What do you charge for meat birds?

[Rare Feathers Farm]

A friend of mine has no where to raise her own meaties but wants to buy 10 from me. She knows how to butcher (I do not). She offered to come up and kill/butcher with me. So the price of the birds would be for "live" meaties. She would process her own. However, I would be buying the chicks and caring for them, feeding them and getting them to butcher age/size.

What is a fair price for a ready-to-kill meatie? Do you charge by the pound or by the bird? Depending on the finished size of these guys, I want to keep 15 or so for myself. That's about all we have room for since our freezer will have 1/2 a beef and 1/2 a pig this fall as well.

I'm going to be buying Cornish x chicks.

Thanks!

~Heather

 

[bigredfeather]

The cost to raise a CX to butcher weight is going to dramatically vary depending on where you are at. I can tell you a CX will have eaten 16-20 pounds of feed at 8 weeks. Mine usually dress out at 5 pounds. So if you take your chick price + (your feed price per pound X 20 pounds), you will get a close estimate of your direct cost.

 

[Rare Feathers Farm]

Okay, thanks....

I buy all of my feed in bulk. I pay $90 for 330lbs of "layer" (non-medicated). I will have to ask my feed supplier if they have meat-bird feed in bulk.

I was looking online and IDEAL has them for $1.87 a piece (if I buy more than 25). I also have 10+ acres to use for tractors...not going to count on them foraging too much but we have plenty of grasshoppers & stuff....

I was thinking $12/bird (live)--too much?

That does have to account for the cost of each chick (and shipping of them to me), feed for 6-8 weeks, my time, electricity and shavings.

 

[Oregon Blues]

You are in Washington. My last batch grew well but ate more than I expected. I assume it is because the weather was colder than usual this spring and they used some of the feed to keep warm instead of to grow.

I'm thinking that weather is going to affect the feed conversion. Also, if weather is hot, it is probably going to slow growth.

 

[Rare Feathers Farm]

Yeah, I was worried about that...we're usually 100+ here for weeks on end...it's been a really cold, wet spring & early summer. I might wait until the fall--or closer to it.