Making Extra Money With Chickens
When considering to start a new enterprise on the farm, my first thoughts are can I eat it, and will it make me money? There’s nothing wrong with having a hobby farm, some people love having chickens around, and if they can get a few eggs every week and can share their chickens on social media, that is a plus. There are many other additional ways to have your chickens make you money, here are a few that we use.
Selling Eggs
Probably the most common way a person raising chickens makes money. The chickens lay an egg, the farmer picks said egg up, washes it, boxes it, and sells it… Pretty simple process. Every farm should sell its extra eggs locally. Finding your market could be hard. It’s a low investment, so there’s a lot of farmers in one area selling eggs, but that does not mean you can’t sell them too. I think the key to selling eggs better than your neighbors is building a “buzz” on social media. Starts an Instagram or a Facebook business page, grow your following highly engaging posts, and builds the mystique of “your brand” people buy a lot of Nike and Carhart gear where there are plenty of similar competitors in their sectors, why is that? Product branding does matter. Never forget just because Jonny down the way sells farm fresh eggs doesn’t mean Mary who works in town knows about Jonny’s egg business. MAKE Mary your customer! In this space, it’s not about stilling customers from another farmer, hey, if their customers want to come over, come on with it! BUT it’s more about introducing new people to your product and making them your customer.
Fertile Eggs
Hatching eggs are a great way to make extra money. We run our egg layers and breeders in two different systems. Instead of putting 20 roosters in with 100 laying hens and hoping everyone gets covered. We much rather run 5 to 10 hens with one rooster in a “bachelor pad” type area. This ensures that ONLY the eggs from this group of chickens are fertile.
Doing it this way also gives us as close to a 100% chance of having fertile eggs. We always feel confident guaranteeing fertile eggs to our customers. We keep different breeds of roosters around. This allows us to breed certain roosters with certain groups of hens. We ALWAYS know who the daddy is before the eggs are hatched, running our farm this way allows us to be able to sell fertile eggs from purebred chickens which always bring a higher price.
Day-old Chicks
The cost invested is little to none, especially if you already have an incubator. Spend the extra money and get the automatic one you’ll thank me later. Let the machine do all the work for you, if you are anything like me, your time is too valuable to be turning eggs by hand. We use Facebook, Craigslist, and word of mouth to sell most of our day-old chicks. I don’t market or advertise any of these chicks in advance. I want people to buy emotionally! I want to post “30 chicks born this morning ready for a new home, first come, first serve” by doing it this way, people can see the chicks in the brooder running around, be able to quickly determine health, and can make decisions NOW instead of taking a few weeks to think about it and having their nagging wife talk them out of it.
We find sales are just better when we market chicks this way. Again, we primly sell purebred chicks not saying that we don’t sell crossbreds, but again the way we breed chicks and hatch them, there’s no doubt they are exactly what we say they are. Being so transparent allows costumes to feel more confident in spending their hard-earned money on our product. We offer sex and unsex chicks just like the hatcheries, we do charge $1.25 more to sex the chicks, it’s a bit time-consuming over putting a straight-run in a box and going on about our way. We can hatch eggs about every 30 days.
Selling Adult Chickens
I think selling, laying hens, or adult roosters is the most lucrative method, at least in my area. Some people much rather pay a little more to not have to deal with the brooder phase and or raise a chicken for 5 to 6 months to start getting eggs. So let’s provide those replacements! I’ve seen young replacement hens go for anywhere between $25 and $100 at auction. Let’s say we hatch out 50 chicks sell only 25, and raise the other 25 to as close a maturity as possible, then take the remaining 25 to an auction.
On the low end, we could make 25 bucks.That’s 25 chickens x’s $25= $625
On the high end, we could make 60 bucks. That’s 25 chickens x’s $60=$1,500
That isn’t bad, in my opinion, let’s say you live in an area like me where there is a poultry auction once a month, that’s potentially $7,500 to $18,000 only from selling 25 chickens a month. What if you sold 50 chickens a month or 100? Again, just something to think about. The average age of a laying hen is about 2 to 3 years. The average farmer or homesteader needs replacements every other year. Why not be the one who offers good quality replacements? Outside of selling whole, and cut-ups on the meat birds, selling adult chickens is where we make the bulk of our money in the chicken enterprise. Some people don’t have the setup to raise chicks, while others don’t have the time, they want their eggs, and they want them now! These customers are willing to pay more.
Your time and expenses should always be taken into consideration when pricing anything on the farm. Don’t outprice yourself to where you’re stuck with all these chickens, and become the crazy chicken lady, but make sure your expenses are covered and there is some profit left over for you. In closing, there are many ways to make money selling chickens, decide what you want to do. The more money you can generate from one animal, the better. I hope this gave you a few ideas, you can do it!
