method too. 30% down and only 50% return if the order is canceled. Pre-orders only. No sense in leaving an extra freezer running all summer for the same $$$$.

I like that idea...$1.90/lb whole chicken is a pretty good deal. I don't buy whole turkey enough to know what the going rate is. I hope to be meeting up with my high school science teacher (who is now retired) to process some chickens and maybe a turkey. I have to know I can do it before I jump into this.

 

[Slywoody]

I buy Farm Raised Cornish X for 10 bucks apiece @ around 8 #. Well worth it to me.

 

[Tendu]

I think one of the most important things when selling anything is to find out how much you would need to charge to break even.

So see if you can calculate how many bags of feed you bought, the cost of new bedding, and any other expenses, and then divide it by the number of birds you have. This should give you a number to start at, so that anything more you charge is profit. This always makes me feel a little better when deciding prices since I can choose a profit margin that I'm comfortable with, while not having to cheat myself out of money trying to make my prices look as "reasonable" as wal-mart.

 

[Ang]

When people started asking to buy my home raised and processed cornish-x's I just threw out a number. Folks happily pay the $2/lb that I ask.

 

[jaku]

I sell my birds for $10 each.

 

[CTChickenMom]

I just used my own laying flock (pretending they were a number of meat birds) as an example to figure out how I'd price those I'd sell.

There are some variables that may differ like the amount of feed purchased or the amount of time to slaughter.

Rounding up, I pay $13 for a 50# bag of feed that lasts me 3 weeks for my 13 birds.

That would be $52 over the chicken's 12 week life span (which translates to $0.62 per day)

I divided that by my 13 chicks and it translates to $0.05 per chicken/day

$0.05 x 84 days (12wks) gives you $4.20 for feed

I checked on MMs BBQ special and the birds average $1.60 each (25ct)

$10 worth of pine shavings gets you roughly $0.11 per day

I figured in a 30% mark-up (based on a total for the chick, feed and shavings) for a total selling price of $7.68 per bird. Minus the mark up it's $5.91 each so $10 is good. You make almost everything back that you've invested.

 

[Tendu]

Quote:
See, now that seems reasonable.