21/01/2025
Why are my chicks expensive
Often people will try to get me to lower the price of my chicks, thinking that mine are just too expensive.
I'd like to explain why I price my chicks the way I do.
I think a lot of people around here are farmers, or ex farmers and think like I used to. On our farm when I was a kid chooks weren't valued highly, we barely thought about them. You lost some, many didn't lay well, many had health problems, but we had a heap of chicks running around to replace them. They were cheap to feed as we just fed them some cheap arse pellets supplemented with spilled grain from feeding the cattle.
You went and collected eggs and didn't really take notice of who was laying or not.
Of course, with space and waste grain it wasn't important how healthy the chooks were, as long as we had some eggs every day.
Now that I have a little poultry shop I have totally changed my opinions on chickens. I realise how good feed, good health, and good breeds are really important if you are limited to only having a few birds, such as if you live in town, or if you have to buy feed.
My prices are high because my costs are high. I can't have a rooster because I live in town, so I have to buy in fertile eggs to incubate. These eggs, from good breeders of heritage breeds cost between $70 and $100 per dozen, with postage.
Some of those eggs won't hatch, sometimes most won't hatch if they have been badly handled in the post. Of those that do hatch, around half will be male, which no-one wants. So, I MIGHT end up with 4 or 5 females out of each doz.
I have to pay for power to incubate the eggs and keep the chicks warm for 4-6 weeks, and then keep them a bit longer till I can be fairly sure of their s*x before anyone wants them – feeding them all the while (with expensive, higher quality feed), as well as the work and care involved.
I have the hard job of putting to sleep all the males, because you can't even give them away – and I have still been feeding and looking after those up till this point.
So... I don't actually make any money out of my $20 newly hatched chicks, or $40 s*xed ones. They are really only to get customers into the shop to, hopefully, buy some other stuff that I can pay my rent with.
Sure, you can by mass produced, point of lay, ISA browns, but I can't compete with that so I concentrate of offering well looked after heritage breeds that live and lay longer, and are not as boring. Sorry, ISAs do a good job for what they are bred for, but many people want so much more.
Please spend a few minutes thinking of the value of my expensive chicks compared to random mixed breed chicks from a stranger that could carry disease and you don't know how well they'll produce, before criticising my pricing. I know most of my customers don't understand the costs involved, and I don't blame them, so I'm just trying to let you know.
