Why Do People Buy Live Chicks From Breeders and Farm Stores‭?

[casportpony]

So it would seem that it's cheaper to buy a prepared chicken than raise them yourself.

One of the stores near me sells whole ~30 ounce whole rotisserie cooked chickens on Fridays for $5. On sale I think raw whole chickens are about $0.7, so yeah, much cheaper to buy from the store.

 

[Kiki]

So it would seem that it's cheaper to buy a prepared chicken than raise them yourself.

Cheaper, most likely.
I don't think some chicken keeping related things boil down to cost. Well I shouldn't say this in general, but for me cost isn't a top factor in my bird keeping.

 

[aart]

How much does a dead prepared to cook chicken cost in the US?

Organic, free ranged, pastured, or factory farmed?

I can't quite remember the price last time I bought a whole chicken...
....was more than $1 a pound tho, they've gone up in the last year or so.
That's for factory farmed.

 

[RumneyRoost]

A cooked and roasted chicken around here is usually $8.99 or more.
Skinned and deboned chicken breast is usually at least $3 per pound.

Personally I have no interest in ever having a rooster. I like my small flock of 5.
They all came from the same small breeder. He doesn't allow anyone on his property for biosecurity reasons. He only breeds nice birds that meet the SOP, and he's fair.

I didn't have to go through all the trouble associated with new chicks. I was able to bring fully feathered girls home. Any new birds get quarantined for 30 days.
Fingers crossed these ladies will be with me for a few more years though.

 

[roosterhavoc]

Far superior!

 

[casportpony]

was more than $1 a pound tho, they've gone up in the last year or so.
That's for factory farmed.

That much? Here you can usually find them for less than $1 a pound. Organic or free ranged, those are more though.

 

[lomine]

I don’t know what proportion of the worlds chickens are supplied by hatcheries.
I’m not sure that being able to buy a chicken for $3 is a good thing. There is an argument that if you spend only $3 on a chicken that becomes the price of its life.

There are parts of the world where two or three chickens may be the entire wealth of a family.

Hatcheries are in business to make money. They are not in the business of chicken welfare. If they do practice good husbandry I don’t believe its because they are concerned about the chicken; they’re concerned about their reputation because a bad one might mean fewer sales and that means they make less money.

How much does a dead prepared to cook chicken cost in the US?

Sometimes the only thing a person can afford is a $3 chick. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to have chickens. Most backyard and small flock keepers value their birds beyond what they spent to purchase them.

Yes, hatcheries want to make money, that's what businesses are for, and selling healthy chicks is good for business. They want a healthy breeder flock so they lay more eggs and get better hatch rates. Just because they do it to make money doesn't make it bad.

So it would seem that it's cheaper to buy a prepared chicken than raise them yourself.

If your argument is that hatcheries shouldn't exist because it devalues a chicken's life then it would be hypocritical to also argue that people should just buy chicken meat instead of raising their own because it's cheaper. Grocery stores sell chicken at a price that is less than their cost because it brings people to the store; then they get people to buy things with large profit margins. I know how factory chickens are raised. Even the organic raised ones don't have a life as good as my birds. I might spend a little more per pound but I know exactly how that chicken was treated from start to finish.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Like the second poster said, ECONOMICS! Humans have been artificially hatching chicks for perhaps the last 5,000 years. It is forever more impractical to hatch off enough chicks to make a living from using only the mother hen. You only need to go to the chick and the health forums to get some idea of the death rate or perhaps the life rate among new hatched chicks to begin to understand this..

 

[BantyChooks]

So it would seem that it's cheaper to buy a prepared chicken than raise them yourself.

Ditto in Canada. Raising meat birds here is very hard to be able to do for cheaper or even equal to store prices.
People sometimes ask me why I keep chickens/quail/ducks. I say "Because I can." It's true, lol! I'm careful enough with money that I can afford the expenses of feed that I don't get back in eggs.

If I were to go for making or breaking even in money... I think I could do it. But it wouldn't go with what I want about chickens.
I'd get a layer flock of White Leghorns from the feed store as chicks. No incubator cost or work, and I could pick exactly when I wanted them rather than waiting until it got warm enough to ship eggs. Their coop would be made of recycled or free materials. I'd free range, and feed them layer feed mixed with all stock grain and cracked corn. The latter things are a good four dollars per bag cheaper than layer pellets. I'd keep them through their first moult, and when they stopped for the second one I'd slaughter them all, and rest the coop for the winter and then get chicks in spring. That is, assuming I didn't need a constant supply of eggs to sell, in which case I'd stagger a batch to start laying when the others were eaten. I think that resting the land and coop would be good, though. I can sell eggs for a good price here ($3/doz) which can easily pay for feed and feed me if all or most the birds are laying. The breed choice is due to the fact that I have yet to find another breed as hardy, thrifty, and productive. Do they burn out quickly? Yes. Not as much as sexlinks, though.

Good thread, by the way. I've been enjoying it.

 

[Mosey2003]

If I were to go for making or breaking even in money... I think I could do it. But it wouldn't go with what I want about chickens.
I'd get a layer flock of White Leghorns from the feed store as chicks.

Right, exactly. I've had to explain this to people too. If it were simply about eggs and money, a flock of Leghorns would be the ideal because they eat much less than brown egg layers.

For meat, you would have to be able to buy feed in bulk at a considerable discount, from all the numbers I've ran it would cost me approximately $7 per finished broiler, which is $2 higher than the store. Plus, that's not considering my time, effort, and infrastructure. Especially not the time butchering them. I'd still like to do a few though, because I prefer home butchered birds to the mass butchered, but if whole chickens are on sale for less than $0.99/lb, you bet I'm going to snag a few anyway.