March 09, 2023

6 things you NEED to raise broiler chickens on PASTURE

March 09, 2023/ John Suscovich

Raising broiler chickens for meat SHOULD be simple, fun, and delicious. There are only a few core principles you need to consider when raising your birds. This blog post will lay out the 6 fundamentals for successful pastured poultry farming. These principles work for meat chickens and egg layers. #6 is going to have you shaking your head!

January 12, 2015

2015 Pasture-Raised Eggs Budget

January 12, 2015/ John

We raise our laying hens on a pasture based model. During the warmer months the birds are out on pasture and are moved every day to fresh grass. We love the quality of the eggs and the quality of life for the hens. My budget is just one way to create a budget and it will only get more accurate over time.

To download the excel file:

If you would like a copy of the Excel file that I used for my 2015 budget then you can put in your name and email on the form at the bottom of the post to subscribe to my newsletter and I will send it to you. If you are already on the newsletter then you will already be getting a copy sent to you in your inbox.

Egg production efficiency:

It is no secret that chickens don't lay eggs well all year long. Depending on a multiple of factors they either lay really well, or they don't lay at all. Getting your chickens to lay at least semi-consistently all year is a riddle that every farmer attempts to solve. The truth of the matter is that it is not healthy for a hen to lay at 100% efficiency all year long. It takes a lot of effort to poop out those eggs all year. Some of those those factors that contribute to a different level of efficiency are:

The age of the bird (old hens don't lay as well as young ones)
Hours of daylight
Temperature
Diet
Lifestyle
Stress
Water

My numbers are already proving to be better this year than the original budget I created. That is a good example of two things: plan for the worst and hope for the best, and keeping good records so that each year you can be more accurate with your budgeting because you will have more solid numbers to go from.

Actual egg production numbers:

To get the number of eggs produced during the year and from that the number of dozens produced I created the equation:

number of birds x days of the month x production efficiency percentage = eggs produced

This gave me a number, by month, of how many dozens of eggs I would have for sale. Knowing what I charge for a dozen eggs will give me my gross sales numbers by month. That's as simple of the dozens produced x the price I charge = total gross sales. As time goes on and our record keeping gets more organized, more accurate, and based on actual numbers vs. my best guess based on past sloppy records we will have a better and better view of what this specific operation is going to look like on farm.

On farm we count eggs a few times to make sure we're accurate. We start with counting them at the coops when we collect. Then we count the dozens for sale after they have been cleaned. Both in the nesting boxes and during cleaning there will be cracked and deformed eggs and we want to know where they are breaking so we can figure out what to do about it. Also a little redundancy never hurt anyone.

Chicken Feed Costs:

I feed certified organic, non-GMO feed to all my hens on farm. That's super expensive. At any given time it costs between $0.45-$0.51 per pound of feed. I went on the higher end of the spectrum for calculating my costs. Again prepare for the worst. If I can get my feed costs down by finding a new supplier, finding a quality supplement, or whatever I'll have saved myself some money that I will then have the option of reinvesting back in the farm.

I typically choose to go with pessimistic so that I don't end up anticipating having more money than I am going to have, and then spend more money then I am able to, and then I end up in debt. That make sense? A for instance here. I would like to install more water hydrants around farm. That's going to cost me money. I can feasibly live without it, but it would make a big difference for me. If I create my budget and see that I cannot afford it then I won't spend the money right away and I'll deal with the annoyance over the debt. If I end up with more money I'll hang on to it knowing that I can re-invest it back into the farm because I had originally anticipated not having it, it's like a bonus at the end of the year.

Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS):

Feed is the major expense when producing eggs, that and labor. There are creative ways to save in other areas like shavings, egg cartons, etc... But those two are always going to cost you. Raising chickens for eggs on a small scale is a tough row to hoe. It's hard to make money as the margins just aren't there. One wrong move and you lose the profit really quickly. I'm not saying that I condone it, but if you spend a few years raising chickens out on pasture you start to see why people started raising them in barns. It takes a lot of time, a lot of skill, and there are a lot of predators. Everything eats chicken.

Taking labor out of the equation:

Since the publication of my broiler budget I have taken labor out of the math of my COGS. Tracking the hours an operation takes is smart, but then putting a dollar amount to that on this document is not the way to go. Here at Camps Road Farm I am a hired Farm Manager. We have other employees on salary as well. That salary number has to be accounted for out of the gross profits and not necessarily the COGS. Every time you do work on your farm it won't necessarily cost you the same amount of money. Labor calculations are such a tricky thing to try and share because everyone's situation(s) are going to be different.

We now factor labor into a different part of the budget as an HR item. I had actually counted to twice by accident and having found that mistake my numbers are looking better this year than originally anticipated.

Cash flow statement for eggs:

Cash flow statements are good to have in general because it lets you know if you are going to be able to pay your bills at any given time. That and it lets you see when times are good and when times are tight at a glance. Winter is both a blessed and a rough time on farm. There's more time to update paperwork, work on marketing, update your website, and most importantly spend some time with your family. It is a rough time because (as I'm writing this) it is 10 degrees outside and there's limited sunlight. Nothing is growing and everything I do outside takes twice as long as in the summer.

Knowing when the bountiful times and when the lean times are on your farm will help you prepare for what's to come. You will have a better idea of the numbers as you go through the years if you keep up with your record keeping. Eggs are no different than any other operation on our farm. We need to know when we're really making money and when they are losing money so we can either prepare for it or adjust our practices.

Things I hope to improve this year:

There are so many things that I want to improve on the farm this year. If you are not constantly improving then you are just choosing to ignore something. For eggs I want to get our Cost Of Goods Sold down and get the whole process more efficient. Our care and management of the hens is pretty good though we know what we need to improve there, that was our focus in 2014. Now in 2015 we hope to make it a more profitable part of the farm. To do that we:

are adjusting the scale at which we operate
potentially have a less-expensive but still high-quality feed supplier lined up
making micro adjustments to our management methods

How I raise chickens for eggs on pasture:

Now, that is a big title. This is meant to be a brief over-view and not an in-depth "all questions answered" explanation. If you want more detail ask me in the comments section below or subscribe to our FMS YouTube Channel for more "how-to" information about our practices.

I will never say that what I am doing is the "be all end all" of methods. I am here to share what I am doing whether or not I find it successful. If you find something I'm doing wrong or have questions let me know because I am always looking to improve.

In the summer:

chicken mobile and chickens

In the summer all of our birds are out on pasture. They live in mobile chicken coops that are on wheels and are moved on pasture every single day. We surround the coops with mobile electric poultry netting and move the coops around inside that netting until a new area is set up. In the summer our chickens are:

moved every day to fresh grass
kept in mobile coops
given certified organic non-GMO feed and scratch grains
given vegetable garden scraps

For the playlist of videos on how we raise chickens check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-O8flggtY_sK2wJl_A7JkXf3sJtrHHMr

In the winter:

raising chickens in the winter

winter chicken housing

In the winter our birds share space in one of our greenhouses. We are keeping them on a deep bedding system with wood chips and straw. The wall of the greenhouse rolls down which allows the birds outside. They are fed the same certified organic feed as in the summer but we stop feed restriction because of the added stress of it being cold out. We give them lights from 4-9pm and we never give them supplemental heat. For more on our winter chicken situation refer to the above YouTube playlist.

Farm Finance Challenge

At the publication of this blog post we are merely weeks away from launching the Farm Finance Challenge. My farm and 12 others from around the country are going to be publicly posting our production and financial numbers on Farm Marketing Solutions in order to keep ourselves accountable for our record keeping, share the information with other farmers, and support small scale agriculture.

I cannot begin to tell you just how excited I am going into 2015. This year brings a lot of promise for my farming and farming in general. If you are interested in hearing more about the FFC then click this link to visit our HUB page.

January 05, 2015

2015 Pastured Broiler Budget

January 05, 2015/ John

For the full post explaining more about the budget visit me at http://www.farmmarketingsolutions.com/2015-pastured-broiler-budget/ For plans to my chicken tractors check out the eBook at http://foodcyclist.com/stress-free-chicken-tractor-plans/ To view all my budget categories visit: http://farmmarketingsolutions.com/2015farmbudget

Raising pastured broilers is one part of our very diverse farm. 2015 will be the third year in a row that we have done a combination Pastured Poultry CSA as well as selling pastured broilers retail at farmers markets and wholesale. It has been a great part of our operation as it take very little money to start up, it is great for reclaiming and conditioning pastures, and it fits in nicely with the other things we have going on at the farm. That and we're kind of the only show in town for pastured poultry at the moment, which doesn't hurt.

Every year my numbers get a little more refined. This year I have got even better than in the past at putting my yearly budget together. I know that with the efforts of the Farm Finance Challenge they will be a piece of cake to put together next year. The video above and this post are the numbers as best as I can put them together this year. If you scroll to the bottom of the post you have the option to enter your name and e-mail address to get the broiler section of the excel file that I am referencing.

Creating your broiler budget:

When I am sitting down to do any budget I treat the piece of notebook paper, the excel sheet, or whatever I am using as a blank canvas. It doesn't matter what I am putting where because I am creating it for myself. I can change it to suit my needs whenever I want. The trick is to get it started and to get some real work done each time you open it. Add a little, walk away, come back, add a little more. The point of the whole thing is to get usable numbers for yourself. After all, you are doing this for your farm not just for fun.

Start with just thinking about all the element that would go into creating your budget and keep adding them into your budget sheet. At some point you are going to run out of things to add and you will have you "final" numbers. It might take you some time, it might require a fair amount of research, but each year it will get better, I promise.

What things did I include in my budget?:

How many chickens I intend to raise
What breeds
Numbers of batches or rotations
How much feed
How much labor
How many processing dates
Quarterly breakdown for cash-flow
What I get price per pound retail

I basically went through everything I would need to know to raise broilers and pulled from my records or other people's information (current price of feed) to populate my budget sheet. From there it was just a matter of creating the necessary equations as I went to get the numbers that I needed to end up with. Those were Gross Profit and Net Profit. After all, this document was created to see if I was going to be able to keep the farm at the end of the year.

Labor costs:

This is going to certainly be an area of debate, and I mention it a little in the video. I figure for $12 an hour in my budgets for any operation. That doesn't mean I always pay $12 an hour or that I am actually getting paid $12 an hour. It has just worked out to a nice round number for labor for me. Throughout 2015 we will be more closely tracking how many man hours are spent on any given operation throughout the year to get a better sense of what is required.

There are things like volunteer days, mishaps and nature, apprentices, full time staff, and friends of the farm to consider. When you are figuring the numbers on any farm there are certainly areas where it can get murky and labor can be one of them on a small farm. The best I can figure out is that $12 number. If you have a better way please leave a comment in the comments section below and let me know what you do.

Chicken feed costs:

Because the price of feed fluctuates what you budget and what actually happens can differ. I currently get my feed from Morrison's Feeds in Vermont and I used the latest price of their feed off their website to do my budget. I do have another potential non-GMO feed supplier close by that may be able to get me feed a little cheaper because they are closer but that's not locked down yet. For now I want to figure on the higher price. Better to be prepared and do better than to count on a good price and have to pay more and not have the cash on hand.

Chicken processing:

I have gone seasons where I kill every bird on farm with the knife in my hand for each one. This past season I chose to get the birds processed off farm for a number of reasons. The main reason was that having a USDA approved stamp on my chickens opened up other markets for me. In Connecticut the State laws make it almost impossible to operate any small business successfully and poultry farming is no different. We have been making baby steps in recent years but we still haven't caught up to our neighbors to the West or the North.

The place I currently take them costs me $4.75-$5.25 per bird depending on how I have them packaged. That gives me the average of $5 per chicken. It also takes me 2.5 hours to drive there, woof. You may not need all that where you are.

Some of the other benefits of "out-sourcing" my processing is that my liability of someone getting hurt or sick is lower, I don't have to pay a crew, I don't have to take all the lives myself, and I get to spend a day in an internet cafe and get caught up on office work. Will this be my forever plan? Who knows? It's going to have to work for now until I can figure out something better.

How I raise my chickens:

For my cornish cross broilers I raise them in chicken tractors out on pasture. The chicken tractor is my own design created to suite my needs and very adaptable to wherever you may be farming.

I feed certified organic feed that is also non-GMO. The farm is not certified organic but it may be something that we will be working toward in the future. I buy in chicks as day-old from Meyer Hatchery, raise them in the brooder for 2-3 weeks and them move them out to pasture for the remainder of their lives. I often process at 8 weeks old and I get a finished weight of 4-5 pounds on average.

For more information about my chicken tractor plans and the farm that I started using them on click here or the banner below.

My current farm is Camps Road Farm. I was hired as the farm manager there (here?) and I could not be happier. Pastured broilers are part of a very diverse operation including hops, apples, layers, pigs, sheep, foraged foods, vegetables, and events. We are still raising broilers in the FoodCyclist style tractors that made the trip from my original farm.

What I hope to improve on in time:

No one will ever know everything there is to know about anything. I cam constantly learning and through that learning I am striving to make every operation on my farm better. As part of improving the farm we are taking part in the 2015 Farm Finance Challenge. We will be increasingly diligent about our record keeping both in the field and in the office. I am already looking forward to next year when the 2016 budget has already bee created by the 2015 numbers.

Record keeping is something all farmers struggle with and that was the reason the FFC was created. I am working on improving and so are the other farms that are taking the challenge with me. It's kind of exciting! This blog post comes out in the beginning of January 2015. Depending on when you are reading it we may already be underway. I invited you to check out the challenge, help to hold me accountable to my record keeping and reporting goals, and support the other farms that are taking the dive with me.

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