Meat chickens in the winter?

[Parront]

adorable! Thank you for sharing, ducks will deff be my project for next spring... ill be counting down the days!! lol

The part you do not see in the photos, is the muddy pen! We have free well water to wash the muck into the creek.

 

[Ridgerunner]

There is no way we can compete on price with the commercial egg layers or the commercial meat providers. They have way too many advantages. If you are going to make a business of it, especially beyond a "pocket-change" type of business, you have to fill a niche so you can charge higher than normal prices. A lot of the marketing words like natural, free-range, organic, cage-free, pastured, and others may not have a legal meaning or may actually mean something quite different than commonly thought. I don't know what country you are in so I really don't know what they mean where you are. Still, marketing names like these can help you find a niche.

Long term goal is to have a self sustainable farm that I can profit from... but were talking down the road, way down lol! Chickens and garden just seemed like a good place to start.

If you go into business you need to find out what the legal requirements are. In the USA unless you are crossing state lines or exceed a certain volume Federal rules often don't pertain to you. Each state has its own rules, different for eggs and meat. Counties and cities often have even more. If you sell at a farmer's market there may be even more. Some of these depend on volume or where you sell them. If you sell to a restaurant you may have different inspection and licensing requirements. There is a difference in selling a few eggs to friends and neighbors to help pay for the feed than trying to make enough to pay food and utility bills. Meat can have more restrictions, eggs are generally easier.

You mentioned 48 meat birds a year. How much profit per bird would you need to make to pay your electricity bill this month, let alone your internet bill? You are not going to make a big profit unless you scale things up.

I grew up on a subsistence farm. Money was TIGHT. We raised almost everything we ate. The work day was LONG. Trips and vacations were pretty much non-existent since we had animals to care for, our working relatives visited us when they had a vacation. We might visit nearby relatives on Sunday afternoons when Dad could afford gas. Our cash crops were tobacco and cattle. There is a lot of romance in getting back to nature and this simpler lifestyle but that usually works a lot better if somebody has a job, especially with benefits. You can certainly look at finding a way to make a profit in the future but right now I'd suggest your initial goal should be to feed yourself and your animals.

I also dont want to get into this and loose money relizing it was a bad idea.

Don't give up on your dream and keep asking questions. But take baby steps until you can see for yourself what is involved. Be flexible, nothing ever works out as you think it will. It is very possible you'll come up with a totally different way instead of selling meat. Maybe selling hatching eggs or baby chicks from your laying flock. Or green eggs. You can eat the cockerels hatched from your laying flock, they just might not be as big as "meat" chickens. Maybe you decide to buy Cornish X chicks to raise to sell as organic or pastured, you can do a cycle of them every 8 or so weeks, maybe 3 batches a year.

Chickens can be a big part in a self-sustaining farm, not necessary in bringing in money. If they can forage they can pretty much feed themselves during the good weather months at east. Can't get much more efficient than that. Eggs will probably be a lot more important to your diet than the meat, but the meat is a nice benefit. Just like your garden that can be cyclic, production will drop in winter.

I hoped to make enough profit to cover the cost of their food as well as meat for myself

This is different than I was talking about above, certainly doable. Many people cover the cost of feed just from egg sales though it still helps to be filling a niche so you can charge more. One problem with egg sales though is that egg production is seasonable and customers often want a steady supply.

Mature hens usually molt in the fall and quit laying. Often some pullets will skip the molt their first winter and keep laying straight through until the next fall, when they molt. Also, the older the hens get the less they lay after a certain point. You cannot totally eliminate this but you can reduce the impact. Every year I cycle in new pullets and retire older "spent" hens. You can eat those old hens too. I suggest chicken and dumplings but there are plenty of other recipes too.

Some people get hung up on the size of a cockerel if they are going to eat them. I don't. For thousands of years small farmers have eaten cockerels that were not huge meat chickens. For some purposes size is important but regardless, they all taste like chicken.

One model I propose you consider. Get a rooster and put him with your laying flock. Sell the eggs. Determine how many chickens you might want to eat per year and try to hatch that many if you eat pullets. Or hatch twice as many, eat the cockerels, and sell the pullets. I can think of one guy that pays for the feed by selling the pullets. Forget about raising a special breed for meat, at least for the near future. That just makes it too complicated.

I eat my pullets and need to hatch about 40 to 45 chicks a year to get the meat I need. I also have limited freezer space, I need it for garden and orchard stuff. I hatch about 20 chicks in February or early March so I don't run out in the freezer then hatch smaller batches, usually with broody hens but sometimes in the incubator, to get the number I need. As long as you give them enough room different age groups can get along. I keep a few of the pullets to replace older hens. There is a learning curve on how to make something like this work for you, you will need to tweak it.

My next thought was that if I hatched 8 every 21 days or so I could have a constant rotation of birds in and birds out

To control when and how many eggs you set you have to use an incubator or sometimes two. You cannot rely on broody hens for that. They go broody when they want, if they go broody at all. You can use two incubators, one to incubate and one as a hatcher, and get weekly hatches if you want. If you decide to sell baby chicks that could be useful. But as you mentioned, for your model the logistics don't work well. I'd be thinking of a few larger hatches. You can make that work.

 

[atucker]

There is no way we can compete on price with the commercial egg layers or the commercial meat providers. They have way too many advantages. If you are going to make a business of it, especially beyond a "pocket-change" type of business, you have to fill a niche so you can charge higher than normal prices. A lot of the marketing words like natural, free-range, organic, cage-free, pastured, and others may not have a legal meaning or may actually mean something quite different than commonly thought. I don't know what country you are in so I really don't know what they mean where you are. Still, marketing names like these can help you find a niche.


If you go into business you need to find out what the legal requirements are. In the USA unless you are crossing state lines or exceed a certain volume Federal rules often don't pertain to you. Each state has its own rules, different for eggs and meat. Counties and cities often have even more. If you sell at a farmer's market there may be even more. Some of these depend on volume or where you sell them. If you sell to a restaurant you may have different inspection and licensing requirements. There is a difference in selling a few eggs to friends and neighbors to help pay for the feed than trying to make enough to pay food and utility bills. Meat can have more restrictions, eggs are generally easier.

You mentioned 48 meat birds a year. How much profit per bird would you need to make to pay your electricity bill this month, let alone your internet bill? You are not going to make a big profit unless you scale things up.

I grew up on a subsistence farm. Money was TIGHT. We raised almost everything we ate. The work day was LONG. Trips and vacations were pretty much non-existent since we had animals to care for, our working relatives visited us when they had a vacation. We might visit nearby relatives on Sunday afternoons when Dad could afford gas. Our cash crops were tobacco and cattle. There is a lot of romance in getting back to nature and this simpler lifestyle but that usually works a lot better if somebody has a job, especially with benefits. You can certainly look at finding a way to make a profit in the future but right now I'd suggest your initial goal should be to feed yourself and your animals.


Don't give up on your dream and keep asking questions. But take baby steps until you can see for yourself what is involved. Be flexible, nothing ever works out as you think it will. It is very possible you'll come up with a totally different way instead of selling meat. Maybe selling hatching eggs or baby chicks from your laying flock. Or green eggs. You can eat the cockerels hatched from your laying flock, they just might not be as big as "meat" chickens. Maybe you decide to buy Cornish X chicks to raise to sell as organic or pastured, you can do a cycle of them every 8 or so weeks, maybe 3 batches a year.

Chickens can be a big part in a self-sustaining farm, not necessary in bringing in money. If they can forage they can pretty much feed themselves during the good weather months at east. Can't get much more efficient than that. Eggs will probably be a lot more important to your diet than the meat, but the meat is a nice benefit. Just like your garden that can be cyclic, production will drop in winter.


This is different than I was talking about above, certainly doable. Many people cover the cost of feed just from egg sales though it still helps to be filling a niche so you can charge more. One problem with egg sales though is that egg production is seasonable and customers often want a steady supply.

Mature hens usually molt in the fall and quit laying. Often some pullets will skip the molt their first winter and keep laying straight through until the next fall, when they molt. Also, the older the hens get the less they lay after a certain point. You cannot totally eliminate this but you can reduce the impact. Every year I cycle in new pullets and retire older "spent" hens. You can eat those old hens too. I suggest chicken and dumplings but there are plenty of other recipes too.

Some people get hung up on the size of a cockerel if they are going to eat them. I don't. For thousands of years small farmers have eaten cockerels that were not huge meat chickens. For some purposes size is important but regardless, they all taste like chicken.

One model I propose you consider. Get a rooster and put him with your laying flock. Sell the eggs. Determine how many chickens you might want to eat per year and try to hatch that many if you eat pullets. Or hatch twice as many, eat the cockerels, and sell the pullets. I can think of one guy that pays for the feed by selling the pullets. Forget about raising a special breed for meat, at least for the near future. That just makes it too complicated.

I eat my pullets and need to hatch about 40 to 45 chicks a year to get the meat I need. I also have limited freezer space, I need it for garden and orchard stuff. I hatch about 20 chicks in February or early March so I don't run out in the freezer then hatch smaller batches, usually with broody hens but sometimes in the incubator, to get the number I need. As long as you give them enough room different age groups can get along. I keep a few of the pullets to replace older hens. There is a learning curve on how to make something like this work for you, you will need to tweak it.


To control when and how many eggs you set you have to use an incubator or sometimes two. You cannot rely on broody hens for that. They go broody when they want, if they go broody at all. You can use two incubators, one to incubate and one as a hatcher, and get weekly hatches if you want. If you decide to sell baby chicks that could be useful. But as you mentioned, for your model the logistics don't work well. I'd be thinking of a few larger hatches. You can make that work.

Thank you so much for this amazing response, you have touched on everything and gave me so much to think about!!

 

[atucker]

There is no way we can compete on price with the commercial egg layers or the commercial meat providers. They have way too many advantages. If you are going to make a business of it, especially beyond a "pocket-change" type of business, you have to fill a niche so you can charge higher than normal prices. A lot of the marketing words like natural, free-range, organic, cage-free, pastured, and others may not have a legal meaning or may actually mean something quite different than commonly thought. I don't know what country you are in so I really don't know what they mean where you are. Still, marketing names like these can help you find a niche.


If you go into business you need to find out what the legal requirements are. In the USA unless you are crossing state lines or exceed a certain volume Federal rules often don't pertain to you. Each state has its own rules, different for eggs and meat. Counties and cities often have even more. If you sell at a farmer's market there may be even more. Some of these depend on volume or where you sell them. If you sell to a restaurant you may have different inspection and licensing requirements. There is a difference in selling a few eggs to friends and neighbors to help pay for the feed than trying to make enough to pay food and utility bills. Meat can have more restrictions, eggs are generally easier.

You mentioned 48 meat birds a year. How much profit per bird would you need to make to pay your electricity bill this month, let alone your internet bill? You are not going to make a big profit unless you scale things up.

I grew up on a subsistence farm. Money was TIGHT. We raised almost everything we ate. The work day was LONG. Trips and vacations were pretty much non-existent since we had animals to care for, our working relatives visited us when they had a vacation. We might visit nearby relatives on Sunday afternoons when Dad could afford gas. Our cash crops were tobacco and cattle. There is a lot of romance in getting back to nature and this simpler lifestyle but that usually works a lot better if somebody has a job, especially with benefits. You can certainly look at finding a way to make a profit in the future but right now I'd suggest your initial goal should be to feed yourself and your animals.


Don't give up on your dream and keep asking questions. But take baby steps until you can see for yourself what is involved. Be flexible, nothing ever works out as you think it will. It is very possible you'll come up with a totally different way instead of selling meat. Maybe selling hatching eggs or baby chicks from your laying flock. Or green eggs. You can eat the cockerels hatched from your laying flock, they just might not be as big as "meat" chickens. Maybe you decide to buy Cornish X chicks to raise to sell as organic or pastured, you can do a cycle of them every 8 or so weeks, maybe 3 batches a year.

Chickens can be a big part in a self-sustaining farm, not necessary in bringing in money. If they can forage they can pretty much feed themselves during the good weather months at east. Can't get much more efficient than that. Eggs will probably be a lot more important to your diet than the meat, but the meat is a nice benefit. Just like your garden that can be cyclic, production will drop in winter.


This is different than I was talking about above, certainly doable. Many people cover the cost of feed just from egg sales though it still helps to be filling a niche so you can charge more. One problem with egg sales though is that egg production is seasonable and customers often want a steady supply.

Mature hens usually molt in the fall and quit laying. Often some pullets will skip the molt their first winter and keep laying straight through until the next fall, when they molt. Also, the older the hens get the less they lay after a certain point. You cannot totally eliminate this but you can reduce the impact. Every year I cycle in new pullets and retire older "spent" hens. You can eat those old hens too. I suggest chicken and dumplings but there are plenty of other recipes too.

Some people get hung up on the size of a cockerel if they are going to eat them. I don't. For thousands of years small farmers have eaten cockerels that were not huge meat chickens. For some purposes size is important but regardless, they all taste like chicken.

One model I propose you consider. Get a rooster and put him with your laying flock. Sell the eggs. Determine how many chickens you might want to eat per year and try to hatch that many if you eat pullets. Or hatch twice as many, eat the cockerels, and sell the pullets. I can think of one guy that pays for the feed by selling the pullets. Forget about raising a special breed for meat, at least for the near future. That just makes it too complicated.

I eat my pullets and need to hatch about 40 to 45 chicks a year to get the meat I need. I also have limited freezer space, I need it for garden and orchard stuff. I hatch about 20 chicks in February or early March so I don't run out in the freezer then hatch smaller batches, usually with broody hens but sometimes in the incubator, to get the number I need. As long as you give them enough room different age groups can get along. I keep a few of the pullets to replace older hens. There is a learning curve on how to make something like this work for you, you will need to tweak it.


To control when and how many eggs you set you have to use an incubator or sometimes two. You cannot rely on broody hens for that. They go broody when they want, if they go broody at all. You can use two incubators, one to incubate and one as a hatcher, and get weekly hatches if you want. If you decide to sell baby chicks that could be useful. But as you mentioned, for your model the logistics don't work well. I'd be thinking of a few larger hatches. You can make that work.

Eating your pullets, something I didnt think about... so dual purpose birds, what week would you be eating them? ive gotten sugestions on 12 weeks for roosters and 20 for hens... Would you do this sooner then?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I generally eat my cockerels between 16 and 23 weeks. I want to evaluate my pullets for eggs so I usually butcher them at around 8 months after I select my replacement layers. There is not that much more meat to justify waiting on the girls, not at all. We each have our goals and situations and have to find what works best for us.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I also eat my excess Roos anytime between about 14 weeks and 20, but have gone much longer. Just have to change cooking methods. I keep my girls till first adult molt, then they because ground chicken or sausage or similar - except for those few pullets that obviously aren't what I want for my project, those get culled early with the boys.

As a "thumb rule", assume carcass weight will be about 2/3 of live weight, and the actual protein yield not quite 2/3 of that. So a running around 6# live weigh bird yeilds a 4# carcass, which equates to a little over 2 1/2# of meat plus bones, organs, bits for making a good stock.

 

[atucker]

thank you!!!

 

[Parront]

I think that the profit in my birds is from having a nice compost pile. The produce you can grow with the fertilizer your birds generate is so much better, you will make your money on your tomatoes, or any fresh summer produce you grow. It tastes so much better, people beg you for your produce! Gardeners will pay you for the chicken bedding/waste, too.

 

[atucker]

I think that the profit in my birds is from having a nice compost pile. The produce you can grow with the fertilizer your birds generate is so much better, you will make your money on your tomatoes, or any fresh summer produce you grow. It tastes so much better, people beg you for your produce! Gardeners will pay you for the chicken bedding/waste, too.

Do you use wood shavings for your bedding? When we set up the new coop, I was torn between that and sand... I have read that some will add some shavings weekly and scratch, let the chickens turn it and then twice a year clean it all out as compost and start again...
What process do you use?

 

[Molpet]

I have read that some will add some shavings weekly and scratch, let the chickens turn it and then twice a year clean it all out as compost and start again...
What process do you use?

I add dry grass and leaves. I save dry grass in feed bags and get bagged leaves from town in the fall. Store it in a lean-to and alternate which I put in the coops.
Shavings take forever to break down.