Small Scale production-level operation, feed costs

[Llewin]

I am putting together a business plan to start up a pastured poultry operation. This year we are planning to run a total of 150 chickens, in three batches. We've chose to go with Freedom Ranger birds and will be running them using a day-range system.

I'm trying to crunch numbers on feed and infrastructure costs and my numbers seem to be coming out REALLY HIGH, like $5/lb just to cover costs, let alone wages or profit.

This is clearly not what all the chicken farmers on eatwild.com must be finding for cost analysis because most of them are selling chickens for around $5/lb so they are either losing money or breaking even...or my numbers are WAY off.

Are there any pastured or day-range chicken farmers out there that would be willing to unofficially help me out with getting some accurate numbers put together?

Contact me privately, if so...

 

[ECBW]

There was a recent thread on the same topic. Some one said if you are looking to make a small fortune in farming, start with a large fortune.

You are very wise to crunch the numbers. I have minimum startup cost becasue I used almost exclusively reclaimed materials. I can only break even.

The chicken farmers I know, all have regular jobs.

 

[Fred's Hens]

If you have a farm that grows 800 acres of corn and soybeans, you can easily set up your own feed mill, buy a mineral-vitamin pak from any feed company, and blend your own feed for half the cost of buying feed retail. If you buy your feed retail, breaking even is seen as a good thing. Labor donated, of course.

 

[ronniewayne]

i have ran 4 batches of pastured broilers now. the first i tried red rangers the rest i went with the cornish rocks..the rangers i lost money on. the cornish i donated labor and made a small profit on..in my pens the rangers just wouldnt put on enough lbs to get the conversion...hope you have great luck