How much $$$ we made on meat chickens last week.
Can a small homestead generate enough income to cover its costs?
That’s what I wanted to know this year.
We’ve never been or intended to be full-blown farmers. But as our homestead has grown - so has the feed bill. And infrastructure costs. And equipment upgrades. So I wanted to know - can we generate enough income off our 5 acres to have everything cover itself and not take away from Tommy’s “off farm” income?
Well, in order to find out, I committed to tracking expenses for our farm this year religiously - even opening up it’s own checking account. For the last several years our really only major income has been raising meat chickens. I know that we roughly made enough off them that for every 2 we sold, we covered the cost to raise one for our own freezer.
But are we actually on track for that so far this season?
Now that our first batch (of 4) is mostly processed and over with, I’m going to share our #s with you and see if we’re on pace to profit.
The Breakdown
We purchased 110 Cornish cross chickens for $2.11/each.
This batch was in the brooder foreeeeverrrr. I bought them too early. And the weather was not giving us any favors. They used 10 bags of shavings in 4.5 weeks at approx. $6.99/bag
Unfortunately I don’t have the exact amount of feed they consumed since we buy ours in bulk and use it between 3 different batch simultaneously. But my best guess is they used about 1,200 lbs.
Now here’s the rough reality. We had massive loss with this batch. Out of the 113 we started with (extra chicks are common when ordering directly)… 67 made it to processing. Yup. It was brutal. But that’s the nature of some batch of Cornish.
Of the 67 birds, 41 were sold whole/processed for a total of 204.69 pounds of meat.
17 birds were reserved for our chicken butchering class which 8 will attend this Saturday for $80/each.
And the remainder were broken down into parts to be utilized for CSA memberships this summer.
So. A summary of our expenses:
$232.10 - chicks
$84.80 - bedding
$372 - feed
$50 - Misc processing expenses (bags/Ice)
$40 - class hosting expenses (lunch/printing)
TOTAL EXPENSES: $778.90
A summary of our income:
$640 - class fees
$973.75 - 41 sold chickens @ $4.75/lb
$44 - additional processing fee for some wanting parted out birds
$80 - CSA membership portion for this month
TOTAL INCOME: $1,737.75
Profit - $958.85
Honestly you guys - I was shocked! We lost 40% of our birds and still came out ahead.
Of course, I didn’t include any thing under expenses about building chicken tractors, processing equipment, heat lamps, etc. because we already own all of that infrastructure.
I also didn’t include any cost for our labor - tending the brooder 2-3x a day for the first 4.5 weeks. Hauling water to the field and moving tractors morning and afternoon the second 4.5 weeks. Processing, packaging, and all the clean up. Driving to pick up the chicks and feed, etc. Total we probably have 75 hours of labor into this batch and if we did take a paycheck we’d be making a whopping $13/hour
So there you go. I hope that’s helpful.
By the way - many of our customers are on this email list, and I’m okay with them seeing these numbers! I would hope they’d want the people they support to be paid for their efforts and not working for free.
We have two more batches for customers this year plus a 4th for our own freezer. As far as what the profits will be used for from this batch? Well, we decided instead of paying ourselves we would save some $ for feed costs for the next batch and we also made a much needed upgrade to our processing infrastructure!
We finally purchased some shiny new plastic crates which will make hauling birds in from the field MUCH less stressful for them - and less messy for us. So thank you for those who helped support this upgrade! We are so excited!
This is just one facet of our homestead. There are other areas (like our milk cow) that we don’t really ever make money from. So the biggest challenge will be having the areas that do have potential for income cover the costs for other areas.
If you are interested in me sharing more about this throughout the year, let me know by replying to this email!
And if you are planning on raising meat chickens in the future - I just added a new set of printables to our shop for a discount! It includes 3 different handouts:
- How to Pick which Breed to Raise
- How to Calculate/budget for Feed costs (and Potential Income)
and our newest pdf:
- How to Calculate How Much Meat to Grow for a Years Worth.
Click here to get all three! and start preparing for your first or next batch with a little more clarity and planning.
That’s all for this week!
Blessings from our little homestead to yours,
Beth
