2024 Meat Birds By the Numbers

Each year after the butchering event, we compile data and look at the numbers.  Although I'm a Finance major, I don't care for numbers much.  I'd much rather listen to and tell stories or read books or listen to interesting podcasts.  However, numbers actually tell a story.  I firmly believe in budgeting.  I don't believe in purchasing something unless you can afford it.  Wouldn't things be different if our government would ask the question, "Can we afford this?" before spending money on boondoggles that rob people's futures and livelihoods?  Off on a tangent, I'm sorry.

If you've followed us during our annual meat bird project, we weigh the birds weekly to see if they are growing and if they are going to hit our target weight within the specified time.  Things must be measurable so you can determine if you've succeeded in whatever your endeavor is.  Raising birds for slaughter is no different.

Prior to cutting up our birds, bagging and putting them into the deep freeze, we weigh them.  The crude tally below tells the story:

We butchered 32 birds.  The total carcass weight was 159.1 pounds yielding an average bird weight of 4.97 pounds.  The largest bird was 7.25 pounds and the runt of the litter was 4 pounds.  Actually, this year was a good year as far as weight.  A six pound bird usually yields a 4 pound carcass.  That's what we shoot for.  The fact that our smallest bird was our goal tells you that from a carcass weight standpoint, it was a good year.  

The other good thing was we had 0.00 mortality.  No birds died!  Usually, some die.  Normally, some of the baby chicks are weak and others crowd them and suffocate them.  That didn't happen this year.  They were all healthy and strong from the start.  If they do die, you want them to die very young so that you don't have a lot of feed invested.  We were fortunate this year as all lived until slaughter.

The next form we use gives details that we just find are interesting like days at slaughter, costs, etc.

It cost $319.35 or $10 per bird to get the bird to slaughter.  That includes costs of the baby chicks, feed, supplies.  Note that the chicken tractor is fully depreciated.  Our cost per pound is $2.01.  Quick comparison shopping shows our birds are cheaper than at Whole Foods (comparable bird), but Wal Mart Tyson Whole Chicken beats the pants off of ours in the price war.  Textbook example of economies of scale.   

Lastly, here is our feed cost itemized:

Over the eight weeks, we purchased a total of 10 sacks of Chick Grower at a total cost of $179.15.  There are some other factors that don't really factor in the analysis.  First, we think our birds are healthier.  They were out on grass in the sunshine.  No antibiotics.  No hormones.  No medicines.  No vaccines.  I think (until the day they died) they were happy birds.  Their blood, feathers, and guts no doubt improved the garden soil.  Finally, it's a great family project.  We can all work together to achieve a common goal, and we'll all enjoy great, healthy meals all year long.  These intangibles don't really show up in the accounting, but they're important, nonetheless.

Blood, Guts, and Feathers - Chicken Butchering - 2024

Eight weeks from cradle to grave.  That's it.  That's how long it takes to raise a Cornish Cross Meat Bird for slaughter.  Saturday was butchering day.  Our sons came in to help with the annual process.  We were trying to figure out how many years we've done this and can't put our finger on it.  Our best guess is 15 years.  Each year we purchase day old chicks and raise them for slaughter and eat on these birds all year long.  In the past we've raised as many as 100 at a time.  This year, it's only Tricia and me at home so we raised 32.

Each day we made sure that they had access to feed and fresh water.  We also gave them an all you can eat grass and bug buffet by pushing the chicken tractor to fresh grass two times a day.  The night before the butchering, I pushed the tractor near the butchering stations I set up.  I stopped feeding them at noon the day before butchering so that their digestive system would be emptied.  This makes gutting them a cleaner process.  I got the whetstone out and steel and sharpened all the knives.  A sharp knife certainly makes the butchering process easier.

The Final Countdown

The first station is the "killing cones."  We use traffic cones that were abandoned on the side of the road and then screwed to two 2 x 4's.  The live birds are turned upside down in the cones with the head poking out.  The rubber cones hold them tight.  Buckets are placed beneath each cone to collect the blood.

Killing Cones

Benjamin runs the Killing Cone station.  After he's positioned the birds in place, he uses a sharp knife to slice the bird's artery on the side of its head.

One slice

The bird's heart will pump all the blood out of the bird and it will die.  We aim for the least stressful death possible.  This only takes a couple of minutes and the bird is pronounced dead.

A bloody job

Russ runs the scalding station.  We use our crawfish boiling pot that's been filled with water.  A propane burner heats the water.  A thermometer in the pot is monitored so that it stays between 145 and 150 Fahrenheit.  The temperature has to be just right.  If it is too cool, the feathers won't come off.  If it is too hot, it will cook the bird.  We add some dishwashing liquid to the water.  It is a surfactant and enables the feathers to come off a little easier.  We usually dunk the bird in and out of the water for about two minutes.  We make sure we dunk all the way down so that you get the joint of the let wet.  The test for making sure the bird is ready for plucking is to try to pull a tail feather out and try to pull a big wing feather out.  When each pulls off easily, you're ready for plucking.

Russ' Plucking Station

Teamwork makes the dream work.  Sometimes, when Benjamin is waiting for his four birds to die, he assists Russ in scalding.

Next up is the plucking.  Years ago we built this plucker.  It has rubber fingers mounted on the sides and on a disk on the bottom.  A washing machine motor powers this contraption.  You turn it on and the bottom spins.  Toss the bird in and spray it with water and while it spins, the rubber fingers take all the feathers off.  It's quite a time saver.

The plucker

The de-feathered bird is given to me.  I pull the head of the chicken off and cut the feet off.  Then I remove the gland on the top of the bird's tail, cut the neck and pull the crop and the windpipe out and make a cut across the bird's belly near the vent.

No head, no feet

Tricia runs the evisceration station.  She's quite the surgeon.  She reaches in the bird's cavity and pulls out the intestines, liver, gizzard, heart, crop and windpipe.  It all pulls out connected.  She cuts a U-shaped cut around the vent and the bird is gutted.  The liver, gizzard and heart are cut out and placed in iced containers for further processing later.  The gall bladder is carefully cut off the liver, being careful not to cut into the organ.  All the guts are put in a bucket.  She reaches in the bird and removes the lungs from along the back bone and, if a male, removes the testicles.  The gutted carcass is washed out good with a hose.

The surgeon in her OR

The birds then are cooled down.  They are thrown in tubs of cool water.  Keeping them submerged protects them from flies.  It also brings their body temperature down.  Toward the end of the process, we dump out the water and refill with cool, fresh water.

The chilling station

This whole process goes faster than you think.  We always say we're going to time it and always forget.  Finally, we look in the tractor and there's just one left.  The last of the Mohicans.  

Tomorrow, I'll show you Part II of this process.  It is a smooth operation that we've tried to perfect each year.  There's something to be said about processing your own birds in the backyard.  It's good to know what you are eating and what went into your birds.  No medications.  No hormones.  No antibiotics.  Join us tomorrow as we continue...

2024 Meat Birds - 7 Weeks Old

This week was an eventful week for the Cornish Cross birds.  A bad storm was coming through, promising hail and high winds.  After the weather scare when the birds were very young when we tried to hold the chicken tractor down in 80 mph winds, we had different plans this time.  We were getting weather reports of 75 mph winds an hour away from us.  I staked down the chicken tractor, but then had an epiphany.

The birds are older now and not as susceptible toy hypothermia.  I decided to remove the tarp from the top of the tractor.  This takes the wind resistance away and allows the wind (and rain) to blow right through.  Yes, the birds would get wet, but we could get the tarp back on as soon as the weather settled down, turn on the heat lamps, and all would be good.  Good, that is, unless we got hail that could kill the birds.  I made up my mind that we would butcher any birds that got killed by the weather.

Well, no hail killed any birds.  The strong winds blew and we got almost 2 inches of rain, but the birds made it.  All of them.  We turned the heat lamps on and the shaking birds quickly recovered.  What a blessing!  Well, today is weigh day.  I grabbed an average rooster and marched him in to the kitchen scale I have set up on a table in the garage.

He's a nice looking bird, I think.  He feels solid as I held him.  Let's see what the scale says.

At week 7 we are at 6 pounds and 2 ounces.  Remember a 6 pound bird yields a 4 pound carcass and that is what we are shooting for.  We've hit that for the average bird and still have a few days to go (and grow)!

The day we got them, they weighed 3 ounces

• Week 1, they weighed 6.5 ounces
• Week 2, they weighed 18 ounces
• Week 3, they weighed 29 ounces
• Week 4, they weighed 44 ounces
• Week 5, they weighed 64 ounces
• Week 6, they weighed 84 ounces
• Week 7, they weighed 98 ounces

That's a weight gain of 14 ounces or just shy of a pound over the last week.  As discussed above, we've hit our goal.  I've compared to prior years and this one is right in line with where he needs to be.  Weather permitting, we've tentatively scheduled the butcher date to be this Saturday morning.  So far, we haven't lost a single bird.  Let's see if we can get all 32 birds to cross the finish line on Saturday.  Stay posted.  We'll keep you abreast (pardon the pun) of the poultry butchering extravaganza.

2024 Meat Birds - 6 Weeks Old

This morning my wife and I were reading in the book of Job.  You know the story well.  Job had many calamities befall him.  All on one day.  When he thought it couldn't get any worse after loosing his oxen and donkeys and sheep and servants, another servant came running up and told him that his sons and daughters were having a feast and the eldest son's home.  All of a sudden strong winds came forth and blew the house down on top of them, killing all of Job's children.

What did Job do?  He mourned.  Like anyone would do.  Then he said, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, Blessed be the Name of the Lord."  In all this Job didn't sin.  In fact, his wife told him, "Are you going to retain your dignity?  Curse God and die."  Job told her, "You talk as a foolish woman.  Are you going to receive good from the Lord and not receive the bad?"

First, I began to think of what a righteous man Job was.  I also began to remember when our meat birds were very young and the 80 mph winds blew, knocking over our pecan tree and causing destruction all around.  Tricia and I were in the chicken tractor, trying to hold it down and save our birds from calamity.  Little did we know that we could have been like Job's kids!  Not only that, lightning was flashing all around, crashing like nobody's business.

After the storm passed and I was cleaning up limbs, I picked up this branch that wasn't 150 feet from where we were in the chicken tractor:

Yep, lightning!  It popped a water oak tree in the front yard, burning the branch with considerable voltage and splintering the wood, sending it falling in the yard.  You can see way up in the tree in the photo below where, about 3/4 of the way up, another burned, broken off piece of the limb remains.  That was a close call!

Well, tonight is 'weigh day.'  It's the time I go out and pick out an average bird from the chicken tractor, march it into the garage where I have the scale set up, and weigh the bird.  We purchased straight runs, meaning they could be hens or roosters.  Roosters grow faster and bigger.  This one below is a rooster.

He felt heavy and hot.  I sat him up on the scale to see where he was.

Whoa!  He tipped the scale at 5 pounds, four ounces.

The day we got them, they weighed 3 ounces

• Week 1, they weighed 6.5 ounces
• Week 2, they weighed 18 ounces
• Week 3, they weighed 29 ounces
• Week 4, they weighed 44 ounces
• Week 5, they weighed 64 ounces
• Week 6, they weighed 84 ounces

That's a weight gain of 20 ounces or 1 pound 4 ounces over the last week.  At five pounds and four ounces, that is precisely where we want to be at this point.  I've compared to prior years and this one is right in line with where he needs to be.  At this rate, we are on course for butchering at the 8 week point.  We'll check back in next Wednesday.

2024 Meat Birds - 5 Weeks Old

It's already Wednesday weigh-in for the meat birds.  The week has been mostly uneventful for the Cornish Cross birds.  They are steadily growing.  You can't really call them chicks any longer.  We had more than a 2 1/2 inch rain this past week, but it didn't phase them.  As young chicks, when they get wet, you can easily lose the whole flock.  Ask me how I know that little factoid.  They are older now and have feathers and put off a lot of heat.  

Speaking of heat, I still have them under the heat lamps at night.  During the day, I turn them off as it has been warming up into the upper 80's already.  I'm still feeding them bugs at night.  As far as feeding, we're still giving them an 18% protein, non-medicated chick grower.  I feed at breakfast, lunch and supper.  In other words, I keep feed in front of them all day long.  At nightfall,, I pull the feed and give them a 12 hour stretch with no feed.  In the morning, they are hungry.  They practically attack me when I open the door with the bucket of feed.

Let the sleeping chickens lie

I picked up a bird of average stature for the weigh-in.  Remember, there are 7 birds that are a week older.  I'm not weighing any of those guys.  You can see by this one's comb that he is a rooster.

This bird has some big feet!  I noticed them when I set him down on the scale.  Let's see what he weighs...

Exactly 4 pounds.

The day we got them, they weighed 3 ounces

• Week 1, they weighed 6.5 ounces
• Week 2, they weighed 18 ounces
• Week 3, they weighed 29 ounces
• Week 4, they weighed 44 ounces
• Week 5, they weighed 64 ounces

That's a weight gain of 20 ounces or 1 pound 4 ounces over the last week.  At exactly four pounds, that is precisely where we want to be at this point.  At this rate, we are on course for butchering at the 8 week point.  We'll check back in next Wednesday.

2024 Meat Birds - 4 Weeks Old

What's changed in the last week since the last weigh in?  Well, for one thing, their feed trough.  I moved out the small feeders because they kept getting their heads stuck in it.  They're growing.  I replaced the little chick feeders with what we always use - a 10 foot PVC gutter.  It works perfectly.  Now all the chicks can gather around and eat to their hearts' content.  

We still have them on 18% (unmedicated) chick grower.  We keep feed in front of them all day long.  At night, I pull the feed away from them.  In the morning, they're presented with breakfast and kept with food in the gutter all day.  I can tell they are growing and still, no deaths.  0% mortality rate.  Let's see if we can keep that up.

I still feed them bugs at night, but we've had a string of cool nights and that's kept the nightly bug population down.  Although tonight, it's warmed up and so far they've eaten 60 fat beetles.  On my last beetle feeding trip to the chicken tractor, I grabbed an average looking bird and brought him back to the scale in the garage.  He plopped right down.

Surprisingly, the bird is calm and only made some slight noise when I picked him up.

I made sure to zero out the scale before we began.  Here's where ol' boy measures up on the scale for the week 4 weigh in.

The day we got them, they weighed 3 ounces

• Week 1, they weighed 6.5 ounces
• Week 2, they weighed 18 ounces
• Week 3, they weighed 29 ounces
• Week 4, they weighed 44 ounces

That's a weight gain of 15 ounces over last week.  As I look at prior years' figures, we are still right where we need to be as far as growth is concerned.  We'll check in next week to see how they continue to progress.  Remember, our goal is a 6 pound bird at eight weeks.  We're still within range of hitting that target.

2024 Meat Birds - 3 Weeks Old

Three weeks are in the books for the meat birds.  I'm not a superstitious person, so I'll go ahead and say it:  We haven't lost a single bird.  We started with 32 and 32 are still upright and vertical.  That's good.  Real good.  We've been feeding them an 18% protein Chick Starter with no medication or antibiotics.  We keep the feeders full, but the feeders you see in the photo below will be swapped out with a PVC gutter that we use as a feed trough in order to fix a problem.  I noticed today that the chicks' heads were getting stuck in the feeder.  They're growing.

The other thing that's different is that I replaced the one gallon waterer with our old trusty bell chicken waterer.  

It suspends from the roof of the tractor and has a 5 gallon reservoir that I'll show in the next photo.

The reservoir is simply a 5 gallon bucket with a 5/16 hole drilled in it.  A rubber tube connects to a valve on the bell waterer.  The five gallon bucket sits precariously atop another 5 gallon bucket turned upside down that sits on a cow molasses tub turned upside down.  This set up allows gravity to do its thing and provides sufficient head pressure to keep water flowing as the chicks drink it.  We're still adding apple cider vinegar to the water.

So today is weigh day.  I snatched up an average bird.  Not the biggest.  Not the smallest.  I carry him in to the kitchen scale I have set up in the garage.  He's a nice looking bird.  He feels plump.  I'm still feeding them a whole bunch of june bugs every night.  That's free protein you don't have to pay for at the feed store and the chicks love 'em.  I set this week's bird down and he gave me a nice profile pic.

I sat him down on the scale for the Wednesday weekly weigh-in...

This week, Week 3, he weighed 1 lb. 13 oz or 29 ounces

The day we got them, they weighed 3 ounces

• Week 1, they weighed 6.5 ounces
• Week 2, they weighed 18 ounces
• Week 3, they weighed 29 ounces

That's a weight gain of 11 ounces over last week.  As I look at prior years' figures, we are still right where we need to be as far as growth is concerned.  We'll check in next week to see how they continue to progress.

2024 Meat Birds - 2 Weeks Old

An eventful week for our feathered friends.  The changes are apparent.  First, they are putting on feathers.  Their heads still have the yellow fuzz that is typical of cute little chicks, but white feathers are starting to come out.  They are noticeably larger, too.  We'll find out how much they've grown in a minute.

The storm that blew through on Wednesday set the birds back.  First, many of them came very close to dying as they got wet and had hypothermia.  Although we saved all of them, for probably 12 hours of the day, they didn't eat and didn't drink.  Once they recovered, they ate, but in a life span of 8 weeks, losing half a day of nutrition is going to set things back a little bit.

The bug population has fallen off.  Where I was feeding them between 95 - 200 beetles each night, tonight only 5 beetles were found.  That falloff in protein will be missed by the birds.  We're expanding the real estate within the chicken tractor that they can roam on, almost daily.  Since they are eating more each day, they are also pooping more.  We move the chicken tractor to fresh grass, so that they aren't standing in their poop.

So tonight is the night I pick out an average looking bird out of the flock of 32 and bring them to the kitchen scale to see where we measure up.  Like a prizefighter standing before the scales, let's look at tonight's heavy-weight competitor:

Notice the big dinosaur-looking feet on that little bird.  That means he's got some growing to do to fit into those "shoes."

Let's zoom in on the weight:

1 pound and two ounces.  In looking at records of past history, 20 ounces at this time hold the record, I think.  This bird isn't materially far behind.

At a day old he weighed 3 ounces.

A week later, he more than doubled his weight to 6.5 ounces

Not to be outdone, a week later, he more than doubled his weight to 18 ounces or 1 pound 2 ounces.

That's pretty good growth there.  We'll see if we can keep them healthy, happy and growing!  Next week we'll see how Week 3 goes.

2024 Meat Birds - 1 Week Old

As we've done in prior years, during our meat bird project we'll have weekly updates where we weigh them and discuss how they are doing.  Tonight is episode one.

As time goes on, you notice trends.  Things happen time after time.  When I was farming, I remember plowing the same field year after year.  The turns you made until you finished plowing were the same turns you made in previous years.  The tractor could almost be on auto pilot.  Other things the Lord put in nature comes at the same time every year.  The live oak leaves fall and are replaced with fresh growth, quickly followed by tassels.  Then the little stinging caterpillars fall from the trees.  Ugh!  Then, the june bugs come.  I call them june bugs, but that's not their name, I'm sure.  It's only April.

Anyhow, like clouds of locusts the june bugs come.  Tonight, I thought of a brilliant idea.  Those don't come often, so I thought I should act on it.  I turned on the flood lights and the light attracted the june bugs.  I picked them up.

I learned that I could fit 21 of them in the palm of my hand.  The crawling sensation gave me the frissons.  I threw them down in the brooder and found that the old saying "quicker than a chicken on a june bug" is true!  Those dudes and dudettes went absolutely crazy chasing down the bugs and devouring them.  These are straight run chicks, so I won't know how many are male versus female until a little later.  You want males because they grow bigger and faster.

This is Friday night entertainment on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  I watched the chicks scurry around, grabbing a june bug in their beak.  Then other chicks would try to steal it.  What fun!

I kept walking back to the light and collecting more bugs that were attracted to it...  Like moths to a flame, they sealed their doom.  As of this writing, I've fed 97 bugs to the chicks.  I think they are still hungry believe it or not, so I'll go back out and collect some more high protein june bugs.

So on Wednesday, the majority of the birds (less the 7 we got a few days earlier) turned a week old.  Time to put one on the scale.  This is Tricia's kitchen scale, so I put a piece of paper on it to keep it somewhat clean should the bird decide to have his daily constitutional.

As you can see, at one week old this one weighs 6 1/2 ounces.  Last week it weighed 3 ounces.  It's doubled in size, adding 3 1/2 ounces of body weight in one week.  In looking at prior years' weights, they have been between 6 and 8 ounces at one week, so we're right in the ballpark.

I'll wager that if I feed them 100 june bugs a night, they might weigh as much as me by next week!

Cheep! Cheep!

For the Sunday after church meal, my wife was planning on making Chicken Etoufee.  We always like rice & gravy for lunch.  She informed me that when she reached into our deep freeze to get a chicken out to thaw, we were down to our last bird!  We still have a few bags of the roosters that we butchered from the birds we hatched out, but as far as the meat birds we raised, they are almost gone.

Tricia told me that she had seen some Cornish Cross meat birds at Tractor Supply.  Normally, we order them by mail directly from the hatchery, but hey, if Tractor Supply has them, we'd save on shipping.  Saturday afternoon we went to Tractor Supply.  They had 7 Cornish Cross (straight run) left.  We said, "We'll take 'em!"  She told us they normally get more each Wednesday AM.  I made a note to check back on Wednesday.  Seven birds won't last us very long.  We put the seven little birds in our brooder under the heat lamp.  The fence on top puts a lid on (pardon the pun) the temptation that our cat, Ginger, might have in getting a chicken dinner under the heat lamp.

I was passing through Jennings today at lunch and pulled into Tractor Supply Company.  They had just received an order of 25 Cornish Cross meat birds this morning.  I said, "I'll take 'em all!"  She boxed them up for me.  They were all eating organic chick grower 18% protein.  At $2.99 per bird with NO shipping, this was a better deal than ordering by mail, where they were $3.30 per bird before shipping.

One box had 12 and the other had 13 chicks.  They all appeared healthy and happy, moving around and making "Cheep, cheep" noises.  Here's what they looked like when I unboxed them.

I picked one up and put it in my hand.  This is when they are still in their 'cute' stage.

And here is a profile shot, just like Olan Mills used to do:

I added the new arrivals in with the other, larger 7 birds.  Those seven are probably a week older.  The younger chicks weren't intimidated.  They ran around like they owned the place while their 7 larger counterparts watched their brooder be over-run by the new chicks.

I added more food and filled their water container, adding a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.  This weekend, weather permitting, I'll move them out into the chicken tractor.  Hard to believe, but in 8 short weeks, we'll be butchering them and they'll move into the deep freeze, hopefully before our remaining inventory is exhausted.

Final Word on Butchering AND The NUMBERS

This will be our final post on chicken butchering.  You can read the two previous posts HERE and HERE.  Before we wrap it up, we'll talk about organ meats, cutting up the chickens, freezing them and then finally, final numbers.  Here goes...

Once we're finished butchering, we clean up all the livers and bag them up in quart sized ziploc bags.  We'll wrap with bacon and broil in the oven OR pan fry in butter in a cast iron skillet.  We love chicken livers!  Now for the gizzards.  We cut them in half.  I wanted to show you what's inside - GRASS!  That's a very good sign.  The birds were healthy.  Yes, they ate feed (non-medicated), but they also ate grass and bugs and worms like normal birds are supposed to.  Once the gizzards are cleaned, we bag them up as well.  We eat gizzards and rice - a mighty fine meal. 

Now, we clean the hearts.  Fifty of them.  We cut them in half and wash out the clots that are in the ventricles.

It's a muscle and thus, meat.  We mix them in with the gizzard bags.

We'll take a coffee break and wash up.  A well-needed break.  Chicken Processing is quite a task.  Our work isn't done, though.  After coffee, I sharpen the knives one more time.  They'll be used in a heavy duty purpose now.  It's time to cut the whole chickens up.  After the chickens have chilled all morning and into the late afternoon, they've gone through rigor mortis.

We like to do an eight piece cut-up (with a couple of alterations).  Two drumsticks, two wings, two thighs, and two breasts.  Then we cut each breast in half AND we cut the neck off the backbone and ribs.  We save that for making broth.  We've found that when you cook rice, instead of using water, if you cook rice in broth, it steps up the flavor and richness of your rice and gravy.

Each of those birds gets put in a gallon-sized ziploc bag, labeled and frozen.

We number the bag, notate whether the bag contains a whole chicken or a half chicken, and then put the weight of the carcass.  We stack them in the freezer and we have meat to last us for a whole year, especially since Tricia and I are 'empty-nesters.'

Here's the interesting part - our analysis of the boucherie.

We killed 50 birds.  The total carcass weight of all butchered birds was 227.25 pounds.  That yields an average of 4.545 pounds per bird.  Our heaviest carcass was 5.5 pounds and our lightest was 3.25 pounds.  We're pleased with the health and size of the birds.

Here is detailed analysis of expenses to raise 50 birds from one day old chicks to their slaughter at 8 weeks old:

Chicks:

50 ordered        12/8    $139 or $2.78 per bird (Highest we've ever paid for chicks)

51 arrived

(1) fatality

------------

50 total

Feed:

We purchased 875 pounds of feed at a total cost of $292.33

Supplies:

Heat lamps/bulbs    $18.67

Ziploc bags             $  5.00

Bulb                        $  4.50

Propane                   $20.00

                                --------

                                $43.17

Total Costs:

Birds             $139

Feed              $292.33

Supplies        $43.17

                      ---------

Total            $474.50 / 50 birds =    $9.49 per bird COST / 4.55 lbs/bird = $2.09 per pound

For comparative purposes:

Whole foods Organic whole chicken            $3.99 per pound (our bird isn't organic)

Whole foods Heirloom chicken                    $3.99 per pound (our birds aren't heirloom)

Whole foods whole chicken                          $2.99 per pound (probably a good comparison)

Of course we didn't factor in our labor, but feeding them, pushing the chicken tractor to fresh grass each day, watering them, and butchering probably kept me gainfully occupied and out of trouble, so there's that!

We have a freezer full of chicken now and we'll do this all again in 2023 if the Good Lord's willing.