What do you charge when you sell your meat birds?

[MontanaChickDoc]

My neighbor developed the alpha gal "meat allergy" and was even having reactions to grocery store chickens because of the stuff they inject into them, to plump them up (sometimes contains collagen from animals!!). I offered to raise some meat chickens for them, and ended up butchering 15 Sasso broilers and 12 Cornish cross for them over the summer. I tallied the cost of birds, feed, and butchering and came up with $4/ lb to charge them for the finished product. Does that seem expensive? The Sassos grew a lot slower so I had to feed them to 16 weeks to dress out at 5 lbs/ bird or so, and the Cornish I did at 10 weeks because of timing with other activities we were doing, and they were 7-8 lbs each. I think I probably undercharged for the Sassos but over charged for the Cornish so it came out even in the end and I wanted to keep the math as simple as I could for my small brain I feel bad charging $20/ bird or more but at the same time, feed is expensive! What do you guys charge or pay for fresh chicken? Just curious.

 

[nuthatched]

$4 a pound seems fair for all your work.

What's an 'alpha gal meat allergy '?
Most grocery store chicken isn't injected with anything so I'm not sure why she thinks that.
It could be a sensitivity to what the animals are eating, I know a guy who can't do corn, even corn finished beef makes him ill.

 

[Molpet]

2014 I was paying $6 alb for whole cx at a farmers market, and had to get in line before they opened because they would sell out in a couple hours.

 

[bman12]

https://rebelpastures.com/products/pasture-raised-whole-chicken

A 4lb bird is $35 bucks.

I have wondered myself what I would need to make this profitable. I figure at this point you have to get $25 a bird to make it profitable, but probably not worth your time unless you just love it.

$3 a bird from freedom hatchery
$3 to butcher near me
$9.20 for feed (according to freedom ranger you need 23 pounds of food for 12 weeks to get to 7lbs live weight)
$3 equipment....a swag(gas for your tuck to get feed/butcher and materials for your chicken tractor/fencing/whatever)

That puts you at roughly $18 a bird without paying for labor or accounting for lost birds or all the other things that can go wrong. I know these cost can be reduced with scale, but I imagine most of us are probably managing less than 100 birds so there isn't much scale for us.

I am curious to know what others think and how much the numbers may change based on where you are. My numbers are east coast in a high cost area I figure others can do better but just sharing my thoughts.

 

[LydiaB]

We raise ours organic and charge $5/lb. I keep telling my mom we can raise the price… I haven’t looked recently but organic chicken breast in the store was $9/lb last I knew (10 years ago).
Home raised chicken is healthier than anything you can get on the store. Especially if you pasture raise them.

 

[LydiaB]

$4 a pound seems fair for all your work.

What's an 'alpha gal meat allergy '?
Most grocery store chicken isn't injected with anything so I'm not sure why she thinks that.
It could be a sensitivity to what the animals are eating, I know a guy who can't do corn, even corn finished beef makes him ill.

Alpha gal is a tick born red meat allergy. People can have anaphylactic reactions to driving past someone grilling red meat. They also can’t have filtered bottled water due to the filter medium having something in it that is from animals (I forget what it is). And obviously they can’t have any red meat or anything contaminated with red meat products.

 

[MontanaChickDoc]

If you check the labels on chickens from the grocery store )and other meat for that matter), a lot of times it says "Injected with an 18% solution" - to keep them plump and moist at cooking, supposedly, but I think it's just so you pay for all that extra weight!! But sometimes those injected solutions contain animal proteins like collagen. The point is, you don't know WHAT is in them. It's scary. But that is why fresh meat doesn't shrink when you cook it, it's not 1/5 water added after processing!!

 

[Penpal]

I don't know what you are feeding your birds, but maybe you could cut corners there without sacrificing quality. There are things you can grow yourself without field equipment, like sunflowers, meal worms, red wiggler worms, or in the case of my yard this very wet year- slugs.

You might also consider butchering the birds yourself.

As long as you have the set up, you could also sell eggs.

 

[C Siena]

We raise ours organic and charge $5/lb. I keep telling my mom we can raise the price… I haven’t looked recently but organic chicken breast in the store was $9/lb last I knew (10 years ago).
Home raised chicken is healthier than anything you can get on the store. Especially if you pasture raise them.

What do you feed your chickens to keep it organic?

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Alpha gal is a tick born red meat allergy. People can have anaphylactic reactions to driving past someone grilling red meat. They also can’t have filtered bottled water due to the filter medium having something in it that is from animals (I forget what it is). And obviously they can’t have any red meat or anything contaminated with red meat products.

Alpha-GAL allergy is an allergy to the protein contained in any product that comes from a mammal. My granddaughter has it. She can't have meat or dairy that comes from cattle, goat, sheep, pork, venison, etc. (We don't eat pork anyway.) No milk, butter, cream, cheese, sour cream, etc. The allergy comes from the bite of the Lone Star tick. Joy of living in Missouri, aka Tick Central. So ... we now only eat fish, chicken or eggs when it comes to animal products. Incidentally, she also has a non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Sure makes it interesting (read: "challenging") to cook for her!

We have eaten in restaurants where meat is cooked, with no ill effects.