Cost to Raise 30 Chickens on Pasture

[Music] as feeling this weather in the morning has been feeling like fall I learnt a flannel like warm flannel Oh kind of chilly starting to see leaves change starting to see leaves on the ground today I'm going to talk to you guys about a little bit about how much it costs us to raise these meat birds our experience raising eat birds this is our third time raising our own meat bird these are freedom Rangers last year was our first time raising our own meat birds we raised 25 birds and they were a heritage breed hard rock that are a dual-purpose bird now the heritage breeds are a lot slower growing which we knew that but we wanted to try it for ourselves if you look at our earlier videos that we were doing I did a few videos on that process that we did last year raising the heritage breed bird all right here we have 26 pastured chicken those heritage breed birds took 18 weeks before we process them to grow because there are just a lot more slower growing we raised them in the chicken tractor the same way how we're raising these ones to raise those heritage breed Birds which were a lot slow growing took 18 weeks you know paying full price for feed and I was looking at close to $32 per bird to raise but the cost to raise them I didn't feel was where we want it to be we decided to raise freedom Rangers as their next batch of birds and this is our second time this year raising these birds we are processing them at ten weeks we are raising them the same way that we did the our birds last year and the chicken tractor same system we feed them the same amount now this is things that I just figured out as we're raising these chicken so before we moved here you know you would look at you know videos or or try to hear stories of people actually doing it and how much it costs them to raise these birds and it's just it depends where you live it depends what birds they are depends how much you can get feed for it just depends on your own situation so what am i explaining here is our experience raising these meat birds and what it cost us let's talk about feed for a minute so I bought in bulk I bought enough food to last us the rest of our last meat birds and these meat birds but to calculate that prior I needed that experience of doing meat birds last year seeing how much they ate and then doing the meat birds again they go through 50 pounds of feed every seven days because I bought in bulk 50-pound bags cost me [Music] $19.00 I was paying so that dropped the price significantly and it also depends on at what week are you processing these birds we are doing them at ten weeks so if you break that price down at nineteen dollars a bag at ten weeks and these are 30 birds and to buy these birds that cost us two dollars each to raise 30 pasture-raised chickens it's costing us about 850 $8.50 to raise one bird and if you break that down even further per pound you're looking at close to around $2 per pound depending on how much chicken weighs these last birds that we processed a few months ago they're averaging about from four pounds to five pounds so to recap on pastured poultry I'm just learning this stuff you know we're only a year it's only been a year since we've been doing it ourselves costing us about $2 a pound per bird to raise versus here where we're at like in Asheville North Carolina you're looking at the people who actually do it and sell it at a larger scale they're charging six dollars a pound per bird so our receiving money yes but really that's not why we're doing this before we moved here this was the plan to do our own meat birds if we're going to start a homestead I wanted to be able to do that for us for our family but I really didn't know how much that was going to cost I'm just learning learning this as we're doing it of course we're not experts we're still learning you know maybe our poll process will change over time I don't know but for now this is what is costing us to raise these meat birds it's more of the process is why we're doing it to just witness it just to be a part of the journey of moving these chickens out on pasture every day fresh grass rest bugs just watching them grow and taking care of them and then eventually processing them ourselves that experience right there is why we're doing it chicken comes from somewhere somebody has to butcher them and we want to be the one to do it so the raised chicken to raise your own pasture raised chickens it all really all depends on how much the bird costs where do you live how much you could get feed for are you processing birds yourself you could take them to a processor for this amount of birds they're charged six dollars per bird so that would raise the price up significantly to recap these freedom Rangers it's costing us to raise one bird about nine dollars I just wanted to share with you guys how much it really does cost us to raising the birds maybe some of you are one hour wondering if they should raise their own meat birds or not how much is it going to cost and all this and you know you still have to make chicken tractors you still have to get some equipment if you're going to do it yourself so all that you know that's an initial upfront cost you know I think it's well worth it you know and again I don't think it's about saving money really I mean there is that but I didn't know how much they cost before we raised him like that wasn't why I wanted to do it but I hope this helps I appreciate you guys watching and let's keep moving just keep grooving it get it done [Music]

Channel: Sow the Land

Views: 255,827

Rating: 4.8630881 out of 5

Keywords: pastured poultry, pasture raised, meat birds, pastured chicken on 1 acre, suscovich, chicken tractor, mobile chicken coop, freedom rangers, heritage breed, sewtheland, sowtheland, raising 30 chickens, farm to table, homestead, homesteading, homesteading today, small scale farm, chickens, backyard farm, modern homestead, wapf, paleo, natural lifestyle, family vlog, lifestyle vlog, we left the city, pasture bird, grass farmer, permaculture, salatin style, farm marketing solutions

Id: RfE2adCyA_o

Length: 7min 28sec (448 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 05 2017