Here are the real costs of pasture-raised chicken.
So you want to know how much it actually costs to raise pasture-raised chicken? Well here is the answer, it costs a lot more than people actually think!
If you just want the answer, for us we raise an organic-fed and pasture-raised bird and it costs us about $40 to $45 per bird to raise, store and sell it if we do 200 birds at a time. The input chart is at the bottom of the page, if you would like a breakdown, but I would recommend you read the entire article so you understand the context.
Day-Old Chicks
Factory farmed chicken, raised in confinement houses and fed grain which is often subsidized by the government, has warped our perception of what good chicken tastes like and costs. Let me tell you there is a huge difference in the way it costs and how healthy the birds are.
Here at Natural Pasture Farms we raise the best pasture-raised chicken we know how to. We start with day-old Cornish X (Cornish Cross) chicks we get from our local hatchery Ideal Poultry in Cameron TX. We get all our chicks from them as we can often pick up at the hatchery to avoid the stress of being shipped in the mail, plus we are supporting a local business.
Brooder Costs
We raise the chicks in our brooder for the first 2-3 weeks until they are feathered out. This is necessary as they are not able to regulate their body temperature well until they have their feathers. The exact timing of moving them to pasture has more to do with the weather at the time then anything else.
We generally raise them only in the fall and spring, so we can usually move them out at about 2 weeks. We only raise them at these times as they do much better went the weather is fair. Once they are on pasture they remain there until harvest.
Pasture-Raised
We move our birds daily on fresh green pastures, feeding them organic feed which we source locally. We get our feed from a local organic feed mill, Coyote Creek in Elgin Texas. We do not keep them cooped up in pins, we actually let them roam using netting and a livestock guardian dog to keep them safe from predators.
Many of the larger pasture-raised chicken producers basically take the confinement chicken houses and put them on skids and move those around. While this is a step in the right direction for sure, we don’t agree with keeping them pinned up indoors.
We instead use mobile shade shelters which have a roof, but no sides. This was the chickens are free to move about as they choose. This is one of the main reasons we do not raise them in the winter.
We may try a hybrid approach with our shelters where we can drop down walls to allow us to raise them during the winter months. But for now we will stay with the roof only shelters. We just value their ability to roam too much to coop them inside a mobile shelter.
Daily Chores
Daily chores once the birds are on pasture is fairly route. We visit the birds at least once, usually twice a day. We feed them in 25 lb feeders which we move each morning and then fill. This attracts the birds which allows us to move their shelters. We keep their feed in large food grade barrels which we place near the birds using a tractor.
We check the general health of the birds and separate any out of concern into a hospital pin we have in the barn. This is a rare thing, but we usually have a few per batch that need extra attention.
Every few days the netting is moved to keep up with the birds, which takes about 45 minutes along with the daily chores. As long as the weather is good the daily chores are fairly minimal. If however there is bad weather, we take extra time to strap everything down and to time the feeding so that it does not get caked and wasted in the feeders.
At about 8 weeks of age they are ready for harvest. The exact timing of this depends on the size bird that is desired, but in general it is suggested to aim for 8 weeks for the best weight gain to feed ratio.
For birds raised in confinement the 6 week mark is more common. It is my understanding this is based on a combination of market demand and the different feed conversion ratio which is found while in confinement. If you plan to raise your own, you will need to make this decision based on your own situation.
Harvest
We have harvested our birds ourselves as well as taken them to a local USDA processing facility. When we say processing facility think small family-owned place and not a huge commercial facility. We ourselves use Burgundy Pastured-Poultry near Waco Texas. They do only a few thousand birds a week, so their is a very personal experience between us and them.
We found that the cost to have them process the birds was less than we could do it ourselves once our batch size got above about 150 birds. Plus I often had a hard time getting help and doing it myself meant many full days of processing chicken, which I did not enjoy.
That being said, there are many benefits of processing your own birds. The most important one being the reduction in stress on the animal. Our processor does a fantastic job, but the birds are undoubtably stressed on the trip to the processor. Another benefit is that poultry is one of the only animals which you can process on-farm and sell with very little regulation.
For more on processing on-farm and selling your chicken check with your state food safety or similar department, but here is a general guide. There is a federal exemption, but each state is actually in charge of the exact laws and process. We plan to bring the processing back on the farm over the next few years as we grow and can support some help.
Processing day for use is one of the longest days on the farm. The day prior I load the crates and plenty of coolers into our truck and cattle trailer and take it down to where the birds are so its all ready to go.
We (my wife and I, she is a godsend) get up at about 2am and go out to load the birds for the trek to the processor. We corral them in a small area and load them one-by-one into the crates and then place each crate inside the trailer. Each crate has about 8 birds who weight about 10 lbs each, so these things get heavy.
I have to leave by 4:30 am to arrive at the processor by 7am. When I arrive if im lucky (which I rarely am) someone helps me to unload the crates. I also unload the coolers and make sure they are spotless inside. I then let the processor know what cuts I want before leaving.
To save money I often go into Waco and do some shopping etc. to wait for them to tell me its time to pickup. But I sometimes head straight back to the farm if they say it will be later in the day before they will be ready for pickup, or if I have pressing things to do on the farm.
At pickup the birds are chilled and are loaded into our coolers. They help me load the coolers into the trailer (which I had to go powerwash out, I forgot to mention that) and I head straight to the local store to pack the coolers with ice for the 2 hour trip home.
Once home, its usually 6-8 pm at this point, my wife helps me unload the coolers and we begin sorting and transferring the chickens into our freezers. This process usually takes us 2 hrs for 200 to 300 birds, depending on how many we left whole etc.
This is the basic process we go through to raise chickens on pasture. Keep in mind we schedule the chicks and the harvest dates out at least 6 months in advance to insure we get the dates and the amount of chickens we want. We have to really have our chickens in a row to make this all work smoothly and insure we meet the demand.
Using The Chart
The costs of each of the inputs varies based on your unique situation and the region where you live, but I will give an idea on how much it cost me in late 2022 to raise a batch of 200 birds. It should be noted that labor needs to be included in each line. It does not include the initial startup costs, though it does consider the recurring maintenance costs. These need to be considered as well.
I include labor in the delivery/pickup portion of the formula unless otherwise stated. We set labor at 25$ per hr. as this is about as cheap as you could have an employee for once you include all the overhead of having an employee.
The cost per chick has gone up significantly along with everything else and bulk discounts apply. So check with your local hatchery for pricing. Add labor plus transportation in as well; you have to spend time to go get them somewhere and it will cost wear and tear on your vehicle.
The feed we use is organic and is somewhere around $0.75/lb and you can count on 15 lbs at least per bird, more if you have a lot of waste on the ground etc.
The processing costs is another area where the prices can vary. Are you going to do the processing yourself, make sure and figure a deprecation rate and charge that per batch along with your labor fee. The cost per bird is usually $10 to $12 per bird, but this changes significantly based on the number of birds we take in a batch. Remember you will have some losses, you will not take all 200 birds, we count on a 10% loss. It is usually not this high, but it helps with margin and accounting for the lost feed etc.
The labor line includes daily chores including brooder setup, labor while in the brooder, transitioning to the field, daily chores in the field and loading on processing day. We figure for 60 days at 1.5 hrs per day on average.
Then you have costs involved in selling the bird. For us this is the costs associated with attending farmers markets. To determine this you need to figure out how many birds on average will you sell per market, and what are your costs for attending that market. I wrote a great article on how to find a local farmers market, if you want to check that out.
For us we have market costs such as insurance, booth fees, the costs of all the booth setup itself (tent, table, freezers, generator, etc.) and travel and labor costs. If you are going to sell the birds another way, such as shipping you must figure out these costs as they will be substantial.
Storage costs need to be considered as well. A freezer or most likely 2 or 3 will be needed to store the birds. This will take electricity as well along with a room to keep the freezers in etc.
There are additional costs such as replacing feeders and waterers, shelter upkeep, etc. so we add an additional cost per batch to cover these costs.
| Input (200 birds) | Cost |
|---|---|
| Chicks (cost per X number of) + (delivery/pickup) | $720 |
| Feed (15lbs X number of birds) + (delivery/pickup) | $2350 |
| Processor (number of birds taken X cutup cost per birds) + (delivery/pickup) | $1900 |
| Labor (days X avg. hrs per day X hourly rate) | $2250 |
| Market Costs | $960 |
| Storage | $200 |
| Other | $200 |
| Cost per Bird | $45 |
