Tricia is a great statistician, keeping accurate records year by year so that we can determine what's working and what is not. Some things are within your control, and some are not. Let's look first at the bird's ages. Here is 2019 birds:
And here are 2018 birds:
The birds were one day younger this year than in 2018. From a cost standpoint, the quicker you butcher them, the less you have to feed them. Feed, as we look at next, is your biggest cost component. We buy feed by the 50 lb sack. If you do this on a large scale, you can cut feed costs by buying in bulk. We are small-scale. If you feed them organic feed only, you really drive up costs. We are not organic, but we use non-medicated feed. We may try organic feed next year. Every year we look at it, but the cost drives us away. We do stay away from medicated feeds, though.
Here is a tally of ordered birds for 2019:
And here are the numbers for 2018:
Big difference is the mortality rate. We ordered 10 less birds this year and ended up butchering almost the same number of birds due to a lower mortality rate. We only lost 4 this year compared with 12 last year. This can be hard to analyze. Sometimes the birds are weak from shipping. That is outside of your control. Sometimes, though, we lose birds we shouldn't due to poor placement of heat lamps, causing the birds to pile up and smother weaker ones. That is human error and controllable. In fact, 2 of the 4 birds we lost this year could have been saved with better management.
Here's a detail of 2019 Costs:
And here is 2018 Costs:
The birds were cheaper this year by $0.42 per chick. Feed was a little more expensive in 2019, but the birds ate a lot more! 17 pounds of feed per bird consumed in 2019 versus 14.7 pounds of feed per bird in 2018.
Here are the totals in comparison year over year:
We harvested about 200 pounds of chicken that we will eat on for the next year. Our average pound per bird was a little lower than last year, but not significantly.
The biggest metric is cost per bird. Our all-in cost (minus our labor) was $9.43 per bird in 2019 versus $9.72 per bird in 2018. So here is where the rubber meets the road. At our local Piggly Wiggly, whole cut up chickens sell for $2.29 per pound. In raising our birds, our cost of $9.43 per bird divided by our average weight of 4.11 pounds per bird gives a cost per pound of $2.29. Exactly the same!!
However, in purchasing your cut up chicken from Piggly Wiggly, you just have to drive to the store. You don't have to feed them everyday for 8 weeks, push the chicken tractor everyday for 8 weeks, or spend an entire Saturday butchering them. Labor costs, if added to the price per pound, even valued at minimum wage, would make it uneconomical from a pure financial standpoint.
If your goal of raising your own birds is to save money, well, that is a losing proposition. However, there are other considerations. We know exactly what went into their feed and bodies. No hormones, no medications, no antibiotics. They were treated humanely and raised on grass and sunshine and wind. We handled them and butchered them in a clean setting. I think our birds look better and taste better than store-bought birds, but I am biased, I know.
There is also a lot to be said about taking part in growing your food and knowing where your food comes from. Although we'll soon be empty-nesters and the number of birds we'll eat per year will decrease somewhat, we'll still continue to do this as we have for the last 10 years. Tune in next year as we'll once again resume operations on the Sonnier Chicken Ranch. Yeehaw!!
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