June monthly chicken financials

YES!!!  I am positive for the year.  The chickens have finally made money.  I am now up a whopping $41.33 for the entire year.  Now if I only didn't have to spend $60 this month for new baby chicks to replace my losses.


It is another month, so time for the monthly egg report for June 2010.  Here goes for all those curious egg connoisseurs. 

 So June was a profitable month(three in a row).   I made $75.18 net profit on average 19.1 hens laying (yep, I had to account for all those chickens killed.  I started the month with 30 chickens and ended up with 17 by the end.) (for the year my net income is +$6.89/month.  I had $45 in expenses mostly food (I only had to feed 200#/4 bags.  I had to actually buy egg cartons.  The people I work with are not returning them.  So I almost ran out.  So now all customers who don't supply cartons will have to pay $3.00/doz.  The egg cartons cost $0.30/each.   Also, my feed store sells feed at the daily market price for grain.  The feed cost was $9.03/bag all month long.)  For the year my monthly expenses are $45.82.  We collected a total of 428 usable eggs (131 less than last month due to my chicken killers) averaging 16.2 eggs/day collected (for the year the average is 11.8).  The chickens ate 0.40#food/egg (for the year are averaging 0.71#/egg, remember I count my feed expense against the laying hens.  The babies are just starting to lay, we collected two mini eggs this month so hopefully they will start laying next month.)    In June it cost $0.07/egg or $0.84/doz (my yearly average is $0.16/egg or $1.92/dozen.  I have been selling my eggs for $2.50 dozen since the beginning of the year.)  I am +$41.33 for the year.  Next month after purchasing new babies and some more bedding and starter chick feed I will probably be at the break even point at the end of July.  

If you were a wily predator, would you want to snuff the life of this innocent chicken and have a fresh dinner?


We found some more hair sheep on Craigslist.  I am still surprised by this as hair breeds are not very common.  We will be picking up seven more sheep in the next two weeks.  They are Katahdin/Dorper crosses, 4 ewes and 3 whethers.  I scheduled three of our current sheep with the mobile slaughter the first of September.  We will be slaughtering our old ram, old whether and a lamb whether.  So sometime after that we will give a report on just how different is the flavor between a Suffolk and a meat breed.  Annmarie had to call around to find us a horse trailer to borrow so we can go pick them up (one more thing to acquire eventually).  


We started looking at tractors and implements online this month.  There is just too much land for me to take care of by hand.  Even if I limit myself to the 20 acres that surround our houses I just cannot do it all.  I need some mechanical assistance.  We are going to keep looking and pricing brands and fancy gadgets that can be attached to the tractor.