poultry for profit

hi,,im new to this site,,i have 4 birds,,2 mixx brown hens,,1 copper black maran,,and 1 bupp orpington,,cockarel,,well recently iv been thinking about maybe starting a small free range poultry farm for eggs to start with then meat {maybe} i was wandering if anybody on this site  owns a poultry buissnes ,and if they could give me a bit of info, thanks

My OH keeps on about being a poultry farmer, but I think sometimes its best these days to keep it small and sell first of all to friends and family and see how it goes.

It costs a lot of money to set up a reasonable size poultry farm (I've researched it a lot over the last few years) and these days there is such a lot of red tape and cheap foreign imports, that a lot of people we know have already given up.

Saying that, we found out yesterday through reading the Farmers Guardian, that the man we used to buy his old free range hens when they were past their best, is doing very well at the moment!  But when you think that the supermarkets only pay about 50p a dozen for free range eggs, you have to have a lot of chickens to make any decent money, then after 72 weeks, you have to get rid of them, and maybe only get 10p each if they go to someone like Flatmans for processing into dog food, or maybe 50p or £1 if you sell them on to backyard keepers.  Get more POL in and it starts all over again!

But if you are still interested, look at John Bowlers website, they can help you set everything up, and they reckon they will buy all your eggs, but we haven't actually tried them yet.

www.johnbowler.co.uk

Hi Skyblue, what's the going rate for eggs over your way?

I've only been charging £1.20 a dozen here, but that is the going rate for our 2nd rate eggs (that's apparently what they call the eggs from ex battery chooks!!!)  But I have seen free range eggs advertised for £2.00 a dozen, whereas elsewhere they are £1.40 and £1.50!!

Their food has gone up twice this year already!! And set to get worse with all the flooding ruining crops.

Well good luck Andy, you know what they say about little acorns!!!

And food will continue to rise dramatically over the next few months. Wheat and barley have more than doubled in price over the last few months.

Hi

Like i said, i keep about 50 chickens for eggs, they free range so find most of their food themselves, i charge £1.50 doz and usually don't have enough for the demand, but if you start to get to big you have to then work out how much time you are going to spend on it, plus the cost goes up feed,medication,worming,cleaning chemicals and the like and its not easy if you work full time and have a family. I also keep a few ex battery hens but mainly light sussex and r/r, i also hatch a few out to keep my stock levels up and sell the surplus.