Chicken economics - cornish cross

Cornish cross chickens are the standard meat chicken for the American market. Joe Salatin uses them exclusively in his pastured poultry operation, and most of the small farmers use them as well. All of the pictures for this entry are chicks that are IDENTICAL in age, and they're used to illustrate the amazing growth of these chicks. The chick on the left is a heritage breed chicken, the buff orpington. The one on the right is the cornish cross.
The cornish cross goes from hatch to slaughter weight in 6 to 8 weeks. From a farmers point of view that's a very quick crop. Because the grow-out time is so short, the labor costs are less, as well.

Here's the breakdown for 100 cornish cross:
equipment for 100 chicks:
4 30 gallon rubbermaid tubs and metal shelving (to keep the chicks in the tubs)
$80.
4 heat lamps,
$52. 4 heat bulbs,
$32 4 feeders,
4 1 gallon waterers, $35

This equipment lasts for at least 2 years, and during the year will be used to raise 6 batches of chicks. Notice -- more batches of chicks per year. So I'll assign 1/12th the cost of the equipment to this particular batch, or $16.10. If you were to raise fewer batches you'd be assigning a higher fraction.

Labor I calculate the labor as if I were paying someone minimum wage + all of the associated overhead taxes (medicare, social security, unemployment insurance, bookeeping, which adds about 40% to the base wage). I can't imagine getting someone to work for me for less than an hour a day, so figure labor at $7/day, or $50 a week. Over the course of the 8 weeks to brood out this batch, that's $400. More labor for cornish cross because they require more bin cleaning because of the large food intake.

Mortality Figure 15% mortality. That's pessimistic, but pessimists are only pleasantly surprised. Consumables :
Purchase price of chicks + shipping: $1.57/each
300lbs chick starter, 2100bs lbs of chick grower, $330. Yes, they will eat more than a ton of food.
(calculated as 100 chickens * 6lbs per chicken * 4lbs of feed per pound of chicken produced)

Wood chips/sawdust, $70 - we use free chips from tree service companies, but if we had to buy sawdust or chips, that's what it would cost in bulk.

Total cost to produce 85 chicks: $957, or $11.25 a chicken.

That's cost -- with any business you need to make a profit for when you lose a batch of chickens to a weasel, or your shelter blows away, or any of a number of other bad things.

So if you retail these chickens at $4/lb dressed, and they dress out at 4.5lbs, this gives you a gross sale amount of $18.00. Out of the $6.75 gross profit you'll subtract whatever you need to for processing costs. I figure that one person at minimum wage will clean 5 chickens an hour, and that adds up to a processing cost of $3 per bird, giving you a net profit of $3/bird. So a batch of 85 birds will net you $240 every other month. I've ignored marketing costs and the cost of whatever processing equipment you'll need.

I think that $4/lb is a little low. $4.50 a pound would give you a net of $5.25, which seems more reasonable. The problem is that many folks out there are selling birds for less than that. Usually these folks last a year or two, but there's always enough of them that you'll have lower-than-your-cost every year. $5/lb gives you a little more cushion. Maybe you give your minimum wage guy a $1/hour pay raise.

Buff orpington and cornish cross at 10 days of age

You'll find a similar breakdown of the costs of raising heritage birds here.

Cornish cross and buff orpington chicks at 10 days

Here's a picture of a buff orpington chick and a bantam. Notice the graphic on the box for relative height.

Here's a cornish cross next to the same bantam and box graphic
10 days later, here's a picture of a buff orpington chick and a cornish cross chick. Click on the picture for a bigger version. Notice the foot size on the cornish.

Both chicks are fed the same chick starter/grower, and both are kept in the same conditions. The cornish cross weighs 4x what the buff orpington does at this age.

We raise both cornish cross and heritage breeds. As far as eating, I prefer the heritage breeds, but some of our customers want the cornish, so we raise a few batches of them over the course of the year. They do pretty well to supply the demand while the heritage are growing out. This particular chick will be processed in 40 days, at about 6lbs live weight.

In a mixed brooder, you can tell which chickens are the cornish from the first day. They're the chicks that fall asleep with their head stuck in the feeder. The leghorns are the ones that run screaming from you when you feed them. The buff orpington chicks are calmer.