Meat chicken questions-cost to raise, dressed weight vs. live weight..

[Araylee]

Hi! New here. This summer will *hopefully* be my first time owning chickens. Definitely going to get 6 or so layers, and considering meat chickens. I'd like to get freedom rangers from JM Murray as I have small children and no time to do intensive management schemes. Feed, water, get eggs, weed the garden, homeschool, and on, and on... And I don't want to deal with broken legs and heat exhaustion, ugh. My questions are as follows:

If the "live weight" of a freedom ranger at 9-11 weeks is between 5 and 6 pounds, what does the dressed (whole) chicken weigh? And how much breast meat will said chicken have? We eat a lot of breast meat but could switch to dark in a lot of our recipes with no one the wiser. If I buy a whole chicken at the store it is usually about 3.5 pounds. Are these freedom rangers going to be comparable to a "store-bought" whole chicken? I know that the "chicken breast on steroids" usually found in skinless boneless chicken isn't going to be attainable for me but would like an idea of how much meat is there.
We will have 5 acres for said chickens to roam, probably doing a move-able pasture system. I only plan on getting maybe two batches of 50 birds, so they'll have plenty of roaming room. How much feed does it take to get an itty bitty fuzzbutt to a 6 pound chicken?? If on pasture, will I notice a reduced feed bill? I live in eastern WA and feed here is $$. I think I can buy in bulk from the mill that sells to the feed stores for reduced cost, but I need to know how much feed 50 birds go through in 11 weeks first!

Are there other things I need to know? How prevalent is disease in chickens?

Thanks so much!

 

[scubaforlife]

Quote:
Free Range = a confinement raised bird that is offered the option to walk out to a 2'x3' yard. They are afraid of the outside so they never go out.

Organic = a government controlled word that mega-growers have lobbied/wrangled to allow certain synthetic chemicals and doesn't take into account the amount of fuel burned to get the feed to the bird and get the bird to you.

Most of us raise our meat birds at a cost of 6 to 9 dollars per bird taking all into account. I do it as a way to educate my children, provide myself with food I am in control of, educate my customers about the wrongs of centralized food systems, and to provide income for my state (all my supplies come from my state). $6 worth of feed, for me, is about 30lbs or enough for 4 birds on pasture. This is standard (non-certified organic) feed.

 

[bucketgirl]

Hi, I just did some freedom rangers.

We slaughtered at 10 weeks and got dressed weight of right between 3-4 with a couple under/over. We're going for much longer this time hoping to get bigger sized.

They are meaty, and the meat is very rich and brown. It is more satisfying to eat less, IMHO, than a grocery store chicken. I can eat 8 drumsticks myself from a fried chicken place, but one leg/thigh is enough off of one of our birds. It's richer in omegas and minerals etc. They are nearly fatless. It is chewier, in a good way. I recommend aging the carcasses in the fridge for >3 days to diminish some of the chewiness.

Right now we have 25 on pasture. It took me 100lbs of feed to get them to 6 weeks of age and about 2-3lb live. My friend has given them an additional 300lbs + ample pasture and leftovers. She plans on buying another 200lbs to get us to our target slaughter date of 04/10 at which point they will be about 13 weeks.

They absolutely eat grass and food on pasture (as evidenced by finding it in their crops at slaughter), but I don't think it reduces their food needs by much, i.e. not enough to realize a noticeable cost savings.

 

[bucketgirl]

Yeah, we figure it is about $8 to make a chicken

We rent processing equipment, cone stand, scalder, plucker. It is $25/day from the NW Ag center. I buy pine chips to get them started on. We bought an auto-waterer.

There are some hidden un-costs:

- The pest load on your pasture will be lower. Expect dramatic reductions in fleas, ticks, and mosquitos if you have them.
- Chicken poop for the soul - great for garden and pasture
- Feathers, blood, etc. add a lot of protein to your compost.
- I have an unverified theory that all the omegas and stuff you will get from the meat will keep you healthier. The stock you make from the bones will likely have crazy amounts of chondroitin and such that make bones and joints strong. This is all heresay, but if you really think through the way a commercial producer makes your food vs. how you will do it, it just makes sense that there will be some big benefits.
- Harvest day is a really nice family day that we all enjoy.
- Dogs love the guts.

Out my way, a chicken raised in this manner is $25-$35.

edit: I am in Snohomish, and when I said "out my way" - that chicken is from Thundering Hooves in Walla Walla. I don't know of a producer here, so in theory, it's also $25 out your way as well

 

[MsPony]

Quote:
And people are worried about by-product in dog food Hehe!

 

[bucketgirl]

Quote:
So there's also a theory of 'Real Cost'. Yeah, $25 is a lot of money (http://www.thunderinghooves.net/, btw. Amazing, wonderful people. I order their beef and sausage) but it may well represent the true cost of the meat. A $4 chicken, or a $10 chicken is subsidized.

- corn and other feed crops are heavily subsidized. So tax dollars are picking up a portion of the feed bill.
- if the workers are illegal or not making a living wage (very common), the welfare system is picking up the bill for a portion of their living costs, or a portion of the price is taken out in wearing out or injuring people who have no way to recieve reparation.
- I don't have any proof of this to provide, but here's a scenario to consider. Large producers, like Tyson, contract growers. Then they mandate what equipment the growers should use, and help arrange financing. This is fact. The growers make a slim margin for basically babysitting the chickens for 7 weeks. Then Tyson mandates further changes, expensive HVAC systems, retrofitting the grow houses to grow chicken entirely in the dark. If the grower complies, they take on more debt load. If the grower does not comply, they lose the contract, and go bankrupt. At which point the grower's personal assets, such as their home or other income OR the marketplace in the country that allows bankrupcy subsidizes, basically, the mechanism the grows chicken for Tyson.

Then there are environmental and ethical considerations that are additional costs. Maybe they don't tie directly to money, but they represent additional considerations that can be avoided by growing your own meat.

- CAFOs generate horrible environmental concerns. People who farm chickens in CAFO develop allergies and health issues. There are groundwater and waste issues.
- Corn, basically, comes from oil. Oil is used to make fertilizer which is liberally used to make corn. "Dependence on foreign oil" impacts our food more than our cars.
- Lower quality food (i.e. the american diet) is increasingly shown to cause Diabetes and Heart Disease, which are a huge part of our national healthcare costs. (These ailments have been shown to be reversable through diet but that's a whole different bunny trail).
- The gov and producers are trying to figure out how to slaughter here, and process in China, and bring meat back. Besides the obvious health issues, there's freight costs across the ocean and dependence on foreign labor to consider.

So long story short, maybe the true cost of a chicken really is $25 or $35. It just so happens that the additional $21 - $31 is paid outside of the grocery store. By adding in my own labor, and eventually adding in local whole grains, I'm hoping to get a $35 chicken for $10, where the net savings of $15-$25 comes from my own labor, a clean environment, clean healthy food, and the fact no one is going bankrupt doing it.

 

[Araylee]

You all make some very good points. I am not opposed to spending money on nutritious food, we buy organic when able, but we are feeding 3 small children and already spending an atrocious amount of money on food every month. (currently we do not buy organic meat, so it would be a huge upgrade in quality if we raise our own.) If I had one of those 25- chickens for dinner every night I'd be eating 800- a month on chicken alone! So yes, there are parts of our food system that are BROKEN. But while I would love to support a local farm in a sustainable condition, I can't afford to.

 

[Araylee]

Hubby and I just talked about this today, that fresh farm range chicken must be more filling than the crud at the grocery store for 3.50/lb!

So you are saying that 600 pounds of feed plus some treats and grass will get your 25 chickens to slaughter weight? That's 24 lbs of feed per chicken which is like $15/50lbs for layer feed (not in bulk!) at my local feed store? (I can get it substantially discounted in bulk.) If I pay one-chicken prices of $7.00/chicken and add some lights, fencing, and a coop I'll be getting free-range, healthy chicken at just over what I pay for "cheap" chicken at the grocer and substantially less than I would pay for a free range, organic chicken.

I like it! What am I missing?? What other costs are hidden??

 

[scubaforlife]

Cornish X has the best conversion rate of 2 to 1. My 7.5 week birds way 4lbs in their freezer bag. I think they were 5.5 when I took them to the processor. So 11lbs of feed for 4 lbs of meat, bones, skin. I want to say 50lbs of feed is $11, so that makes 25lbs of finished chicken or around 6 finished birds per 50 lbs. This is non-pastured. Pastured birds get around 30% of their food via forage. If you are using a less efficient bird (efficient doesn't necessarily mean better) then YMMV. These numbers are just from my grow out on custom ground bulk broiler ration.

 

[Araylee]

is conversion rate 2lbs of feed for every pound of live chicken? or the other way round? Will my freedom rangers lay eggs so I can breed more meaties rather than buy them?
bucketgirl-I am a little horrified at $25-$35-/chicken, but DH pointed out yesterday that the cost to feed each bird may be $6 each but what about LABOR? Also, fencing and coop, feeders, etc. are all up front costs, so maybe it's not that unreasonable of a price, it just seems like a lot compared to a free range organic grocery store chicken at around $18-.

I'll have to see if that company has a website!