Hey, I got an idea. Let’s talk about some chicken!!!
Okay, this is the last one, I think, maybe, probably. Really, this post is to answer some of the questions you all had. Now, let’s talk turkey, I mean, chicken!
Pot O Meat
Clay and I figured our expenses for the birds tonight. The only thing missing is their weight. I know, I’m still learning. Bad farmer, bad, bad farmer. Must have scale to weigh chickens….dur.
Shopping List:
1. Bread
2.Milk
3.Chicken Scale
We bought 20 birds
We raised 18 birds
We butchered 17 birds
(two died as chicks, one was too sick to process probably a heart problem)
We also had to purchase a new waterer, feed trough and heat lamp and bedding material (pine shavings).
We started our birds on chick starter then purchased one ton of grain from a feed mill. We used it to feed our four pigs, 18 meat birds and 20 pullets. I did my best estimate of how much I fed them since I was feeding all the animals out of the same feed. I know, I know, I should separate the bags and keep track of who is eating which bag. Bad farmer, bad, bad farmer, when will she learn?
Here’s what we don’t know:
What the birds weighed or how much meat on the bone we have.
The exact amount of feed the birds ate and therefore we don’t have the exact price of food they consumed.
However; I can make a pretty darn close guess.
And the final number is…..$127.00 to raise and process 17 chickens (including the three losses) or $7.47 per bird. You can see the size of those suckers, right? I think we did okay.
This ends your course in chicken butchering. Please fill out the instuctor’s survey and hand it into the office on your way out of the classroom. You’ve been a great bunch of students, if you need to speak with me, my office hours are posted on the barn door.
Need a Chicken Doctor?
Contact 
That’s a whole lotta chicken you have there! Curious as to how many freezers you have? Would you mind sharing how you wrap it to freeze so it wont end up with freezer burn? You could go into the meat market business there in your kitchen!
I think you did fabulous! The big pay off to me would be the fact that you know exactly where your food came from, what it was fed and how it was treated.
So can you tell a difference in the taste with these birds? You should buy a chicken from the store and have a side by side taste test and see if your family can tell the difference. That would be a homeschool science experiment for us!
And … now are you going to post some chicken recipes?
Holy cow…err or should I say holy chicken?! That is a lot of meat!! Great job farmer April!
Now that is a LOT of chicken! And sounds very cost effective, too!
holy cow! er…chicken. that’s alot of chickens! and a pretty reasonable price to raise them as well. we have 50 cornish X and will begin butchering them next week. (you should have entered that first photo in your sister’s contest. something like a cheap of chickens)
April!
I think that is pretty reasonable. I’ve always read that chickens weren’t too cost effective for eggs or meat, but now, I’ve gotta say, I’m changing my mind on that after reading your blog! I’m so proud of you that you were able to do the butchering! I guess if I HAD to, I could…oh, who am I kidding, I don’t think I could do it!
You look so proud with all your carcasses!!! lol
Like Linda said, just knowing what the birds were fed, how they were treated and where they came from is worth it alone.
Your picture cracks me up!! Yep, I think y’all done pretty golldurn good!!
Awesome! We process our own deer, In the past I would double wrap with white freezer paper, now we purchase the clear for the first wrap (Its a wrap used the same as you would saran wrap but made for freezer use) & white for the second. We have seen less freezer burn & meat stays fresher. Nice looking meat..Oh, & I forgot…what time is supper?
Thats a lot of chicken. Sounds like you came out on top of this one! This calls for a LOT of chicken recipes.
That is cheap!! Also, homegrown chickens make incredibly rich and protein-full broths, so even your carcasses will be worth more than a store-bought one.
Good job! Now wash those towels in hot water and bleach, thank you.
we also raised chicken, but couldn’t bring ourselves to butcher. You are very brave! I think I want Matzo ball soup after seeing this post.
The next round of chickens should be even cheaper. Cheaper, ha I crack myself up. Anyway, they should be cheaper because some of the cost is non-recurring like the feeders. That is assuming that you plan on doing this again.
Brings to mind the old joke:
City boy to farmer “Hey what’s that contraption over there?” Pointing at a tractor. Farmer answers “A Heinway” City boy “Oh really? What’s a hen weigh?” Farmer looks at tractor then at city boy and shakes his head in confusion “oh about 8 pounds”
The chickens in the store here are about $6, but I don’t think they’re as large as the ones you have. Good job with the whole thing! It must have been a lot of work to butcher all those chickens.
I agree with another commenter, commentor? person who wrote in… It looks like a lot of work but it would be nice to know what was going into the meat I feed my kids. Great job April – you’ve inspired me onto chicken raising.
WOO-HOO! Go April! If you weigh your finished bird (like the ones on the counter in front of you) you can estimate that it will ‘dress out’ about 65-75%… so that means out of the weight you have in the butchered bird 65-75% of that weight should be meat – unless you have obese/fatty birds… If you have an 8lb bird you end up with about 5.2lbs of meat…. I noticed that there is some fat on those birds so they were not utilizing all the food they were being fed, they were storing that SOOOOO that can decrease the amount of meat your getting in the ratio I gave you…. make sense? Are you going to cut them up or leave them whole when you freeze them?
You will never want to eat a store-bought chicken again! I am so impressed! Growing up we would raise a hundred chickens and then the “city cousins” would come out and help butcher and they would get fresh chicken too. Until we got smart and loaded up the chickens and took them to the local hutterite colony to butcher and process . . .
I like the idea of skinning the chicken – no smelly, gross, feather mess!
Way to go!
Almost you have me persuaded to process chickens. Still, those are some mighty fine roasters. And, next time, it’ll cost you less because you wont have to buy the trough and heat lamp. Very cool. Here’s to you intrepid chicken lady! And just think, it’s done. All over till next spring. Tell us how it tastes.
I have to tell you (again) how impressed I am. You and Clay did a great job. I can’t wait to see what you do next.
I am SERIOUSLY impressed. We have grown cows in the past (do you “grow” cows…..no, you raise them, I think) and we just enjoyed having them in the back yard. Not so much fun when they escaped in the neighborhood. Also, not sure how much it cost to butcher them…..but it was FUN! That’s what counts, right?
That chicken looks awesome – I wish I could raise chickens! How long will that stash feed your family? How often can you do this a year? Is it a spring-only event?
We raise between 25-35 broilers a year. We feed them for 6 weeks and then load them in the horse trailer and drive them to a place to have them processed, about 20 miles away. They charge $1.20 a bird and I pick them up the next morning in a bag like you would buy them at the grocery store. Our total cost is usually around $4.50 a bird. The birds each weigh around 3.75 lbs to 4.50 lbs. Ours seems to be cheaper because we feed them less time and already have feeders etc. Great job, you will love them. Try making homemade chicken and noodle soup, so yummy. You will never want to go back to store bought chicken.
Hi April,
We butchered our birds on Saturday (and I posted about it today) and we estimated that each bird cost (for the feed) about five dollars. We got the birds at 6 or 7 weeks of age for free from our neighbor, and my husband didn’t discover the enormous bags of cheaper feed (in another town) till just a couple weeks ago, so next time it might be even cheaper.
Oh, and we used a tumbler (de-featherer) and the killing cone—kind of…
Those are some really big chickens! I’m sure your cost will go down slightly next time. Some of those items can be re-used right?
-FringeGirl
I love the picture of you holding a chicken!
That is some good looking chicken you have there! Enjoy!
I helped a friend butcher 50 chickens one weekend. What a job! We defeathered them which was a mess. I raised my own beef and butchered a steer every year. We would sell about a quarter of it to cover costs and the rest was ours to eat and give away. we kneww exactly what it had eaten, no hormones added!
Last time I bought skinless chicken it was about 6 something a pound!
I would agree that you did just fine on your first try at this new game!!
Congratulations!! I love figuring out the cost of things like this. Plus you got to do it together (sort of) and it will be a great family memory…every time you pull one of those birds out of the freezer.
Now please post pictures of you bleaching your kitchen. Thank you.
Congrats!!!
I agree with ^ pics of bleaching the kitchen. lol 
If my aversion therapy does not work on our two bully-hens, I may have some free chickens for you!
Yes, yes! Do get yourself a food scale, larger size. You will be very surprised at how much your homegrown chic’s weigh next time around. I just finished reading through all your chicken postings. Our 50 we butchered years back were ranging……..hens in the 8 lb. average range, roosters were amazingly fat….we had them weighing up into the 10 – 13 lb. range.Of course you have to realize the ones that were tipping the scale at 13 lbs. could barely walk. The looked like little drunken sailors! It was unreal…kept the big fat ones whole and served as turkey
to guests who actually thought I was serving them a turkey dinner by the size of those guys. Great pictures of the whole process.
Wow!!! What a great looking bunch of meat. I admire your courage. As for me, I just don’t have it in me to do all that work. The local market has nice fresh chicken that I don’t have to feed, water, kill, skin or wrap. I feel the same about canning tomatoes. Three years ago I tried canning some home grown tomatoes. It took half a day and I came out with three quarts. How would you ever have enough time to can enough food to feed a large family? As for me, I will leave the tomatoes to Hunt’s and the chickens to you!
Wow. I am impressed.
DER! they are already cut up!! SORRY!!! *slaps forhead* I was just testing you – ya thats what it is!! LOL
You definitely are good on chicken for awhile. Not bad either, under $8.00 a whole chicken…sounds good! Now you have to come up with recipes for all that chicken!
Good job – you, that is. The chickens are not very happy, but they were up until the very end. That’s much better than if they’d been factory chickens. I hope you have a big freezer!
You’re the meaning in my life, you’re the inspiration.
You keep me cracked up and knowing that this crazy farming thing is something that I can do! Keep up the good work!
And the next batch will cost even less because you won’t have to repurchase the equipment! Good job you guys! Is there time to do one more flock before fall?
Wow, April-that is amazing!! I have-for you-absolutely free-an old baby scale (not digital, the kind with a dial-that our family used for sausage on several occasions after the hogs were processed. It is sitting in my garage, and needs to be cleaned up, but if you want it, it is yours. Email me, okay?
Take care-L
Remember when you’re doing your cost comparison that you should compare your chickens to the more expensive “all natural” stuff – since that’s closer to the quality of what you have – not the run-of-the-mill grocery store chicken.
Oh I have really been wanting to do this. Well, not the butchering part, but the raising our own meat birds. I actually found that FFA will dress out the birds for $1 a piece!
I still have been hesitant because my girls (4 & 6) will likely get attached and then upset. And well my man isn’t too keen either. You really need the support of the household, you know? Still working on them. *sigh*
Those look like 7 lb (dressed) birds to me, certainly beyond the 4-6 lb fryer stage, but not quite to the 8 and up roaster stage. To the people who think they’d get attached to meat birds, that’s not likely. There’s just not much that’s lovable about them after week 2. You can sure get attached to other breeds, though, and turkeys especially. We had Tammy Faye, our meat-type turkey for 11 years. She was such a love.
Your chickens are gorgeous!!! Those are some plump breasts, thighs and legs!
Oh my gosh! You totally rock! My daughter recently started raising hens. We found that one is not laying. (Apparently she is a “sitter.”) SO… she (my daughter, not the hen) announced that I could butcher her “sitter.” (the hen sitter, not the babysitter we hire for the littles). How do you do that? I’m clueless. All of my friends so it is so easy! Please email any suggestions you have!
Wow, I am impressed too! The breast on those chickens look big enough to be turkey-like, small turkey maybe, really small. Okay, I feel silly for saying a chicken breast is anywhere near the size of a turkey breast. Hello. The other thing is I read one of your comment’s say that you will never want store bought chicken again. I am suddenly suffering from farm raised chicken envy. We raise cattle and I never buy read meat from the store or many restaurants anymore, why buy it when mine is better, right. So, I am curious what you say next about how it taste.
Cool.
Congratulations on a phenomenal job. Looks like you ran the marathon all the way to the end. I guess that’s as close to as you can get in terms of “happy chicken” and the inside structure of the bones and the way how the meat is attached the bones should make it really clear. The way the supermarket chicken are raised is only about half the time with a very high fat content because they can’t move enough around (contrary to the belief that chicken is lean meat). One point that interests me though is if there was thought in terms of the grains being genetically modified. Very difficult to detect. Remember – no matter how careful we control our environment – we only have limited influence in what others do!
Great job and keep it up
How much did the chickens weigh before you butchered them?
Thanks for responding
What did you use for wrapping? Will plastic shrink wrap work?
Thanks again.