If you’re contemplating launching a chicken selling business of your own, it’s essential to examine every facet of this venture. The product itself is just one aspect to think about – equally important are the operational logistics that will ensure the success of your endeavor.
Why Should You Consider Selling Chickens?
Offset Costs of Chicken Keeping
While engaging in fun little hobbies can bring joy, they often come with financial burdens. One way to alleviate these costs is by selling chickens, which can generate revenue and help offset the expenses associated with running a small-scale chicken operation. If you have ample space, you may even consider scaling up your venture to create a more substantial and profitable business.
Rid Your Farm of Surplus Birds
While you might not be ready to take the plunge into a full-fledged chicken-selling business, there are still valid reasons to get rid of extra birds. Perhaps you’re looking to declutter your property or make some room in your coop for new additions. Regardless of the reason, knowing how to sell your birds at their optimal value is crucial. This knowledge can come in handy whether you’re looking to offload a small number of excess birds or even start a larger operation.
What Chickens Will You Sell?
When embarking on a new venture, it’s essential to prioritize focus over scattergun approaches. By concentrating on one area at a time, you’ll be able to develop a cohesive strategy and optimize your results. Start by selecting a specific niche within the chicken selling market that aligns with your strengths, resources, and circumstances, then dedicate yourself to refining your process and building a solid foundation.
Chicks
Starting a poultry business? One of the most straightforward ways to get started is by selling young chicks. Although they may not fetch as high a price as older birds, chicks are also less demanding in terms of infrastructure requirements. In fact, when properly certified, you can even ship day-old chicks across the country under controlled conditions. This makes it an ideal option for those who want to minimize upfront costs and simplify their entry into the market.
Started Pullets
When it comes to purchasing poultry, many enthusiasts and backyard farmers find themselves drawn to started pullets. These young hens offer a unique advantage over day-old chicks: they’re already just a few weeks away from laying eggs. This attractive prospect makes them a highly sought-after commodity in the market. However, sellers may struggle to secure a fair price for their efforts, as the value of raising these birds is often overlooked.
Laying Hens
While there will always be a demand for high-quality laying hens, the real sweet spot lies between 6-12 months of age. This is when these birds are at their peak production, making it ideal for buyers seeking a consistent supply of fresh eggs. However, it’s essential to consider the investment required in terms of feed and time before selling them. The challenge lies in balancing the initial costs with the potential return on investment.
Excess Roosters
While there may be some opportunities to advertise or rehome the occasional extra rooster, establishing a business solely focused on selling these birds isn’t recommended. In fact, finding buyers for excess roosters can be a significant challenge due to the abundance of existing flocks. Even if you focus on breeding rare breeds, the market for roosters remains limited, making it difficult to sustain an entire enterprise around their sale.
Choosing Which Breeds to Sell
Assessing Your Potential Market
Before embarking on a venture to sell chicken breeds, it’s essential to gauge the demand in your surrounding area. The type of customers you’re likely to encounter can significantly impact your success. In my experience, living in a rural and economically challenged region where residents primarily seek chickens for their egg-laying capabilities means that rare or ornamental breeds might not be as appealing.
On the contrary, if you reside in an area with a thriving poultry show scene, you may find a high demand for show birds. Alternatively, your community might consist of individuals seeking chickens as pets, rather than for their utility. Understanding your target market is crucial to making informed decisions that will ultimately contribute to the prosperity of your business.
Egg Layers
When considering breeds for your backyard flock, it’s essential to focus on dependable egg layers if you’re in an area where they’re the primary market demand. Look for breeds that excel at producing high-quality eggs and start laying early, allowing you to capitalize on their prime production years. Two top recommendations for those seeking a reliable egg producer are Plymouth Rocks and Buff Orpingtons – both renowned for their impressive egg-laying abilities.
Colorful Egg Layers
For those living in upscale neighborhoods, the demand for vibrant egg-laying hens is on the rise. The challenge lies in breeding such birds, but the payoff can be substantial. With consumers willing to pay a premium for a basket full of colorfully speckled eggs, savvy farmers and enthusiasts alike can capitalize on this trend by marketing breeds like Marans, Ameraucanas, and olive eggers as must-have colorful layers.
Rare and Endangered Breeds
Breeding rare and endangered chickens can be a thrilling venture, as these unique birds are not typically found in every backyard. The scarcity of such breeds can drive up demand and ultimately lead to higher prices. However, this means you’ll need to identify a market that is willing to pay a premium for these extraordinary fowl. To succeed, it’s essential to reside in an area with a high concentration of poultry enthusiasts and fanciers seeking to enhance their coops with exotic new additions.
Pets or Lawn Ornaments
In urban settings, many individuals opt to keep chickens as a unique hobby or to have pets nearby. For this scenario, selecting breeds that excel as children’s pets and are visually appealing in a yard is crucial. Silkies, Polish, and standard or bantam Cochins are exceptional choices for this purpose, given their friendly nature and charming appearance.
Consider Your Chicken Operation Setup
Before embarking on a chicken-keeping venture, it’s crucial to consider the logistics of setting everything up. This involves ensuring you have sufficient space and resources to cover the initial investment, which requires a notable amount of time and financial commitment. Think about the prep work involved in getting your operation off the ground, including the initial setup costs and ongoing expenses.
Your Breeder Setup
When venturing into the world of chicken breeding, it’s essential to consider the needs of your parent stock even before introducing birds for sale. The first step is to provide the ideal breeding environment for each breed, ensuring the purity of purebred chicks. This will involve setting up separate pens tailored to each specific breed. Additionally, a reliable incubator is crucial in hatching and selling your own chicken breeds.
It’s vital to invest in an incubator that can consistently hatch multiple chicks at once.
Setting up to Sell Chicks
When the setup for your parent stock is complete, attention turns to the birds for sale. If you’re planning to sell chicks, this process is relatively straightforward. However, it’s crucial to have a large brooder in place to accommodate several dozen chicks between hatching and selling. Additionally, consider having at least one pen on standby to house any growing birds that may not find a new home, ensuring they’re kept safe and healthy.
Setting up to Sell Pullets and Hens
When setting up your operation to sell started pullets and hens, it’s crucial to have infrastructure in place that caters to each stage of the birds’ life cycle, from chick to maturity. If you’re focusing solely on selling young pullets that haven’t yet reached laying age, a straightforward chicken tractor without an extensive nesting area can serve as an ideal housing solution for these pre-lay birds.
Legal Requirements
Before taking the plunge into selling livestock and poultry, it’s crucial to conduct thorough research. A key aspect of this is understanding the legal requirements governing such sales in your region. Although there may not be many restrictions to worry about, it’s always better to err on the side of caution. In addition to complying with local regulations, consider obtaining an NPIP Certificate.
As a responsible chicken breeder, having this certification can provide assurance to customers and enable you to transport birds across state lines. While the certification process may come at a cost, it’s well worth the investment. To get started on the path to NPIP certification, familiarize yourself with their Program Standards document, which outlines the guidelines to follow.
Keep in mind that each state has its own set of rules regarding certification, so be sure to conduct research specific to your state. Online resources, such as state vet offices and the USDA Veterinary Services Office, can provide reliable information. Don’t underestimate the value of networking with other poultry breeders in your area. Their experiences and insights can offer valuable guidance on selling poultry.
Make Sure You Raise Healthy Birds
When it comes to running a successful chicken-selling business, prioritizing the health of your flock is crucial. As a responsible entrepreneur and poultry caretaker, ensure you have solid practices in place to maintain the overall well-being of your chickens. By doing so, you’ll not only be providing for their basic needs but also fostering a reputation that inspires confidence in potential customers.
Setting Rigorous Health Standards
To cultivate healthy chickens, focus on your daily habits rather than grand gestures. Maintain tidy living spaces for your flock, avoid overcrowding them, and refrain from feeding spoiled food to your birds. If one of your chickens falls ill, take immediate action by isolating it from the rest of the group. If you have multiple pens or flocks, ensure that the sick bird’s pen remains separate until you’re confident no other birds are infected.
Beware of Parasites
When it comes to chicken keeping, one crucial aspect is monitoring for signs of parasite infestations. A savvy breeder or owner will typically inspect the potential purchase’s areas where parasites tend to congregate. Surprisingly, even experienced breeders can unknowingly sell birds with mites and lice. To avoid this, it’s essential to regularly check your chickens for internal and external parasite symptoms and promptly treat any infestations.
Implementing effective preventive measures such as maintaining a clean and well-ventilated coop, providing regular dust baths, and ensuring adequate nutrition can help prevent the spread of parasites.
Implementing Good Biosecurity Measures
When it comes to maintaining a safe and healthy flock of chickens, biosecurity is crucial. This practice involves implementing safety measures to prevent the introduction and spread of diseases among your birds. Key situations where biosecurity protocols are essential include introducing new birds to the farm, hosting or visiting other farms, and participating in auctions and poultry shows. Whenever your chickens are exposed to outside environments, quarantine becomes necessary.
Whether it’s new arrivals or birds that have visited external events, they’ll need to be isolated for 2-3 weeks and closely monitored for any signs of illness. If you notice any symptoms, keep the affected birds separated until the issue is resolved and all birds in your flock are healthy once more. Additionally, when visiting other farms or hosting visitors from elsewhere, it’s vital to ensure that you’re not inadvertently tracking bacteria between properties.
To achieve this, sanitize your shoes and clothing before interacting with your flocks to minimize the risk of disease transmission.
How to Determine the Price of Your Birds
Setting a pricing strategy for your backyard chickens’ venture requires a delicate balance. It’s crucial to consider two primary factors: the breed of bird you’re selling and the time and resources invested in raising them. These variables will help you determine fair prices that ensure the sustainability of your business while keeping customers satisfied.
What You’re Selling Matters
When it comes to pricing a Buff Orpington chick, it’s essential to consider the perceived value of this particular breed versus more common options like olive eggers. The demand for rare breeds or colorful egg layers tends to drive up prices, making them more attractive to potential buyers. By leveraging this phenomenon and researching the market rates set by other reputable poultry suppliers, you can effectively determine a competitive price point for your unique offering.
Time Investment
While considering the time commitment required for your chickens, consider that the effort invested in a group of 10 started pullets is roughly equivalent to that of a flock of 20 started pullets. Surprisingly, raising larger flocks won’t necessarily require more of your time, but can potentially double your returns.
Monetary Investment
As you embark on the journey of raising birds for sale, it’s essential to consider all the costs involved, including feed, bedding, and potential medication expenses. To ensure a clear understanding of your financial investment, keep meticulous records of every expense incurred throughout the process.
When selling day-old chicks, the initial outlay is relatively minimal since you’re not investing in the birds themselves. However, when dealing with started pullets, the costs add up quickly.
To determine a fair market price for your birds, divide the total amount spent on each batch by the number of birds being sold.
This calculation will provide a crucial benchmark, indicating the minimum price you must charge to break even and recoup your initial investment in each bird.
How to Advertise Your Chickens
With the foundation of healthy birds and a competitive pricing strategy in place, it’s time to develop a comprehensive marketing plan that showcases your exceptional avian offerings. A well-crafted marketing strategy is crucial, as even the finest birds will struggle to gain traction without effective promotion.
Advertising Properly
Crafting an effective advertisement for birds requires attention to detail and a commitment to showcasing the products in their best light. A well-written description, free from grammatical errors and engaging enough to capture the reader’s interest, is essential for making a positive first impression. Additionally, including high-quality images that clearly display the birds’ characteristics, such as age, sex, and parent stock, can help build trust with potential buyers.
Providing useful information about the breed, like its unique features or habits, can also be a valuable selling point. By combining a compelling description with clear and concise visuals, you can create an advertisement that effectively communicates the value of your birds to potential customers.
Marketing Online
The internet has proven to be a valuable resource for marketing livestock in both rural and urban settings. Although Facebook’s ban on live animal sales has significantly impacted the industry, there are still several platforms that can be leveraged to reach potential buyers. For instance, online marketplaces like Craigslist offer a local-focused approach to selling chickens, although it’s essential to exercise caution when dealing with strangers.
Another effective platform is BackYardChickens, which allows sellers to connect with thousands of chicken enthusiasts worldwide, providing an ideal outlet for promoting their flocks.
Attending Livestock Sales
When attending livestock sales, you can establish valuable connections while simultaneously purchasing and selling chickens from a diverse range of sellers. However, it’s crucial to remember that any birds not sold must return home with you and be isolated from the rest of the flock to maintain your biosecurity plan. This is essential for ensuring the health and well-being of your existing fowl population.
Social Media
Although Facebook’s terms prohibit the direct sale of animals like chickens, there are still opportunities to leverage social media for your poultry business. By creating an Instagram page focused on sharing aspects of your farm life and the personalities of your birds, you’ll cultivate a community that may eventually be interested in purchasing birds from you directly.
Word of Mouth
In small communities, word of mouth remains a potent force that can either elevate or tarnish your reputation. By conducting honest and transparent business practices, you can foster a loyal customer base that will enthusiastically recommend your offerings to others. Conversely, poor business decisions can lead to a reputation as an untrustworthy seller, causing trust and loyalty to erode.
A delicate balance between serving your customers well and maintaining a positive community perception is crucial for long-term success.
The Importance of a Positive Buyer/Seller Experience
When a customer is ready to purchase from you, it’s crucial to ensure a seamless transaction. Deliver on your promises by providing the exact birds you advertised and doing so in a timely manner. Be transparent about any potential issues or concerns, avoiding the temptation to pass off subpar or unhealthy birds as prime specimens. If an issue arises and the customer is unsatisfied, make every effort to resolve the problem and maintain a satisfied customer base.
While it’s impossible to please everyone, most customers are willing to work with you when provided with high-quality birds.
Are You Ready?
Selling chickens requires careful consideration, and not everyone is prepared to take the leap. As you weigh the pros and cons, you may find that there’s more to it than initially meets the eye. Conduct thorough research and homework before venturing into the chicken business. When it comes to raising birds for others, providing top-notch poultry and adhering to best practices are crucial for success.
While there’s undoubtedly a lot of hard work involved in building a successful chicken selling operation, the passion you bring to the endeavor makes it all worthwhile. Moreover, knowing that your feathered friends will go on to flourish in new homes, perpetuating their lineage, can be a truly fulfilling experience.
