Profitability

[BigBlueHen53]

There are some good threads on here about feed and whether it's worth it to try to grow your own. @U_Stormcrow and @Perris are good sources on that topic.

 

[Perris]

I have a flock of 30-something chickens, and I cover all my recurrent costs through the sale of surplus eggs, and I am slowly recovering the capital costs too (I started with 3 pullets in 2017 and have just let the flock grow gradually and naturally).

I manage it by following low input methods (some of the stuff I bought because I thought I would need it when I started turned out to be an unnecessary expense), and by not pricing in my time, because I like spending time with and on my chickens and it is a relatively small proportion of my day - it is my own free time if you will.

If you are going to raise chickens as just one part of your farming/ self sustaining activities, facts and figures relating to just poultry farming or egg laying are irrelevant. Look instead to models like Harvey Ussery, on whom see for example https://www.theprairiehomestead.com...-ingenious-chicken-keeping-with-harvey-ussery

Think about what style of chicken keeping you are going to pursue, and select appropriate breeds to suit. They are not all the same and they vary in character and ability to cope with the sort of conditions you will provide them, as well as in build and appearance. Then source the best birds you can for your foundation stock - from local farmers' barnyard stock, or expensive fancy breeders' 'also rans' (they keep their best for themselves), either may meet that bill.

A small scale flock can use and provide a lot of things for free: forage, manure, bug control, exercise for example. Try to price these things in to your business planning. If you keep it small you don't have to pay to bring all food in and take all waste out; you don't have to try to prevent and then deal with health challenges because birds are crowded together and get little or no exercise. Profitability does not require you to scale up. To date this calendar year I have spent about £325 and earned £500.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

From a profitability perspective, I do a lot of things right - high nutritional quality, low cost feed from a local mill, hatching my own so as to not pay replacement costs, feed supplementation via low maintenance varied pasturage to further bend the feed curve. Deep litter method to produce useful compost for my gardening.

I do a lot of things wrong, too. I'm not using "production" breeds, so my yields relative to my inputs are lower than they could be. My coops have gone thru several costly iterations as they've been expanded or redesigned for my needs and climate. I don't cull frequently enough (adding to my "carry costs"). I added rabbits - produce more (and superior) compost faster, quicker to breed, quicker to produce meat protein with the trade of no eggs - but higher feed costs, and higher upfront housing costs (which I redid). I have pekin ducks (NOT cost effective), I have goats (which I need, desperately, to cull to manageable numbers). and a day job to pay for it all.

Also, I'm in an economically depressed area of the country which produces a lot of chickens - I could break even at best, excluding my labor, and accounting for the value of all the outputs (including that glorious compost).

So the one useful thing I'll offer from my example is to FOCUS. Even if you are brilliant, try to do too much, too fast, and you will find a lot of things getting away from you. That, and "you will make mistakes - they are costly learning experiences. But more costly if you don't". One a purely economic basis, most will find their margins to be very narrow.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

as to numbers? I've had close to 100 poultry on my property at once, as few as 12. Its essentially the same amount of labor either way. That's why profitable have farms scaled up. They are able to amortize nearly fixed labor costs over a larger number of birds/egg sales. They have also broken into feed cost economies of scale.

As example, because of my location (lots of commercial chicken operations near me), and some marketing choices by a local feed store, instead of paying about $0.40/# for feed from the local big box, I pay around $0.28/# buying in bulk w/ cash. That's as cheaply as I can buy the feed from the mill that produces it, 500# at a time. The corporate producers around me? According to their stock reports, they are paying between $0.13 and 0.17/lb.

I have a substantial cost advantage over Bobby Backyard, but still pay twice as much for my feed as Charlie Corporate - my only hope to compete is in the markup between their sales and those eggs eventually hitting the grocery shelves on a pure cost basis.

So I'm going to recommend you spend some time at your family's stand, walk your market, identify all your potential competition and their pricing. Is there a niche market you can compete in???? Its probably not plain "eggs". It might be in "pasture raised, cage free" or "free range". Depending on where you are in the world, "soy free", "corn free" and "organic" may require proof and record keeping costs far exceeding your other inputs, and can be difficult terms to work around lawfully (even if truthful). [I am not a proponent of corn free or soy free feeds - they can be very good, or not. I AM a proponent of feeds with guaranteed nutritional labels of adequate tested nutritional value, whatever the ingredients]. DO the math, do your homework - you might be able to compete in a niche market.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Oh, and re: roosters. 1 rooster : 10 hens +/- is the ratio given to maximize FERTILITY. Has nothing to do with behavior. Space is a social lubricant. My birds have roughly 5 acres to roam, and routinely ignore the electric fence to wander elsewhere on my 30a. I have had R:H ratios as high as 1:3. What I have found, time and again, is my roosters spreading out on the property to areas whey believe are "best" then calling for hens to join them there. Hens, in numbers of 2 to 6 would tend to congregate around a preferred roo for a while. Sometimes, hens would change groups. Roosters rarely changed areas, unless I removed one or mor to freezer camp - then its musical chairs.

Now, it is quite likely that, in smaller spaces like a chicken tractor, behavioral issues will become much more prominent and my experience will be worthless to you - as I said at the start, Space is a social lubricant. (Truly, its abundance - an abundance of space, an abundance of feed and d water locations, and abundance of roost space - any excess to reduce conflict). But that's my experience, for better or worse. I only use my chicken tractor for a few weeks of adolescence as a grow out pen, and hesitate to generalize that experience more broadly.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I'll echo and expand a bit on some advice above about the number of chickens to start with:

If you wish to eventually have a hundred or more chickens, start with 25 or 30 this year. This allows for the inevitable learning curve to be more manageable - 2 dozen is way less complicated than 200.

It's also beneficial for the long-range productivity of your flock! Depending on what breeds you get and for what purpose, you might find that most of your chickens are no longer sufficiently productive after 3 years to keep. If so, start small with the 25 or 30, and then every year add a third or so more of your total goal. (So if you want to have 120 chickens, add 40; 180, add 60.) After a few years, you will have a flock that is about 1/3 three years old, 1/3 two years old, and 1/3 a year old, plus some more pullets to replace the three-year-olds.

If you start now with your ideal number of stock, they will nearly all poop out and go non-productive on you at the same time, requiring replacement all at once with the resulting non-productive period as they grow.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

...If you start now with your ideal number of stock, they will nearly all poop out and go non-productive on you at the same time, requiring replacement all at once with the resulting non-productive period as they grow.

-- I probably should have written "they might" or "they could well" instead of the bolded above. Chickens don't turn on and off with a switch, of course. But when you're trying to make a business of this, you want to even out any low-production periods to smooth out your income stream.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

-- I probably should have written "they might" or "they could well" instead of the bolded above. Chickens don't turn on and off with a switch, of course. But when you're trying to make a business of this, you want to even out any low-production periods to smooth out your income stream.

No, you hit on a key issue a lot of people are unaware of. Top production breeds have sharp reductions in productivity. A bird that produces 300 eggs in its prime year might produce 220 its second, and only 150 its third - at which point you are feeding two birds for the production of one. [Less productive breeds tend to have lower rates of production reduction - but are less productive overall. So you get more "productive" years out of them with lower average egg count each season. If your replacement costs are high (or your feed is free) that might make economic sense - but usually not]

Which is why commercial scale producers often remove birds at the first adult molt following production, and certainly by the second molt.

 

[Mrs. K]

When I first came on here, there was a poster that kept chickens, well as chickens. She never treated an ailment, she culled. She did not have fancy, she had a shed. She kept a flock, and birds went into it and out of it.

It is easy to lose money in chickens. Predators can wipe you out. And what you think is predator proof may not be. I swear I have the smartest coons in the county. A lot of people recommend hardware cloth, but I have good luck with chain link fence.

I would strongly recommend getting started with a dozen of hatchery chicks. They are relatively cheap, and you can learn a lot from them. They will provide your family with eggs (I totally get the idea of growing your own food, it has been my gosal for 45 years, but do know some years it does not work well). Depending on the size of your family, you could have some eggs to sell.

There are many aspects to this hobby: eggs, chicks, broody hens, meat birds.

My advice, start small, start cheap. Play with it, get some experience, then branch out. A rather startling thing I found out about myself was that I don’t like a pure bred flock, I like a rag tail bunch. Many the times I have tried a breed, to not like them as much as I would like.

Mrs K