Profit

If you raise them on pasture there is money to be made, as that sets them apart from others. I also raise mine on a soy free ration which makes them even more of a specialty that sets them apart and increases their value. I am selling mine for $5.50/pound this year and I'll bet I will sell out. That said, I've been doing them for a few years and have a customer base established.

Good Luck!

 

In order to sell them at 9.00 dollars you would have to be feeding very cheap feed to make any money at all. the chicks will be around 1.50 each. It will take about 15lbs of feed. If you can get your feed for 500.00 per ton(which I doubt) that would be 3.75 per bird. You will spend money on feeders, waterers, brooders, and electricity. If you raise them on pasture you will need some sort of field pen and or fencing. When it is time to butcher if you are doing any quantity then you will need to either pay someone, buy processing equipment, or find a coop that rents it out (I have seen this for 50.00/day). You will need propane for the scalder, ice for the chill tank, and bags to package the birds in. This stuff all adds up.

Just the consumables for 50 birds would be
chicks75.00
feed 190.00
propane 10.00
ice 25.00
rental 50.00
shrink bags 12.50
total 365.00

I do not believe you will find feed that cheap, and at 9.00 per bird and no death loss you would only invoice 450.00. that would leave less than 100.00 to use for brooding and field supplies, electricity, water, and labor. And as for labor, I have heard somewhere and agree with the statement "the chore that is carring water to chickens can not be overstated."

I do raise meat chickens, and like someone else on here stated, I do a soy and corn free(non gmo) feed and I charge 4.50 per lb. With a 4.5 lb average I get about 20.00 per bird. I also order in grain by the truck load and make my own feed, have a wholesale account with a hatchery and get my chicks for less, and own my own processing equipment that we have been using for several years and prorate the expense on. In other words I can do almost every step cheaper than some one starting out and I would loose money at 9.00 per bird

 

Read this - http://www.polyfacefarms.com/2011/07/25/pastured-poultry-profits/

My costs are just under $3/lb (non-certified organic feed, pastured) so I would need to sell for $4-5/lb to make any money.

 

Hi, I am living in Findlay, Ohio and the meat chicken breeders here that are considered organic sell by the pound which is anywhere from $ 2 to 5 dollars. I have been looking for organic feed for my backyard flock and it is very expensive and hard to find, at least I haven't found anyone locally yet. During the summer and fall, our birds free range and really don't eat the feed we put out, but in winter and spring our feed bill goes up.

We do raise meat birds, but use a dual purpose chicken - Jersey Giant, but only for our personal use.

We do raise a few meat birds for friends who buy the birds, we raise and butcher, for around $10 a bird, but we really don't make a profit, just helping friends out.

Hope info is helpful.

 

I will be selling mine for $2.99/lb this spring, using plant based broiler feed, and just covering my costs, I pay myself $3.50 to process the birds and a couple dollars for labor, not doing is as a business, just a hobby that cash flows, and I enjoy watching the chicks grow up..

 

We are selling at $2.5 lb. for a friend and we aren't making money at that. The winter raise was more expensive than we planned, with most of the overrun being litter and electricity. Our garage was 15 degrees most nights. We are hoping our fall batch they free range more to offset feed costs.

 

We sold birds for $15 each one year, after adding up all the costs from chicks to bedding to electricity, etc. etc. We made $1.50 profit on each bird. That didn't take into consideration (my) labor costs, and since it isn't worth it to me to get paid $1.50 to kill, gut and pluck a chicken, we won't be doing it again.

Now we just raise some for our own use, and I pay someone else to process and package them.

 

I'm raising some (that are going to turn out to be around 50% organic .... all organic feed was too expensive!) that I'm selling to coworkers at a cost of $1.00 more per pound than they cost for me to raise them (they agreed they'd be happy to have pastured birds that were raised by someone they knew). I'm expecting them to finish out at around 5 lbs/bird, so I'll make $5.00 per bird and they'll be paying around $3.50/lb. I have people in my office that want to know when I'm raising my next batch and want to be put on the list for them (this is the first time I've done it), so I think there's definately a market ... but getting that organic feed cheaper would be great! I'm also doing 75% fermented feed, which seems to reduce the total feed cost as well.