This is one aspect of chicken-keeping that I do not understand. I do not know how anyone can break even, let alone realize a profit, by selling chickens for such low prices. Maybe if you are trying to clear your coop of older spent layers, or surplus cockerels you don't want to process. Or if your hens are incubating the eggs and brooding the chicks, and they free-range for most of their feed. Or if you're raising them in large batches and getting free produce & bakery discards to feed them. Otherwise, it just does not seem worth the effort.
I don't understand why people will pay hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars on tiny lap dogs, pay $50-$100 or more on meals in restaurants, shoes, makeup, purses, ballgame tickets, etc, but think that $20 is TOO MUCH to pay for a POL pullet. Do they think these birds just fall out of the trees ready to lay? Half a year or more has been invested incubating the eggs/ordering the chicks, keeping them safe, warm, healthy, protected, fed, watered & cleaned, dealing with the losses from illness or predators, and finding alternatives for the ones that turn out to be roosters. Expenses have been incurred buying them feed & other extras.
If you had a new-hatched chick and handed it to someone to tend for the next 5-6 months until it was ready to lay, what would be a fair price to pay them per week of care?
Of course a lot depends on where you live, how many other folks in the area are raising chickens to sell, the types of buyers you see. You have to adjust your price to match the going rate in your area, and if it doesn't seem high enough for you, then perhaps selling chickens isn't a good idea for you. Or find a place where people are willing to pay more, often in/near towns where people are able to keep a few backyard chickens and don't want to take the time to raise them from chicks.
I have found the best place to sell POL pullets is at my county Fair. I can get $20-$30 each, there are many people who come each year looking for chickens to buy. I order purebred chicks 6 months before the Fair and raise them to show & sell there. Otherwise, I don't bother selling chickens. When my hens go broody I will let them set, their chicks are mixed standard breeds. I keep the cockerels for the table and sell the pullet chicks by 10 weeks of age for $5.
It really should be a seller's market, but unfortunately there are too many folks offering chickens for awfully low prices. If buyers couldn't find the grown chickens they want for cheap, they'd either have to pay a higher, more reasonable price or raise their own from chicks.
