2017 Meat Birds - By The Numbers

If you dare to be honest when looking in the mirror, you see change.  I'm seeing more grey hair and wrinkles.  I'm not fretting about it.  People change over time. Change is one of the constants in life. Everyday we change.  So do all creatures. Today we'll do a post-mortem analysis of our meat birds like we always do to look at change over their 9 week lifespan.  Less than 10 weeks from this cute little bird:

To this old fellow:

It is truly hard to believe that less than 10 weeks have passed between those two photos.  We look at the numbers to determine if we can adjust anything to make the management of the birds better, more efficient, or more economical.  Even though we've learned a lot over the many times we've done this, it is humbling because we learn things each and every year.  Some things you can control.  Some things are out of your control.  Some things you have to mess up on to discover not to do that again.  I seem to find new and creative ways to mess up every year, but that provides opportunities to learn.

Here's the breakdown:

Date of Receipt:           02/15/2017

Date of Slaughter:      04/22/2017

Days old at Slaughter:               68

Weeks old at Slaughter:          9.7
Number of Birds Slaughtered:  66

Purchased Birds:
We purchased 75 meat birds at a cost of $2.49 per bird with a purchase price of $187.00.  They actually sent us 84 birds, as they usually send a few extra chicks to make up for losses during shipping.

Supplies:

Propane                  $  10.00

Bulbs                        $  14.00

Chicken tractor       $  54.00 (we are amortizing the tractor over 3 years)

Ice                            $    6.00

Ziploc bags              $     6.00

Feed                        $ 351.00  (24 bags of feed)

Total Cost:              $628.00

Losses: We lost 18 birds this year, resulting in a 21.43% mortality rate.  That seems pretty bad, but we lost 13 of those on one evening, 3/29/2017, with heavy rains and wind.

Cost per bird:                       $9.52

Cost per pound:                   $2.12

Feed consumed per bird:    18.56 pounds

Feed cost per bird:               $5.32

Feed cost per pound:           $0.29  ($14.24 divided by 50 pound bag)

Total pounds Cornish Cross carcasses harvested:        $296.20

Average pound per bird (66 birds):                                      4.49 lbs   

In conclusion:

Our cost per bird is higher than in past years, but largely that is due to the $2.49 per chick purchase price.  In the past we were buying 4-H chicks at $0.40 per bird. The purchase price is the largest component in the increased bird cost.  Feed cost is actually down about $3 per 50 pound bag compared to prior years.  The feed consumed per bird is down from last year, but still higher than the 14.89 pounds of feed consumed per bird record in 2013.

One thing that skews the numbers a bit is that about a month ago we lost 13 birds during the rain storm that each weighed a little better than 3 pounds.  The numbers would look better with those birds in the equation.  Obviously, if your birds die, you want them to die young - before they eat a bunch of feed.

As we always say each and every year, at a cost of $9.52 per bird, we can't compete with the chicken sold at the grocery store.  However, it is not the same product.  Our birds were raised and slaughtered differently.  The quality of their short life was markedly different (better) from the factory birds.  No antibiotics, no medicines, no hormones.  They saw sunshine, walked on green grass, and felt the wind on their wings.  I like to think they taste better, too!

It would not do for the consumer to know that the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much of his life standing deep in his own excrement in a feedlot, helping to pollute the local streams. Or that the calf that yielded the veal cutlet on her plate spent its life in a box in which it did not have room to turn around.  -Wendell Berry