December 2011 financials/ 2011 final numbers.

December report:  I am positive again by $19.84 for the month on an average 27 hens laying.  My net income total is - $241.43 for the year.  I would have almost broken even if I had not spent $220 on the chicken butler automatic door.  It was an abysmal failure.  I was sent a second one for free and it didn't work any better.  Not sturdy enough to handle the chickens and child and predators.   I had $37.16 in expenses for feed (150#) this month.  We collected a total of 226 usable eggs (decrease of 7 eggs)  averaging 7.3 eggs/day collected.  My productivity for the month was 27% (decrease of 3% from last month).  The chickens ate 0.66# food/egg (a decrease from last month of 30%).   It cost $0.16/egg or $1.92/doz for feed (a decrease of $0.48/dozen over last month).  My monthly net income is a loss of $20.15/month this year (a decreasing loss of $3.60/mos).  Chickens cost me $20 month just to have!!  I had so much predator kill this year that I had to buy two separate batches of baby chicks.  Crazy problem.  I will electrify the outside fence again in the next couple of months.  The predators always start up in the spring.  Annmarie got me a remote night vision camera that I will allow me to watch the coop 24/7.  I am going to try and get her to set it up soon and maybe even get it to stream live to our website!  Will see how it goes.  It is slowly getting better despite production dropping off. 

For the year 2011, I had an average of 24.6 laying hens.  I collected 11 eggs/day.  For a total productivity of 45% for the entire year.  The chickens consumed on average 0.71 pounds of feed/egg.  My average egg cost was $0.17 or $2.04/dozen.  I lost $20.15 /month over the whole year.  Not going to do the automatic door again next year.  May get a temporary woven electric fence.  Not sure where I am going to go with the chickens.  We did learn that 40 is the maximum number of chickens that I can have.  Here's hoping 2012 is a better chicken year.  

I did call our insurance agent today.  We are looking into converting our insurance into a farm policy.  This would hopefully cover more outbuildings and give us some more protection when selling the animals.