Fall Happenings...

Time for a little fall season catch up session!  

Buck season went well, as you can see.  Sunshine and Mr Wonderful tagged out, Spud Man enjoyed his first year buck hunting, but wasn't able to bag a buck this year.

Sunshine grew lots of gourds this summer and she managed to sell close to $100 worth!  They made great fall decor and were a big seller on our local classifieds page.

Beautiful shapes and colors!

We've been enjoying some of our pastured meat chickens.  We rub them down with olive oil and add rosemary, sage and other seasonings...then we smoke them for a couple hours and roast them in the roaster.  Oh my goodness they smell and taste amazing.  Really need to keep more for ourselves next year.  Mmmm mmm.

I enjoyed all the fall colors before the winds picked up and blew every leaf away.  No raking leaves here!

The kids and I spotted this buck during elk season and managed to snap a quick picture of him before he took off.

Spud Man wrapped up a successful year of growing hogs.  He raised 7 in all, 2 of his own that he paid for.  We pay for the feed for his hog in exchange for him caring for the rest of the hogs we bought for our own supply and to sell.  It was a good arrangement and he is pretty excited about having money to give, save, and spend!

That is a small sampling of everything going on these past couple months.  Life is very good at Summerfield Acres!  We are finally getting some much needed family time, rest, and even a few projects worked on.  

Garden Bounty...

Wow!  This is really fun.  Getting to harvest all the bounty has to be my favorite thing about gardening, well it is a close 2nd to seeing the little seedlings come up anyway!

Here are a few pics from this morning's harvest session.  

I love all the colors!

This picture shows the colors of the Bright Lights Swiss Chard a little better.

To the left is a 1 Ball Squash to the right is an 8 Ball Zucchini Squash, in the middle is a couple straight neck summer squash.

Here are the side shoots we've been getting from the once harvested broccoli plants.  These plants were first harvested about 2-3 weeks ago.  These side shoots add up surprisingly fast.  Some of the side shoots are more like secondary heads and were about 3" across!  These smaller shoots, if they keep producing like this, will really help us reach our goal of 40 quart bags in the freezer for winter.:)   By the way, this red tub is a 7 1/2 gallon size and it is very handy in the garden for transporting to and from the house.  I am really glad I got it!

Here are a few peppers we harvested this morning.  We will likely donate a few of these to the local pantry because we'd only use one or two a week.  Once we get some tomatoes ripe to make salsa we will really use up the peppers I am sure.  The jalapeno peppers are about 2 weeks away from being the right size so hopefully the tomatoes will cooperate with that schedule so we can put up some tasty salsa!

This morning's green bean harvest.  Honestly we are a little disappointed in the green bean crop this year, what we are getting is nice quality and very tasty but we've had a mole eating plants left and right and there are barely enough to supply our fresh eating needs let along enough to put up for winter.  Thankfully we still have about 25 quart jars from last year so it won't take much to get us up to what we need.  

Here is our first attempt at growing celery, I am pleased with the turn out. Tobers LOVES this celery and eats it all the time dipped in peanut butter.:)

Sunshine just finished cutting the cauliflower into smaller pieces for the blanching process to get it into the freezer.  Looks like we got about 3-4 quart bags worth!

A pile of Sweet Banana Peppers too!

Thanks for following along on our harvest adventure this morning.

Farm Goals 2013...

Goals are important, they give you direction, focus, and a way to measure progress.  Last year, the goal was simple, earn enough money from the "farm" to remain in tax deferral status.  We were able to do that easily with the hay crop.  This year, we wanted to take it a little further and expand to be able to raise a few animals and enlarge the garden for more production as well.  Here is a little more info about our goals as it stands right now, we might end up tweaking some things around if we find we were a little too idealistic (or more accurately if I was too idealistic).

The following is a summary of our income categories this year: 

Pigs~  We have 3 pigs currently that will be ready to butcher in about a month or so.  Then we plan to purchase 3-4 more to raise over summer and butcher late fall.  We will keep one for ourselves and sell the rest.

Meat Chickens~  We plan to raise about 300 this year.  We plan to sell most and keep about 40-60 for our meat supply this winter.

Laying Hens~  We keep 9 hens to provide eggs for our family and maybe sell a few dozen a month to help reduce the cost of feed for our own egg supply.

Garden~  This is mostly for our winter supply of food.  We do a lot of canning and freezing of produce and fruit each summer/fall and this will be where the bulk of the veggies come from.  When we have surplus or we are just too busy to can that week we will be selling the veggies and fruits from the garden as well as donating some.  The reject foods or spoiled foods will go to the pigs.

Horses~  Since we aren't financially ready for horse ownership ourselves just yet, and we love seeing horses out the window, we decided to board a couple on the property. We feed and care for the horses, and the owner provides hay to feed them.  It is a great complimentary thing with our hay production because it saves both us and the horses' owner time (her in finding and hauling hay and us in coordinating outside sales and loading up a trailer.  Having horses here helps to bring in $ for covering farm improvement expenses and it helps pay the property taxes as well.  I am really glad we decided to do this instead of diving into horse ownership right away.  This brings in a steady income flow to help float other farm projects until their harvest time comes.  This income acts a little like grease in a wheel for the whole operation. We appreciate our boarder because she cares for her horses well, and is prompt with payments too.  Good boarders are a huge blessing!

Hay~  We have about 3.5 acres of hay production this year.  Last year we had about 4.25 acres and we got 9+ ton off of it in 3 cuttings.  This year we are hoping to yield about 6 ton in 2 cuttings. We'd like to leave some taller grass and forage for fall and winter grazing to help reduce the horses hay needs over winter to help the boarder's hay budget too.  It might make a little difference, we shall see.

Rabbits~ We don't have them currently (we loaned out the operation out for a while), but there is a possibility they will come back into the mix sometime this year.  The goal with them will be for them to cover their own feed costs and to provide some food for the freezer.

Berries~  It is possible we will have a fall yield of berries from our ever bearing strawberry variety this year.  This it he first year of production and we are trimming off all blooms for the first couple months but later in the year we should be able to let a few ripen and I am hoping for a few flats of strawberries off 200+ plants.  We also have raspberries that are newly planted this year but we are unsure if they will produce the first year.

So those are all the areas we are focusing on this year.  Which feels like plenty let me tell you!

Without further delay, here are the farm goals....

#1  Bless others.  By Sharing experiences and time, making memories with people, and sharing the bounty in various ways.  We'd like to donate to our local food pantry, and to give some of the bounty to family and friends.  We'd also like to incorporate a form of ministry into our efforts: fellowship, discipleship and giving.:)  Value of this goal= Priceless.

#2  Put food in the freezer/pantry at low or no cost.  Pork, chicken, green beans, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, salsa, pickles, canned pumpkin, ground zucchini, frozen corn, frozen broccoli, plus fresh produce over summer too.  Value of this goal= $1,700+

#3  Earn enough from farm to pay property taxes and home owner's insurance. This would also allow us to maintain our farm deferral status for the property taxes.  Value of this goal= $2,600

#4  Have enough $ in the farm account from all of 2013 farm projects to cover the start-up of 2014 farm projects.  This prevents us from dipping into the normal monthly budget to start up the farm projects.  We will need roughly $900 to start up the meat chickens next year (to cover feed, chick costs etc for the first 1.5 batches) until we can sell some to pay the expenses.  For pigs, we will need approximately $725 to purchase the feed and piglets for the year.  Garden, we'd need $200 to cover supplies, seeds etc.  For the hay, we need minimum of $300 to have the 1st cutting of hay custom cut.  Laying hens we'd need $300+ to cover the cost of the chicks and feed to get them to laying age if we want to go into more egg production with a few more hens next year.  As you can see these projects really add up and put a tremendous strain on the budget as we go along in the spring.  It would be nice to not have that strain on the finances as we are getting started for the year.   Value of this goal= $2,700++.

So there you have it, our farm goals 2013!  We are excited to see how far down the list we can accomplish this year.  We'd be pretty pleased if we could attain through goals #3.  We've broken these general goals down a little more as a family and talked a lot about how we can accomplish them in various ways, but that would make for a VERY long post so I won't bore you with the details.

At the end of the year I will try to remember to post how we did with all these goals and where we ended up financially.  So far we are astounded at how much it costs to raise animals, so we are praying that we end up in the positive at the end of the year.:)  It's all in God's hands ultimately.

Plant Progress...

I am really enjoying my new hobby of starting plants indoors.  I have been really pleased with how they've all grown.  I've had very few failures this year in the seed starting realm.

I am especially impressed with tomatoes, peppers, marigolds and petunias.  I think I may have started the tomatoes and peppers a little too early because they are already pretty large.  We still have 3 more weeks until the earliest I'd feel safe planting them outside without protection.

Also, I *might* have a problem, I feel like I should say something along the lines of "Hello, my name is Julie and I am a seed-starting addict."  I have 85 tomato plants and 65 peppers (that is just two kinds of plants, not counting the other 15 things I've planted in smaller quantities.  I just kept planting a dozen of each variety that sounded good thinking some wouldn't come up, but they all did and they all thrived.  So I will have a few to sell and lots to give away.  It would be nice if I could cover the costs of the seeds and potting soil by selling a few of the extras.

I edited and rotated these next 2 pictures and they appear fine in my files, but they won't upload right so you might have to tilt your head! lol  If anyone has a clue on how I can change this issue I'd love a comment about it.:) I've tried rotating it in my files every which way and uploading every version of it and it still presents this way when it gets uploaded.  Sheesh!

This pepper is about 10" tall from the top of the soil level to the top of the plant!

This tomato is about 14" from the top of soil level to the top of plant!  They are stocky and strong stems so far and I hope they continue to grow well for a few more weeks in pots.

This one ended up about 18" tall from top of soil level to top of plant!  We've been pinching off blooms for 2 weeks now hoping they hold off on the fruiting process until they are established in the ground.

These are some of the largest ones but there are many more about the same size, most are much smaller because they were planted later than the above ones.  I am not worried about the smaller ones catching up and being productive because many times when buying plants from the store the smaller ones outgrow the bigger ones that have been in pots longer.  I have hope for the little guys.

I was so excited to see this little beauty when I was watering this morning!  My very first home-grown petunia plant that is blooming!  I planted a red, white, and blue mixture of wave type petunias and some traditional red petunias.  I am pretty sure this is the traditional kind.

I have to say petunia seeds are the most expensive seeds I've ever bought!  I think it was at least $4.50 for a packet of 15 itty-bitty, teensie-weensie seeds (like 1/4 the size of 1 poppy seed like you'd see in muffins).  They all came up really well and I will definitely grow petunias again next year except way more to fill up all the areas in the flowerbeds.  I might have to start saving $ now to afford them!  This is still a good savings over buying 6 packs of wave petunias locally.  If I remember right, last year I paid about $5 or more on sale per 6 pack or $2.50 per plant if bought in a 3" pot which would be about $.83 to $2.50  per plant.  I ended up with 13-14 plants from 15 seeds which means approx $.34 per plant.  I will pay attention the next time I go browsing plants for wave petunia prices to double check my numbers.  The regular petunias are much more affordable but they don't cover near the amount of ground like the wave ones do.

Here are all the wave petunias, they how grown considerably beings when they first spout we almost needed a magnifying glass to see them with the naked eye! 

I have to say though we are soooo ready for spring planting time and the last frost to pass because taking that many flats and pots of plants out each day for sun and in each night for frost protection is getting pretty old.  We will certainly be celebrating when that is done for the year and we can enjoy them outside doing their thing producing pretty flowers and delicious fruits and veggies.  

It will get a little worse before it gets better though.  We have to start all the squash, melons, and later crops for a couple week head start compared to direct seeding in a couple weeks.  We can do it, just a few more weeks of the plant parade in and out each day!

Thanks for coming along on the tour of how the plants are growing around here.

The Tester Chickens...

Well are you ready for the initial test chicken review?  Two brave chickens gave their lives to test a prototype of our mechanical chicken plucker that our friend Ray is building for us.  They had leg injuries and had been inside for a couple weeks in a brooder pen so I could keep a close eye on them, they were healthy, but they couldn't walk well enough to compete for feed with the batch of chickens outside.  They quickly became a little too messy to have in house, so they made excellent test subjects and told us what we needed to know about the chicken plucker adjustments that were needed.  They were about 4 weeks old when we processed them so they had another potential 4 weeks to grow.  They each dressed out at about 1.5-2 lbs.

They had been in the refrigerator for a couple days and I debated on whether to use the crock pot, roast them in the oven, or grill them.  In the end, we were in a hurry that night we decided to cut them up into pieces and cook them in the George Foreman Grill method.  We marinated them in Lawry's Sesame Ginger Marinade for 30 mins and cooked them on Med-Low for 15-20 mins in the grill.

They were done to perfection, they had a great flavor, and were tender but firm texture, and overall we were VERY excited and pleased they were so delicious!  Secretly, I've been hoping we have another one with a leg injury or something so we can have another to test out!  I think roasting one in the oven will be a better test of texture and flavor, so that will be the next test meal.

Obviously, I am not a food photographer.  You might just have to take my word for it, it was really tasty!

What's In That Garden Anyway?

You might be wondering what we have planned for a garden that is about 10,000 square feet.  In case you were wondering, here is the breakdown of the plan so far.

Broccoli (3 varieties in a 28x24 area, approx 100 plants)
Cauliflower (2 varieties in a 18x16 area approx 40 plants with flower rows on 2 sides)
Carrots (2 varieties in 3 double rows that are 16' long and 2' wide)
Potatoes (2 varieties that are in a 12x24 area)
Lemon Cucumbers (in a 7x18 area)
Tomatoes (6 varieties in a 14x20 area 30 plants total)
Green Beans (a 20x30 area)
Zucchini, Crookneck, and winter squash ( in a 14x30 area)
Pickling cucumbers (in a 8x30 area)
Corn (3 similar se+ varieties in a 30x40 area~  An early, mid-season, and late ripening variety)
Strawberries (in a 40x30 area)
Kohlrabi (2 varieties in a 6x16 area)
Onions (in a 4x16 area)
Large pig feed plot planted with turnips, beets, canola etc (in a 40x60 area)
Melons (3 varieties planted in a 10x80 area~ cantaloupe, watermelon, crenshaw)
Peas, Lettuce, Spinach, Swiss chard and other shorter row crops will be mixed into smaller areas as well.

We have 2 large areas that are approximately 15x20 open to offer to friends and family to come plant their own crops if they'd like to.  Although, we also plan to share a lot of the bounty from our planned crops we'd also like to give people a place to plant their own if they'd like to.  We had some dear friends do that for us and we learned so much and enjoyed having a part in growing our food.  We wanted to do the same for others as well.

We purposefully plan to plant excess for a few reasons. #1 to be able to share the bounty with friends, family, and the local food pantry.  #2 we also plan to sell some of the excess to help defray the costs for all the seeds, the professional tilling fees, and the large amount of hours we will be tending to this garden (we know we won't be getting return on our time in this venture as that would be pretty difficult).  #3 we wanted to grow enough in quantities it would be easy to have enough to preserve batches in large quantities at a time as well as be able to sell enough in quantities to make it worth our time to coordinate a sale/delivery.  #4 to be able to feed to the pigs and chickens some garden produce to hopefully reduce the commercial feed bill.

We plan to use a lot of mulch to cover the areas of bare soil.  There are several reasons for this.  #1 mulch is healthy for the soil, as it breaks down we have richer soil. #2 It helps keep moisture in the ground longer. #3 It helps even out soil temperature from the extremes of air temperature at night and during the day. #4 It helps control weeds by smothering them.

There are some drawbacks to mulch, like possible hang out for pests like insects and slugs as well as mice.  We are hoping the cats will help us out with the 4 legged critters and we might have to run small chicken tractors to help control the bugs and slugs.

Our weed control plan consists of 4 children and 2 adults equipped with hoes, trowels, and shovels, a large stack of straw bales, and a consistent schedule of keeping up on the little weed offenders before they become large weed offenders.

You can see the large straw bales scattered here and there around, this is in preparation for spreading mulch as the soil gets warmed up and ready to plant.  We don't want to add the mulch too early when the soil is still cool because we might not get as good of germination rates because the mulch will insulate the ground some and the soils will be slower to warm up.

Here is the larger stack of straw bales.  This is about 1/3 the total amount of straw we were able to stockpile this winter in preparation for the garden.  We feel pretty fortunate to have found a free source of straw.  My heart goes pitter-patter when Mr. Wonderful pulls up with a big trailer full of something useful around the place!

So you can see we have a plan, and we've done some research to get us started.  It might be a little idealistic and that is OK with us if you think so.  The only way to learn what we are capable of as a family is to set goals, get started working towards the goals, and learn from it for future reference.

First Batch of Meat Chickens....

This year, we are trying out the project of raising meat chickens.  We wanted healthier chicken than we could buy at the local grocery store for $1.65/lb, but the healthier chicken available from our local co-op food resource was too expensive for this frugal family to consume much of at $4.00-$5.00/lb.  So we decided to set out on the adventure of raising our own.  Of course with anything we decide to do, much research went into it.  We read books, scoured the internet for natural ways to raise chickens, and tried to find ways to both be financially responsible with our resources and the most healthful we could for the money we put into it.

After much research we decided on the pastured poultry method of raising meat chickens. This type of operation is the original idea of Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. For years we have followed his style of farming, and once we had acreage of our own I knew we'd want to adopt some of the types of things he does on his farm.  We ordered several of his books, did much research from others who have tried the same model of raising meat chickens.  Then, it was time to dive right in and just start doing.  

You should know that sometimes I suffer from a condition called Paralysis of Analysis.  I, Jules, tend to research so much I end up not really sure what to do!  At some point you have to decide on the method that works best for your goals, skill set, and resources....even if there is a better way to do it somehow the best thing you can do is START!

We converted our hen house to the brooder with just the addition of deep shavings for bedding, 2 heat lamps, and we battened down the possible drafts for the chicks.  In the fall, when we are done with the brooder stage of things we will put the hens back into this coop for the cooler temps of fall and winter.  Right now the hens are in a movable coop (also called a chicken tractor) so they can enjoy fresh greens and bugs daily.

Here is a chick that is about 3 days old warm and dry in the brooder coop.

They certainly grow quickly....

At 3 weeks we start to transition them to outside time during the warm days.  It requires us to carefully set them out into the fenced run area for a few hours (we work the time frame up each day) and then in the early evenings we go back out and gently set them back into the coop/brooder for a cozy night's rest.  This is the most labor intensive week, it requires time, patience, and lots of hand washing.  By this time, they are getting large enough and messy enough, it is nice to let the brooder air/dry out for a few hours each day.  After we set them out, we fluff up the shavings to let it dry out some.  Then, we add a fresh layer of clean shavings before putting them back in at night.

Growing more quickly by the day it seems.  Here they are outside enjoying sunshine, bugs, and learning to forage a little.

Once we have them through the transition week we placed them into the chicken tractor (the movable pen designed with shelter, and open air areas).  We move this at least once daily to allow them fresh forage and a fresh clean space to live each day.  The only time we will not move the pen is if it has been raining and the damp cool ground would threaten the health of the birds.  In that case, we toss in some straw for them to snuggle in and to keep them off the soiled ground as much as we can.  The next day when we are able to move the pen we then have to remove the straw so the grass can regrow in that area.  It is all quite labor intensive, but doable.

This next photo shows them settling in to the new home.  Their first day in the chicken tractor....they are fine as long as they see a feeder.  This first week in the chicken tractor they were not effective foragers.  To encourage the foraging we would withhold food for the first 30 mins to 1 hour after moving the pen each day, they always have fresh water.  This encouraged them to forage some when the grass is the freshest each day, otherwise they'd choose the commercial feed every time.  

We placed an add online to sell our first batch of meat chickens.  We figured it was time to see if we had a market before we ordered the 3rd and 4th batch of chicks.

When we did our research, it was stressed many times to make sure you have a market before you get too far into it.  Well, we wanted to make sure we could raise them well first, that we wouldn't have any unforeseen problems and be unable to meet the needs we took reservations for.  If we had taken reservations before we even knew we could raise meat birds well, we might have felt in debt in a sense (even if no one had paid for them yet).  After 4 weeks though, we started to feel more confident that we'd made it far enough into the process to be able to offer them for sale, we had 4 weeks left until they would be ready for processing and delivery.

What came of this advertising you ask?  We got all we had available reserved from this first batch!  It happened within about 30 minutes of posting it!  We were relieved and encouraged by this demand so far.  It feels good to know we have a product someone wants, that all this hard work is paying off, and that we are doing something meaningful.  It feels good to provide people with something they need or want.

At 5 weeks old they are looking plump and tasty don't you think?  They still have a few more pounds to go to be ready.  They have been doing really well in the chicken tractor even though we've had some windy, cool, and even snowy conditions to deal with.  It is an impressive system that Joel Salatin created and I appreciate being able to easily implement his system by how easy he has made his plan to follow.

At 5 weeks old they seem to be a lot more interested in forage.  Either that, or the training has paid off and they are like little kids knowing they can't have their dessert (regular commercial feeds) until they've eaten their veggies.  Who says chickens are dumb?  

We continue to get orders of 5-20 chickens every couple days for the future batches.  So far we have at least half reserved of what we had planned to grow this year!  That means 130 reserved out of 260 birds.  With that large of a response, we are thinking about making the last 2 batches a little larger than we initially thought.  Our first batch we ordered 50 chicks, our second batch we ordered 60 chicks, and the last two batches we are planning to order 100 chicks each.  We feel so blessed that we have found something people are looking for.  That we can produce something of value to local families.  We don't take that responsibility lightly.

So that is the news, our whole first two batches of broilers have been reserved, as well as half of our last batch!  We did leave enough margin for error with each batch that we can either keep a few more than we planned for ourselves, or we have allowed for mishaps and losses.  We have to remember to keep some for ourselves for our food supply this winter too!

We learned the hard way not to set the price too early though.  We set the price at $2 per pound.  The closer we get to the 8 weeks the more I realize this is probably only going to cover the costs for this first batch.  Not including the costs to build the chicken tractor.  We look at this first batch like a bargain to get people interested in the product.  The future batches are looking like we will have to charge $2.50 per pound to receive any kind of incentive to keep raising them.  It shocked us how much it costs to produce a homegrown bird, admittedly we naively thought we'd be able to offer people chickens that were cheaper than the commercially raised store bought chickens.....I always assumed that farm direct SHOULD be cheaper than in the store.  When we'd go to the farmers' market initially we were surprised that the prices were more expensive than in the store.  Never will we think that again, after this experience of growing our own chickens.  The cost of feed is astronomical, the labor involved in producing these farm grown products deserves a fair wage.  If we've learned nothing else these past few weeks, we will be a much more cheerful purchasers of wholesome farm grown products in the future for our family's nutrition.

There are pros and cons to raising them yourself.  First of all, the largest thing we notice as a con is commitment....we are strapped down and unable to leave the place for more than the day.  They require several times daily chores, not just morning and evening.  Several times through the day they need checked and watered or fed.  They are an intensive project.  So far it feels worth it, and I think if we keep production to a fairly short season of the year, we will likely keep raising them.  The season that seems to make sense will be April through early August.  The many pros help outweigh that rather large con.:)  I will post more about the pros later in a future update of this post.

This week we are going to test out the first two chickens!  We can't wait to taste home grown goodness.  We did have a little mishap that was operator error, we learned to make extra sure the chickens are out of the way before you move the movable pen.  We had two birds being babied inside because of leg injuries, and they were doing better, but still not able to go out in the bigger pens.  It was getting tiresome and smelly to keep cleaning out another pen inside.  It was decided they would make good testers to try out the homemade mechanical chicken plucker that our friend is working on for us.  They made excellent test subjects, and hopefully they turn out good once we cook them.

* We will continue to add to this post as the weeks go along to continue the growth process photos to keep it all in one post for easy future reference.

*Week 7 Update*~  Here are a few pictures at 7 weeks.  We weighed them today, their live weights are ranging from 4.5-5.5lbs which mean they will dress out between 3.3lbs to just over 4lbs.  We would really like to get them up to the 5lb average weight dressed out.  We have another week to go before we originally planned to process them so maybe they will gain a little more in a week. Otherwise we might wait one more week to process to get the weights up to that 5 lbs mark.  The longer we feed them the more it costs us, but we want a nice sized bird for our finished product too.:)

Here Whippersnapper works on lifting out the feeder.

When we open the top they all flock closer so it is hard to get a realistic view of how much space they each have in there.  They are looking nice and getting plumper by the day.

Resting and enjoying the morning sunshine and fresh greens.  There are two hens and two roosters in the following picture.  Front left and rear right are roosters, front right and back left are hens.  Can you tell the difference?

They are ready!  Here they are 8 weeks old.  They weigh between 6 and 7 1/4 lbs and have 2 more days until we process.  They should be on track to be 5 lbs average per bird.

It costs at least $2.00 per pound just to break oven on producing them.  Which means at $2.00 per pound for this first batch we made no profit and maybe even lost a little $.  If we were to charge $2.50 to $2.75 per pound I think we'd be willing to continue raising them and the work vs. the profit would be not even minimum wage but maybe we can tighten down our production costs a little and make the difference.  

Here are some ideas we are considering to save money in future batches:

Wood Shavings/Sawdust~  We found a source for bulk wood shavings/sawdust.  I ran into my brother in the feed store and he saw I was buying baled wood shavings and he offered to get me some by the truck load.  Before I knew this option existed the cost adds up to about $25 per batch of chickens when we buy it in the bales at the local feed store/  With the new source, we might be able to spend $25 for the entire year supply and this would save about $17 per batch of chickens.

Ice for Processing Day~  If we were to make our own ice in jugs and break them open to use in the chill tanks on processing day this could save us about $20 per batch of chickens to have enough ice for processing day. This one is a bit of a hassle though and I am not entirely sure it would be worth it because we have somewhat limited freezer space, and because of the hassle of breaking open jugs and breaking up ice.  Maybe we need to look into a use ice machine with high outputs if we want to keep raising them?

Processing Supplies~ If we buy 1,000 of the processing bags at a time, instead of 50 at a time, the bag cost would be about 50% less than in smaller order amounts.   This would take it from $.50 per bag to $.24 per bag.  We'd just have to cough up a lot more initial money and either save the extra bags until next year, or sell enough in smaller batches on Ebay to make the bag costs reasonable.

Loss Rates~  One way to have better profit is to have better survival rates.  Our first batch we lost 11% which seemed high to me.  In the 3 following batches so far we've lost more like 3-5% which seems more reasonable.  So if we can keep those loss rates down the profit margin will be better too.

In looking at how the first batch turned out we are pleased.  Would we have liked to have made a profit?  Absolutely, but we know that the learning curve is steep and that knowledge is valuable too.  I think overall it was worth it, the experience and education alone was worth it. The worst part was buying all that feed, it certainly is a huge burden on the budget.  I will be very glad when we have the money from selling the chickens back in the account, that is for sure!;)

Here is the breakdown:

Chicks $1.55 each x 50 chicks = $77

Feed 725 lbs x .38/lb = $275

Shavings for brooder 4 bales @ $6 ea= $24

Ice for Processing Day 4 bags 20lbs each x $3.68 ea= $15

Packaging and Misc processing costs= $30

Grand total to raise 50 chicks (42 made it to butcher weight)= $421 with the cost spread out over 42 birds it is about $10.02 per bird.  Ouch huh?

We are hoping to bring this cost down as much as we can, but right now it all requires some cash outlay to be able to buy in bulk for feeds, processing supplies etc.  We have to balance between saving money and total outlay of cash in a single season.  It feels a little like trying to outrun a freight train, but it feels good to know we do have options and ideas to reduce costs a little.

* Final update for this first batch of chickens:  We had an average dressed out weight of 4.83lbs which was very close to what we were hoping.:)  We had 36 chickens to sell out of 42 (we kept the rest) and all customers were great and showed up in a timely manner except one who after a little trouble coordinating a pick up time said they weren't able to come get them.  Other than that it all went smoothly and we feel like this is something we'd like to keep doing! Check out this post on the processing day fun.  

We hope you learned a little about what it takes to produce healthier foods.  Thanks for coming along on the longest post EVER!;)