countrytalkandtips.myfreeforum.org

Camile · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:53 am Post subject: Selling birds.

Good morning,

At what age do you think it's good to sell birds ?

Because with the excess of broodies I have .. I won't be able to keep all the chicks .. so I want to sell/barter/trade the excess girls.

I believe I will only be keeping 6 young girls as this will keep me going with eggs and all for the new season.

Do you think I could sell birds that are from 8 weeks old onwards ? or should I wait for them to be POL ?

If any of you are interested, please see the thread that will come shortly in the mart.

Thanks,
Camile

keithrawlins · Joined: 18 Feb 2007 Posts: 152 Location: banbridge

8 weeks is fine to start selling, the shorter time you have the birds the less you have to feed them.

chook · Joined: 14 Mar 2007 Posts: 305 Location: North Clare

I agree. As soon as their head is feathered and they can be off heat/broody you could sell them. However, the price obviously varies depending on whether you sell them sexed or straight run. Depending on breed/cross, certainty as to the sex can vary from 1 day to several months.

chook

Camile · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 2:37 pm Post subject:

cool thanks for that ..

so I have a potential 15 to sell .. minus the roosters ...

as for the price, I'm not after money .. it just seems such a waste to eat some pullets ... Wink

chook · Joined: 14 Mar 2007 Posts: 305 Location: North Clare

Camile · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 3:09 pm Post subject:

good thinking .. I didn't think about calculating the food cost ..

I feed them with rolled barley, rolled wheat and flake maize. so the price is not that big I would say .. they've never chick crumb because I sieve that mix and collect the "dust" for the chicks .. and gradually increase it to the full mix ..

keithrawlins · Joined: 18 Feb 2007 Posts: 152 Location: banbridge

pol up here go for about 8 sterling

chook · Joined: 14 Mar 2007 Posts: 305 Location: North Clare

Feeding organic chick crumb to 8 weeks inclusive and thereafter my own 80% organic mix from bought-in ingredients (3/5 org. wheat, oats, barley, field beans, 1/5 org. pellets, 1/5 non-organic bran and some special extras) it works out at about 10 Euro to POL for purebreds (26 wks). And that's just the feed, never mind housing, electric netting, and electricity for incubator and brooder (22 Euro per batch up to 20 chicks if I'm very lucky; not an issue of course if there's a broody).
You can see why I wouldn't just want to give them away...

chook

Camile · Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:08 pm Post subject:

Oh it definitely makes sense to charge a bit for the pullets .. unless it's some close friend or so on ..

you invested some money that needs to come back one way or another ...