We planned to grow our last batch of chickens on organic feeds. We'd hoped this would open up another avenue to more customers. Unfortunately, when I went to place the order they were unable to fill the order until 3 weeks past when I needed it. I planned for what I thought would be plenty of lead time for ordering, but unfortunately it didn't work out and since the chicks were set to arrive soon and the feed wasn't going to arrive until 3 weeks after that it made a huge complication.
We had limited options at that point. We could feed them regular non-organic feeds 3-4 weeks until organic arrived? Then they wouldn't be completely organically fed chickens. We could try to buy organic feed locally, at 30% more expensive than planned, to fill the gap for a few weeks. That would have been a hassle and I wouldn't be able to keep the costs in check to raise the chickens at a reasonable price for the customer. It felt like there was no way to win if we wanted to stick with the organic plan.
We decided the best thing would be to raise the absolute best chicken we could with the current ration we've been using, which is a non-medicated fryer ration. We will finish the year out with the same methods we've been using. Then, next year we could order feeds earlier, maybe even raise most all of them on organic feed if we have a demand for it.
Next year's plan is to order feed and chicks with the $ we have saved to start next year's broiler operation. This will have several benefits:
#1 It would be a lot less stressful for us to have all the feed here when the chicks arrive so we know it will be available and there won't be supply shortage surprises or last minute stress in finding the right feeds at the right price.
#2 If we keep the allotted feed portions separated for each batch we can see how we did on our estimation of feed per batch. This will help us set accurate pricing as well as keep our numbers accurate for our records.
#3 If we buy what we need at the beginning of the project we can take advantage of bulk feed pricing. Even if we only buy half of what we need for the year upfront, then the other half once we've sold 1 or 2 batches of chickens for the year. This could save us 10-20% on our feed prices which would be helpful. Currently we've been buying 5-10 of the 50# bags at a time as we can afford to since we are paying for it from our normal budget each month which can be quite the strain!
#4 Not having that additional strain on our normal budget would be most helpful!
With all the changes and some hassle today trying to order feed, and learning that organic wasn't going to work out for this batch, I still feel incredibly positive about the whole meat chicken operation. I feel blessed to be creating a healthy food for local families.
We are close to the final 8 week count down on our 2013 year of raising meat chickens! We are excited to finish up and see how we ended up as far as profit margins, costs to raise each chicken on average, our mortality rates and all the other fun data we can muster up from the project. Once this last batch is processed we will enjoy greatly simplified chores, and THAT is something to celebrate and appreciate!
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