Wasted Feed.....

[chickenannie]

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Just keep in mind that thousands of birds packed together get sick and have VERY high mortality rates. Plus taking care of their poop becomes another major operation. Often large scale operations upset the ecosystem balance and leave problematic environmental damage. I'm just saying that, because Scale is not necessarily the answer in Agriculture. It is possible for smaller scale operations to be more efficient and profitable than larger ones.

I'm also a big proponent of not spending much money to house the birds. My coops are essentially scavenged and free (but not pretty). My egg sales pay 80% of my feed costs (assuming I have customers when I need them), but that includes bartering eggs for many wonderful things, like: having my taxes done, a constant lettuce supply, homemade wine and bread, etc. Meat from the chickens *might* cover the rest of the feed costs but I'm not sure about that. Sorry to get on a soapbox, I don't know what triggered my rant. Sorry! Loved Davaroo's quote from Plamondon!

 

[pozarnsk]

yeah I've heard those. Problem is I've always been conservative, so I guess that makes me a heartless hard head........

The most ironic thing about this site is that is the only venue I have seen where vegan-hippie meets conservative country. I love it.

 

[chickenannie]

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Yeah, that is interesting isn't it -- we have chickens in common between all of us!

 

[Davaroo]

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Yeah, that is interesting isn't it -- we have chickens in common between all of us!

Excellent point. Ive often thought of it as that TV show where people exchange lives for awhile.

 

[pozarnsk]

and back to the economics of it, its a good thing that I am not looking to turn a profit on these babies becuase I've already put so much into the barn/coop and everything else I'd have to charge $50/dozen for the next 10 yrs to break even. lol. I tend to over due things.....everyone in my family kept coming by to see the coop progress, and they would just kind of look at me funny and say.."you know Jared, they ARE only chickens.."

 

[Davaroo]

I'm just saying that, because Scale is not necessarily the answer in Agriculture. It is possible for smaller scale operations to be more efficient and profitable than larger ones.
I agree, but trade off must be made here, too. All "systems" share that trait.

 

[chickenannie]

Here is someone else saying it better than I can:

Myth 4: Industrial agriculture is efficient
Not true. Small-scale farms produce more agricultural products per hectare.

Marco Visscher | April 2003 issue
The bigger the farm, the more efficient, claim the advocates of industrial agriculture. Although they admit that large farms lead to the disappearance of family farms and rural communities, they maintain that this is simply the inevitable result of efficient food production. The introduction of 'mega technology' in industrial agriculture has only reinforced their views.

'Bigger is better' may have a nice ring to it, but its applicability to food production is disputable at best. Studies continue to show that small farmers are in fact more efficient than their larger, industrial, counterparts. As farms get bigger their per-unit production costs increase because larger surfaces require more expensive machines and more chemical additives to protect the crops. Furthermore, this method of cultivation damages the topsoil, the most fertile layer of the ground. In Europe and the United States, topsoil is disappearing 17 times faster than nature can reproduce it.

Large-scale industrial agriculture often means cultivating a single-crop. Monoculture, as it is known, undermines the genetic purity of crops making them more susceptible to disease. As a result, crops need more pesticides to maintain the same level of production - a classic case of the law of diminishing returns.

The notion that bigger means more efficient is partly a problem of definition. The 'yield' can be perceived as production per crop hectare. A grain farmer's degree of efficiency is thus evaluated on the tonnes of grain per hectare produced. According to this logic, high single-crop yields are, indeed, most easily achieved using the monoculture approach.

With small-scale farmers planting multiple crops the yield per crop is lower, but the total yield per hectare is considerably higher. They plant crops in the empty spaces where weeds would grow in monoculture fields. They are also more likely to rotate crops each season or combine cultivation with cattle breeding and use the manure to boost the fertility of the soil. From this perspective, small-scale farmers are more efficient, producing much more per unit than large-scale farmers.

Various government reports recognise this fact. Small-scale farms produce some 2 to 10 times more per hectare than their large-scale peers. According to a US government study, the smallest farms (up to 27 hectares) are over 10 times more productive than the largest farms (6,000 hectares or more) and extremely small farms (up to four hectares) can be over 100 times more productive. Small-scale farming is efficient farming.

Also, in my experience, in large-scale farming a farmer will "accept" a certain amount of waste in a crop, whereas a small farmer will address those same problem areas faster and better, because they can't afford the same amount of waste.

Actually this topic is something I've been interested in lately and I'm happy to hear other opinions or sources on the differences between large and small scale operations.

 

[Davaroo]

That was interesting, Annie. Have you read Charles Weeks? He was in lock step with this. He suggested a man should not be allowed a second acre until he had fully utilised the first.

 

[chickenannie]

Never heard of Charles Weeks, but thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely look him up. I like what he says about utilizing an acre well. What a concept!

 

[Davaroo]

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Here you go, Annie.
Free and downloadable in several formats:

http://www.archive.org/details/eggfarmingincali00weekrich

"Little is new, that has not been done before."