Poultry Update! Thanksgiving Turkeys and Fresh Eggs
We have expanded a few parts of the farm. In 2024 Brice spent significant time moving and restoring a small barn to house our laying hens. We’ve gone from 20-25 laying hens to over 200. The main goal is always to provide a local, quality product you can’t get in the store. The other goal was a business for our kids to start gaining an income on the farm.
I enjoy getting the baby chicks and providing care until they are “functioning adults”. It takes approximately 6 months for a chick to grow enough to lay eggs. And those eggs are small at first-it’s another month before we feel they are a good size to sell.
The kids hear a lot at Farmers Markets “well I get them from a neighbor for $1-2/dozen”. We are happy for you and hope you are grateful to that neighbor! They are likely raising for themselves and selling extras. Doing it as a business is a whole different ball game. My last order of 35 chicks was over $200. Do the math on that investment-it’ll take 40-50 dozen eggs to pay that off but it’ll be 6-7 months to wait. And I’m not factoring in: feed, water, critters (mink, weasels, raccoons-all can wipe out hundreds of chickens very fast). Birds in cages don’t have that risk nearly as much. Plus-we have eyes on every chicken daily. We get asked often about bird flu. I can guarantee we can spot an ill chicken quickly.
Our price isn’t subject to the egg market, it’s based on our cost. That gets tough for us. When eggs are high in the store I’m always getting calls and texts. Then suddenly I’m sitting on 30-40 dozen eggs and I go check the store-sure enough, the price has lowered. It’s hard to run a consistent business when some folks only come around if it saves money. I’m not disrespecting them, nor do I blame them, but like any store you hate to sit on inventory. I don’t raise our egg prices in response to the stores. This past spring when stores were at $8-9/dozen we stayed at $4-5/dozen.
Another poultry side is meat chickens, aka broiler chickens. I love raising meat birds. I believe with my whole being that free range (in our garden and on grass) makes the best meat. For their health we supplement with oregano oil, vitamins, and ‘broiler booster’. They are provided sun and shade, shelter at night, fans in the heat, dry bedding in wet conditions. I’m up at 5 am making sure they are all up and moving before I head to work. They are put in shelter around 930 pm and allowed a normal sleep/wake rhythm. If I hear it storming I wake up concerned for them-this isn’t asking for sympathy but for perspective. In the 8 weeks we have broiler chickens on the farm I rarely get a regular nights sleep. It’s the nature of the business that we generally don’t stay anywhere overnight or out late, usually we have to leave one of the kids’s ball games early, to get home and make sure they are taken care of. It’s certainly not without sacrifice.
The unfortunate part is that in our years of doing this chicks have gone from .80 cents to over $3 per bird. Bird flu and issues with post office deliveries have raised the prices. The chicks now need picked up or delivered via SpeeDee (this was new this year). We like to butcher on our place to save time/money in transport to a butcher. This didn’t work this year as the business that butchers on our place had to stop taking appointments due to a back injury. The cost also depends on how many I’m selling-if I get enough orders to raise 300 I can ask a lower price than if I’m selling 150 (essentially the same labor, more to sell under 1 transportation cost, 1 feed grinding cost, etc). But-if I order 300 hoping to sell at a more attractive price and don’t get them sold, I have no where to store them-we’ve had this happen even when we sold under $3/pound.
The day I took the chickens to butcher (3 hour round trip) I had a good conversation with the customer ahead of me. I told him I’d purchased $600 crates to transport birds as we found some will pile and perish in the trailer. He had just purchased a $700 freezer to transport birds on his 5 hour round trip drive. I said “not bad”…to which he said “but when do you get ahead, spending $600-700 here and there”. Butcher day Brice took 200 chickens to Bagley, I took 150 to Missouri valley, we spent nearly $1500 to butcher and that’s not including our gas. And the stress of doing it in stormy conditions…I hated the birds being uncomfortable. There’s also the expense of storage for the drive home, ice to cool the birds, and the cleanup of sanitizing everything once we get home.
As we’ve grown my time to communicate has dwindled, much of that being our 5 kids have also gotten busy and many messages are replied to by them while I’m driving them somewhere. So our biggest change this year was making a website, included here. It still needs some finishing touches but it’s getting there. We are trying to save time on the communication of information aspect so we can do what we really enjoy doing-working outside and focusing on our family. Thank you to Chad Wittrock for the website work!
If the prices look too high, we understand. Big producers can do it cheaper. Maybe we could butcher our own birds and reduce prices but we currently don’t have the set up, or frankly the time. Do know that our logo is on the area little league field and local celebrations as we do show our appreciation for your business by giving back. If Costco has cheaper chicken that’s awesome-I haven’t seen their logo at our baseball field, nor their CEO helping coach. We can’t sell our eggs for less, but know they were gathered by our kids and washed (when requested) in a clean sink by caring hands with a watchful eye.
As far as turkeys, poult price has gone from $5 each to $8 each the past couple years. I don’t have prices yet for this year. Last year I was lucky to get any at all due to bird flu. We do have 50 reserved this year. Turkeys are at our farm for 4 months. We have eyes on them daily as well-mostly because they like to come peer in our front door
With all of our birds-the feed is mixed right here by Brice. His rations are based on their age and needs.
