Exotic animals -- pigeon king international

I've written a few times in my blog about how I pick animals to raise. The latest animal that people were going to make millions on is the pigeon.

My opinion is that if someone approaches you, and makes claims that you can make a great living off your farm, you can add pigeons to the list of animals that includes alpacas, llamas, emus, ostriches, and so on.

The basic pitch from Arlan Galbraith, president of Pigeon King International (PGI) was that you'd buy your breeding stock from PGI for a pretty large sum - up to $500 a breeding pair. You'd then build your facilities, and pay for feed, and PGI would buy the pigeons you produced at some contracted price. The purchase price was high enough that it looked like you could make quite a bit of money.

For the first few people into this particular animal fad, you could make money, and in fact Arlan did buy the pigeons produced -- because he needed pigeons to rope the next round of optimistic farmers into the mix. And the next, and the next.

Some farmers got checks for 3 years running -- and served as role models for Arlan to point to to rope even more people in.

This scheme managed to rope in more than 1,000 farmers, with an average investment of $100,000 each, but some invested more than a million dollars. The contracts issued by PKI have a total value of around 1 BILLION dollars.

So I'll go back to my original criteria for picking animals to farm:

Do you and everyone you know eat that animal or use its product at least once a week?

News articles about PKI
PKI dead in the water
Conspiracy killed pigeon king
forums discussing PKI

New arrivals - turkey poults

We're starting to hatch serious quantities of turkeys. This batch is a variety of breeds; eastern wild, narragansett, blue slate, black spanish and bourbon red. when I hatch the eggs it's always a little nerve racking; other than candling them to see if they're developing, you never know how many you'll get. Some of the poults die right at the end. Thankfully we're getting good hatch rates this year .

Steps to take to make your hatch better:

Collect your eggs a couple of times a day and store them in a temperature-stable environment, like your house. 60 degrees works for me. Don't wash or mess with them at all. Put them in an egg carton or rack and let them be.

Let them warm up to room temperature slowly (70-80 degrees) before you put them in the incubator. I like at least 4 hours to bring them up that 20 degrees.

Make sure your incubator is set correctly for what you're hatching; both temperature and humidity need to be checked.

Yea, I'm the one who's being a dick

I posted an ad on the local craigslist to sell some turkey eggs. My incubators are full, so until I hatch some turkeys, I've got some surplus eggs. Here's the ad:

Hatching eggs: Chicken, turkey
Fertile chicken eggs:
Barred rock, $1
Cuckoo Maran, $3

Fertile turkey eggs
Narragansett: $3
Bourbon Red: $5
Blue Slate: $4
Eastern Wild: $6
Black Spanish: $5

Eggs are collected twice a day and carefully stored. You'll get eggs that were laid less than 24 hours ago. Farm in Everett, but I live on capitol hill in downtown Seattle, so you can pick up either place.

After I posted that ad I got various responses, and sold 10 dozen eggs of various sorts. And then this fellow wrote me:

From: Dominic
Per dozen?

And I responded the price listed was per egg. His response?

From Dominic
that's unfortunate, its too expensive.

At this point I could have just ignored the guy. But maybe he's got a source of heritage eggs somewhere. It does happen; people sell stuff for silly prices, and I'm not against buying out another farmer if they want out of the business. So I write:

If you can find fertile turkey eggs for $3/dozen, let me know. I'll buy every single one of them

He wants purebred heritage turkey hatching eggs for 25 cents each; clearly he has no idea what they sell for. So I go about my business. his next message:

From: Dominic
Well, there's a big difference between the $12 a dozen I can get by driving a bit and the $36 a dozen you propose, isn't there?Its fine: obviously if you have a local market that can support that price, than that's what you should be charging. I just wanted to let you know, you'd have me as a customer if you weren't charging so much: that's all.

Hmm... Maybe he doesn't know what it costs to produce the eggs. Ok. I'll bite and try to educate the guy a little. So I write:

I'm asking where you can buy them for $12 a dozen. I'm serious about buying them. That's below the cost to produce. Save me some money. Even chicken eggs sell for $5/dozen.
Once hatched the poults are worth $9 each.

His reply:

From: Dominic Just ask around - I've found multiple breeders in the past willing to offer them at that price. People who aren't so greedy.But hey, whatever you can get, right?

Ok. Now I'm greedy. This guy is pretty annoying, but in the interests of education, I offer:

Would you be willing to bet $200 that you cannot find 3 dozen heritage hatching eggs for $12 a dozen or less in the next two weeks?Turkey feed costs $400 a ton or $0.20 lb. To get a turkey to laying age takes 140lbs of feed or $28. Then you have to pay for equipment, land, mortality and the turkey poults, which cost $10 each. It ends up costing about $60 per hen. The hen will lay 15 eggs a month for 2-3 months. I'm not including any allowance for labor, predators or hens that don't lay. Keeping the hen after her first season is more expensive. So the $.50 net profit per egg is greedy? Do YOU work for minimum wage?

Anytime that I'm willing to bet a couple of hundred dollars, I'm pretty sure I'm going to win.

his reply:
From Dominic: Would you be willing to bet $200 that I can't?

A sucker is born every minute

Yes, absolutely. $200 that you cannot find 3 dozen purebred heritage turkey eggs within a 50 mile radius of Seattle for $12 a dozen or less.
$12 a dozen is below the cost to produce. Going out of business sales are great for saving money but then the store is gone.
If you enjoy having local farms I suggest you support them.
There are no farms offering purebred heritage turkey eggs for $12 a dozen
Check eBay for national prices. With shipping the market price is $45 a dozen

I think i won this bet but he'll never pay up. His reply?

From Dominic: If you are my local farm choices, I'll pass. You're a dick.

Ok, so first I'm greedy, then I'm just a dick. Fine. But he's grist for my blog, so I ask his permission before I post this:

With your permission, I'll post this entire thread to my blog and expose to the world exactly the sort of dick that I am. That will certainly teach me a lesson, right? If I do not hear from you by midnight Sunday, I'll post the entire thread.

His reply:

From Dominic: Yes, I have been able to obtain turkey and goose eggs for less than $15 in other circumstances. Egg are available via eggbid for $2-4 each, which is in your price range: http://eggbid.com/listings/index.cfm?category=960337805

A few years ago there was a nice lady who had a farm near centralia who offered me those prices.

Do I believe in supporting local farms?
Yeah, sure I do - but dude, you've got to work on your customer service. Whatever the price, your customers need to believe in YOU, that's why they are going to support you, and they can't believe in you if you are standoffish or disagreeable.

Even at the prices you were posting with I probably would have bought 2 dozen from you - but am I going to do that when someone is being a huge dick to me?

No, c'mon, of course I'm not. So whatever else you got, you lost 1 good customer who is active in a local community that you could have tapped into: but you lost out on that because you wanted to get to feel morally superior or whatever it was that motivated your actions.

Please, we need a good functioning local farm community here - but for that to work people need to interact with compassion and to build and be part of something more and bigger than just their own concerns. I want you to succeed, but I also want to work with people who make me feel good about being me. Do you help your other customers believe in their purchases?

Do you talk with them, or do you just act like a dick like you did with me? You can post whatever you wish, I'd prefer that you didn't use my name or post my email address: but if you exclude those or use a pseudonym using the text of our correspondence is fine with me.

Ok dominic, now the entire web knows the kind of greedy dick that I am.

Why doesn't he go back to the farm in centralia? Because they're probably out of business. Selling stuff below cost does that to you.