Chick Sales

[SSDreamin]

I have never been leery of CL.. If my scary, gun toting hubby can't come with, my well armed FIL or my German Shepard and my own (well practiced with) weapon does.

Most people in this area know that a large percentage of the population have a concealed carry, and use it.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

I can't keep the local asian and Latin American population up in meat well enough. Today I had a visit from a Vietnamese couple who completely wiped me out of all my sex-link cockerals, 2 tailed araucanas roos and 3 young RIR cockerals.
I had to keep them longer than I wanted, but I got slightly more money because of it. Now I only have pullets to sell. That will cut costs and the pullets will be an easier sell anyway.....plus they behave better, so less fights.
I still wish I had a better sale. At this time last year, I would have been on my 3rd hatch and the first 2 would be COMPLETELY gone.
I did have a Cajun show up too, but he wanted bantams.

 

[Cindlady2]

Actually, if you can get them to "started pullet" stage you can get more for them. I often see people looking for started pullets. I have a gal that wanted chicks but has no way to set up a brooder (she has a coop). I'm feathering out 12 for her and charging $1.00 extra each.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

I have 1 and 2 month old pullets. Not sure if there is a certain time frame to technically call them 'started pullets' but I figure in 2 months, I can pretty much consider them all 'started.'
When you say, you get a dollar for each of them, extra........extra on top of what? I get $3/pullet...$1/cockeral the day they hatch. I go up a little every week on my chicks because of feed, lights and care, and normally I sell a started pullet for about $15/each.

 

[Wannabefree]

I just bought over a hundred chicks and ducks, and resold at a profit of $1-2 each. The last 40ish will be gone this week, as they are already spoken for. I sell my own hatches too, but have a friend who has trouble moving his birds so I play middle man for a fee. You could try that too Rhoda, if you're up for it. I make as much cash doing that as i do with my own hatches.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

I probably could if I could make my chicks move faster. I can think of only 2 things I can do that will help my situation and one of them is going to hurt someone......well more than one person. But thats not my motive. I can avoid my supplier of grain and start selling grain from my house, if I prepare a sight for the storage (will have to protect from rodents though). That will get more people coming to my house locally to get cheap feed for their animals. I can probably make a little money doing that, plus have brooders nearby, filled with chicks, ready to sell......then my clients will immediately increase. If I do this, I will hurt the feed stores locally. Plus I'm not sure, I won't have to start keeping records and have some explaining to do. There is no way, once I start this, to keep it quiet. Even if I only tell about 7 locals who keep poultry, 2 or 3 of them will tell a couple of friends and eventually the feed stores will know I'm the one hurting their sales.....I can only imagine one of them will know someone who can put a little heat on me.
Or, I can (and will) simply finish my barn and set up several more stalls, so I'm not as dependant on immediate sales and I can finish my birds and just sell at a bigger profit. Its really just a matter of time anyway before I get a visit from someone (of certain ethnic cultures) who isn't willing to buy dead meat from a store.

 

[hwillm1977]

What about setting up a little (free) website so people who don't know you would know what you have? That's how we found the guy we bought our chicks from this year... last time I bought them from the nearest feed store and had to drive almost an hour to get there, little did I know I could buy heritage breeds from someone 10 minutes from my house... I stumbled on his website which he had posted on Kijiji (more popular than craigslist here)... www.cspoultry.com

Here the feed store only sells 'production reds' or 'production whites' as egg layers, meat kings for meat... straight run day olds are $2.75, started pullets are $9.50 (4 months old)... but someone selling other breeds can generally sell the day olds for $3.50-5.00 each because you can't get them at the feed store so it's not really a direct competition.

 

[Cindlady2]

I'm starting them at $2.00 because they are all mixed. Although the fathers to them all are Ameracaunas.

 

[Denim Deb]

I know awhile back RU had some chicks, the father was probably an Ameracuana. We don't know for sure since we weren't told what the eggs were. (Someone gave me a dozen eggs, some green, some white, some brown. We put them under a broody hen and got 3 hens and 1 rooster out of the green ones.) He was the only rooster on the farm, so we KNOW he was the father. The mother was a black Australorp. Found out the chicks were sex linked! The pullets all had dark legs, the cocks yellow legs. And, out of the 1 pullet that survived, RU gets green eggs. She's the mother of the 2 chicks I hatched out.

 

[Wannabefree]

I sold the last 44 chicks just after dark last night I may get some more this weekend