Having chickens (layers) for profit on the small farm

You don't say where you live. You need to do some research and find out what the stores sell cage free, organic eggs for. If there is a Whole Foods store near you, start there. You can't sell them as "organic" but you can sell them as cage free, pastured, and antibiotic free. Start in the teacher's lunch room. Leave a typed paper stating that you will be offering your eggs beginning in (you have to know when your chicks will start laying) and that you will deliver to the school on Mondays. Leave lines for people to sign up. The beauty part of this is that there is a refrigerator where you can leave the eggs. When school is out the teacher's can come to your house on Mondays for their eggs, and you can sell them at a farmer's market. I know one lady who keeps her eggs in some coolers on the back porch and uses a coffee can for the money.

I am really glad to hear about such a young person interested in starting into business for themselves! Best of luck with your venture.

Some really good advice has been given here. I especially liked the idea about raising pullets. If you can get your chicks started in the spring as early as the hatcheries start shipping, and be the "early bird" in having your pullets grown out enough to lay, you can get premium prices by having birds ready to sell early, if not first.

If you can grow some of your own feed, get some free stuff about to go bad from the grocery store, free range your hens, or find some other way to keep your feed costs down, you might still make money with eggs. Marketing/salesmanship is a big part of it, and being a kid actually gives you an advantage there. I bet you could sell "College Fund" cage-free, hormone/antibiotic free brown eggs for $4 per dozen on a good day.

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If you can find any auctions that sell chickens, go to them. See what the chickens are bringing. See which breeds bring the most. See if you can get an idea as to their ages compaired to what they bring. See how many they put together in a cage to sell.

Eggs from 20 hens won't make a profit. Numbers make a profit.

I made a profit from my 20 layers this year - a huge profit. I incubated eggs, raised chicks to about 8 -12 weeks of age, then sold them via craigslist and the farmers markets as "almost ready to lay" pullets to "urban farmers". Sold them at $20 each or 3 for $50. At the tail end of the season I sold them along with 4' triangle shaped tractors my son knocked together out of a small bit of chicken wire, half a sheet of OBX, and some 2X2's we ripped from cheap 2X4's. Total cost of the tractor was $24 - sold them for $50, made a package deal of 3 hens and the tractor for $100. Sold 200 pullets and about 15 tractors but could have sold many many more. Have a freezer full of the culled roos. Made over $4000 and spent about $400 on feed and building the tractors.

Along with the above advice, you might want to consider and research:

Ducks - the eggs are great for baking and some people that can't eat chicken eggs can eat duck eggs and will pay a premium price. Usually they bring more and the right breeds will lay better than chickens. They do take a different set up to raise.

If you have a way to raise them in the cold, get your chicks soon and they will be ready for that very early spring "pullet sale" time when they bring top dollar.

Raising mealworms and/or earth worms to supplement their feed. Both are inexpensive and easy to raise and have many side benefits. www.wormdigest.org

Learn to incubate eggs if you don't already. A few banties work really well for that also.

Good luck with your venture - make it work for you!!!

Enjoy it!

Truly turning a profit often involves creative accounting. But, if you're a good scrounger and have helpful kin, you can make a few bucks.

Capital costs are your bigest single hurdle. The cost of the coop and equipment. You can spend a lot here, or be very thrifty and gin it together for next to nothing. Depends on what you need/want, and what you have to work with.

Monthly maintenance costs are your second hurdle. Feed is #1, cartons #2.

Lastly is customers. They seem to show up in droves when one doesn't have eggs to sell, and disapear when the birds come into full production.

Give your eggs away for next to free, and you'll never make a profit. Try to raise your prices, and the customers will scream and leave. I'd suggest you start at a fairly high price for really good eggs. But your eggs must indeed be good.

Advertise. If customers can't find you, they won't buy your eggs. Advertise, advertise, advertise.

Love the idea of selling ready to lay hens with tractors!

It can be done. You need to learn about egg grades, candleing, and cleaning the eggs. If you candle them for blood spots, you can sell them as kosher. This is a great market niche.
Also remember to start small and stay small. If one chicken venture doesn't work, such as eggs, then try selling fertile eggs, then laying hens maybe with a chicken tractor, then dressed chickens or live for kosher/halal, and so forth...
Good luck, but luck doesn't make success, work does.

Yes, the best idea is to DIVERSIFY. Do more than one thing with your chickens. Eggs simply don't sell around here locally - everyone has a chickens and everyone is selling eggs. The prices are low because of that - $1 dozen. That won't buy feed at today's prices. Incubators are easy to build, or people sell them used on craigslist. Worse case one with a turner is $150 on ebay. I have three of those stryrofoam type with turners/fans, didn't pay more than $25 for any of them used. With three I get a hatch of 2 - 4 dozen every 10 days, enough time to move the first batch out of the "intense" brooder (a box with high sides) into the midrange (a kiddy swimming pool), and at 20 days they go into an enclosed shed with shavings and hanging lights (an old metal storage building). I think I have about $300 into my whole set up. I also sell straight run chicks for $3-5 a piece, depending on breed.

The only problem I'm seeing is "small flock"... I was selling eggs from around 50 hens once. I couldn't keep up with the demand. I moved up to around 100 hens... Still couldn't keep up. People get frustrated when they need eggs and their supplier has none, so rather than juggle back and forth, they just end up going to the store.

Also, you can only make a decent profit off it if you have all reliable layers. If you're feeding 30 hens and only get 5 eggs a day, you're only losing money feeding them.

I would first find out what your state regulations are. new box with each doz? date on box? at farm sells only?

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He who thinks he knows, doesn't. He who knows he doesn't know, knows.~ Joseph Campbell

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Thank you so much everyone. Sorry I can't reply to y'all but I'm just gonna fire some more questions.

For raising chickens to sell- 1. Where should I aquire chicks for growing to sell? 2. Where can I find these auctions to sell at? 3. How big should the brooding pens be?

For raising chickens to sell eggs- 1. How much would be a good offer for corn from a farmer?

Thanks again everyone!
Brennan-

Brennan farmers will charge you what they would get at the elevator , several hatcherys all around , in the past I used http://www.martipoultry.com/article.htm and had great luck with them , Ne has several exotic sales and most have 2 sales a year , spring and fall

Unless you live near a large metropolitan area, I just don't know how you'd do it. Feed alone cost $1/bird/week this last spring when we got rid of our birds. I really hate the anemic grocery store eggs but that's what we have to live with right now. We got $3 once or twice but most of the time we had to give them away----- and we still couldn't get rid of them. Our neighbor's dad has a small production line that's profitable but only because he sells them at work and church.

Check state laws. Here in IL you cannot sell eggs off farm. The market for chicken penthouses is way up as everyone and their brother have decided they want those "cheap" healthy farm eggs.

If you do decide to try your hand at the egg business, it'd probably be less expensive to purchase laying pullets now than to buy chicks in the spring. They're mighty expensive to raise up to laying age.

A lot of people are mentioning bulk feed. That's fine and dandy IF you have some place to store it. We don't. We couldn't rationalize the purchase of a grain bin. They don't come cheap. Do you have plenty of roaming room? Will your mom let you raise chickens--- even if they get into her flowers or garden? Do you have a place to keep your birds seperately? Do you have electricity in your barn? Lighting is essential for year-round egg laying? Do you have start up funds? What will you do about frozen eggs? Your chickens probably won't have done a lot of laying before you go to school? Do you have a market for eggs? Can your mom get rid of her extra eggs? Do you have a lot of extra summer and fall produce and does your mok already use it? Our chicken weren't all that crazy about ours -- except meat. That was really hard to set out because the barn cats often beat them to the meat. Can you sell off farm in Nebraska? Would your school let you put signs in the teachers' lounge? Do they have plenty of fridge space at school? Do you have plenty of fridge space at home? If you can free range your birds how will you find the eggs? In the summer you'll have to get them several times daily because people don't like the idea of their eggs sitting outside for a couple of hours without refrigeration.

Everybody and their brother raises chickens around here so we cannot sell eggs for more than the cheap grocery store eggs. There just isn't the market for farm raised eggs. What's your area like? We live on almost 30 acres about 30-40 minutes from the edge of a town of about 100,000 people. We couldn't get people to drive even the ten miles from the nearest small town because of the saturated market--- even when we asked $1.50 at the height of last year's egg shortage. Oh, if you can sell off farm in your area how will you get to a market when you cannot drive? Will your parents drive you around? If you do this you have to consider fuel costs.

Our local feed store sold several chicken palaces. They sold for way over $1000. You might make more money in the chicken tractor/penthouse business. I've no doubt that if, at the age of 14, you've got the desire to go into business you'll find a way.

These are a few of the many things you should consider.

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Moms don't look at things like normal people.
-----DD