Little did I know...

[gvntofly05]

That when I started advertising my eggs for sale that I would end up flooded with requests not just for eating eggs. I have a list of people that want chicks, started pullets, stewing hens, hatching eggs and extra roosters! This is getting crazy!

I need to build another coop just for raising the birds people want to buy for meat! I am really excited by this since I have a hatching addiction. Now hubby can't ask me "What are you going to do with all these chickens"! If they don't get sold then they stock our own freezer.

My small backyard hobby flock has turned into some what of a small business for this SAHM! Now let's see my in-laws say I'm crazy!

My entire coop and run was built with material that was free, I had to buy the feeders and water containers. Since I started selling eggs I have made at least enough each week to pay for their feed! Which keeps the hubby happy!

I had 1 guy contact me today and said he will buy all my extra roos in November at $10 each. I told him with the amount I could hatch I could easily have 25-50 roos by then and he said he'd take them all. Wants to stock his freezer for winter. He also said he would be willing to pay $15 a piece for started pullets in March/April and he wants 12 of them!

So do those prices sound fair? I don't count my labor into anything since I am already home and it's something I love doing!

 

[briteday]

Those prices sound fair to me, but it all depends on the market in your area.

Personally, I have found that we can't keep up with egg orders. And a friend incubated some of our eggs to sell chicks from this Spring and we sold everything we hatched, and then some. She is even raising some up for people that requested point of lay pullets. I also ended up purchasing chicks from a hatchery and needed to buy at least 25 chicks. I only wanted 15 so I mentioned it at our local chicken club meeting if anyone was interested in the remainder. My email box was flooded the next day and we ended up ordering a total of 100. the additional ones I sold payed for my own chicks. And I probably could have sold another 50 more. But I didn't even have the guts to tell DH that we were getting 100 chicks delivered to our house, let alone any more than that! And lastly, I sell my 18-month old hens when my new chicks start laying each year. The money I get from those hens replenishes the funds that I use for the food to raise up the new chicks each year...and then some.

Next year I am going to hatch exclusively sex linked chicks. This year we posted an ad on Craigslist and had several snake feeding people buy our day old roos for $1 each. There's not much interest in meat raising here since there isn't a processing facility to do the dirty work. But I'm glad not to be feeding roos. I'm hoping to generate interest by advertising well before they hatch and have a list of interested buyers so I can be frugal about how many fertile eggs to incubate. And since we have a long waiting list for eggs to eat I am going to raise the price this Fall a bit since people seem willing to pay for them. Thanks to the local organic chain store that opened in the area, people think that "free range, cage free, organic, vegetarian, blah, blah" is worth about $5 per dozen at that store. They think they're getting a bargain at $2-3 per dozen from us.