How Much Does it CO$T to Farm Like Joel Salatin? A Real World Example of Pastured Poultry Profits
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ค. 2024
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In all the best ways possible, you look like a farmer version of MrBeast. I appreciate all the great info!! Will for sure take it into my considerations in my plans. Thanks!!
Thanks for watching
Omg... Now that's all I can see
I was looking for a comment saying this😂
As a die-hard water carrying enthusiast, I feel attacked.
Other than that, wonderful video! Thanks for putting in all of the work to get the info out there :)
Good way to stay strong lol
Carrying water made me feel super healthy but I guess it depends on the person.
Good job man! Appreciate your willingness to be as detailed as you are!
Damn fine video!! Well done! Very informative. All of the details in one video. The first hand experience is a real plus. Thanks for your effort. You’ve got a new subscriber!!
Thanks for watching our videos and mentioning us in the description!
Your welcome! And thanks to you for all the videos you have made, and continue to make. They helped me a lot when we were starting out.
This was incredibly helpful. I truly appreciate you taking the time to make this content for those of us interested in getting into pastured poultry
Glad I could help! Thanks for watching!
Thanks for this video. I was looking for this info & you guys did it all. Great detail.
I appreciate the transparency. I've been wondering as I've watched other videos of other chicken producers about all the extra expenses. Thank you & Happy New Year!!
Same to you!
This is an excellent video. Showing and telling your real-life experience is very valuable especially to those who are researching like us.
Thank you so much. I’m glad I could help.
Good to know someone in Michigan doing this. We’re in the UP. We recently took on 75 Freedom Rangers. We’re finding them quite fun and are considering getting on a large scale. Thanks for the video!
You’re welcome!
This was a great help! Thank you, we are getting ready to launch our tractors in Georgia and this really firmed my resolve.
Best of luck!
@haven - Awesome video! Great breakdown and comments around some of the variables. I have to admit though, my favorite part was in the beginning when you said, "When things kind of go weird...a little bit!" Keep up the great vids!
I’m glad you enjoyed it, thanks for watching!
@@hdezoo how did it get weird? Thanks.
I greatly appreciate you spending your time to make this video, very helpful information. Thank you!
Glad I could help!
Thank you 😊 and happy Easter 🐣 your information is great young man keep bringing us your videos
Thank you!
I'm glad to see smaller videos and people taking about this. I knew Joel salatin makes money but I didn't know if it was from farming or selling farming information
I’m glad I could help, thanks for watching!
My husband and I recently started chicken farming. We did our first match and start to finish processing everything and our first batch that we did we did it just for our freezers and family and friends. Last night we were laying in bed and we discovered you on TH-cam. So we were going through and we were watching your videos and when you were discussing your breakdown of money and things like that and what you spent out when it showed like the garden hoses and you put next to it carrying water is stupid I laughed so hard till I cried because for the longest time for the first few couple weeks I was carrying the water and I thought gosh this really sucks. And then I started using a wagon and just here and the last 3 weeks or I should say two and a half weeks before we processed my husband said to me I've been waiting to see how long it was going to take you to go get hoses out of the barn and connect them and run them out to the pasture and I said why would I do that and he said so you won't have to carry the water no more. And I thought to myself I'll be damned all this time I forgot that I could easily hook up the hoses and run them out in the pasture. So when I seen what you had put I laughed till I cried to the point that my husband was crying laughing at me. We enjoyed your videos and some of the things actually were pretty good tips for us and we appreciate it. See we've had a farm for a long time and we've had chickens for our eggs etc but we weren't raising chickens to sell and we just started this journey not very long ago and we've always succeeded in farming so I know that this won't be that hard for us we love it. We have a big farm and lots of animals so it's just natural for us.. one thing I did want to ask them where you live at does the department of agriculture make you guys carry a business license as well with the state or are you good with just your permit
I’m so glad you guys have enjoyed the videos! To answer your question, we do not have any permits or licenses with the state. We did form an LLC for the business finances, but other than that, we have no licenses or permits for any process we do. It’s completely legal to sell live chickens, but process them as a courtesy before delivery.
@@hdezoo awesome. That makes since. Thanks for writing back. Are you guys still raising them and if so how many do y'all currently have out in the pasture?
We are still raising them, this summer will be our 3rd year growing broilers. Our first batch is coming the week of the 18th of April. We plan to grow 600 this summer, plus some turkeys, and keep our layers going on pasture as well.
Michigander here got a 10 Acer veggie farm going! Only growing 3 Acers got two Acers of Hay! I don't do anything except cut it down! I'm adding chicken tractor's soon! How much food does 60 chicken's eat?? Semper Fi! Midland
If they are meat birds, it all depends when you process them. We process at 8 weeks old, and our meat birds weigh about 6.3 lbs dressed (butchered). They eat about 3.5 lbs of feed for every pound of dressed weight. So if you raise yours to 8 weeks old, and they grow at a similar rate that ours do, the equation is 60 chickens, times 6.3 pounds, times 3.5 pounds of feed, for 1,323 lbs of feed.
A great amount of information. Practically explained .Thank you for taking the time and effort to share this.
You’re welcome. Im glad you appreciate it. Thank you for watching!
Cool, you are In Northern MI. We are in Six Lakes right now, but plan on moving further up to a new homestead in a couple months. Thanks for the very informative video! Crushing
Thanks for watching. You sound like you like gravy.
Great video! I bought a place in upstate ny in the 3rd quarter of 2020. I'm moving to my place soon.
Thank you for taking the trouble to actually cost this out for us. Very well done and presented.👍
Thank you!
Wow! Thank you for the clear numbers that is awesome and hard to find!
I also had a hard time finding hard numbers which is why I made the video. I’m glad I could help.
Thanks for this informative video and being so open with the numbers.
You’re very welcome. I’m glad I could help.
I'm in Michigan too! About to purchase our new homestead. Thanks for the breakdown on this model (I've been studying intently). Your numbers match up pretty close with what I've already put down for a predictive PNL . Would love to have you visit once we get set up!
Blessings 🙌 ❤
Good on ya! Let me know when you’re settled.
thank you for making this, very helpful to the community
You’re welcome, and thanks for watching!
Great video - thanks for high level of detail
If you're looking for other sources, however he's a long journey across the pond; Richard Perkins is a wealth of knowledge.
Great information, even better presentation. Thank you Haven and I'm curious when ya gonna start grass feeding all those cows!? 😆
Ha! That would be quite the operation if we did. Baby steps, baby steps.
Richard Perkins has a great book and TH-cam channel, but most of what he does when it comes to animals is based on Joel Salatin‘s model.
Wonderful video! Thanks for all the numbers!
Thanks for watching!
Nice job, I grew south of you around Midland. A year out of high school I moved back to S. FL
I really appreciate this. I was trying to figure out the up front cost.
I’m glad I could help! Thanks for watching!
This was amazing. Thank you.
Great content! Much appreciated.
Thanks for watching!
Very thoughtful video. Thanks!
You’re welcome, thanks for watching!
Very helpful information! Thank you for the breakdown.
Thanks for watching, glad I could help.
We did about 100 chickens to sell in 2021. We made about $40, but like you said, we won't have those equipment expenses this year. Really, we probably didn't make anything, with electricity costs for the freezers. We hope to pre-sell most of the chickens next time so we're not storing that many. We won't do any until end of summer/fall, because here in Arizona it's too hot in spring and summer. We did some in spring last year, but it was hard on the birds, so we're waiting.
Good on ya!
Extremely helpful. Thank you!
Thank you for watching! I’m glad it helped!
Make more videos !!!! Thank you!! Great Video 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼
I hauled water to mine about 150 yards a trip, decided that was too much work at 65 :p So now I use my lawn tractor to get it out there. Still work, but not passing out from the exertion work.
Work smarter, not harder.
I really appreciate you putting this video together. Concise and articulate. You presented the information really well.
Thank you for saying that. I’m glad I could help.
Good content, I'll have to take a look at your other videos. I have the same processing equipment. I always hated the amount of time it took to heat that 50 gallon tank (mine takes like 3-4 hours to heat) so this year I filled it at the house with our tankless water heater. I was able to turn it up to 140 degrees, so by starting with 140 degree water instead of tap water it cut down on the heat time to like 45 minutes. I'm thinking of adding a tankless water heater at the barn, thought you might want to do the same some day. Time is money after all.
I now use a sous vide water heater to get the water up to 110 overnight, then it takes about 45 minutes or so to get the rest of the way up to 145. If I had two of them instead of one, I could probably get it all the way up to 145
@@hdezoo Never thought of a sous vide. I'll have to look into it. Just curious how do you guys clean/scrape the inside of the carcass (lungs and whatever is still in there after gutting)? I always found that to be the most time consuming part of the job.
My they make “lung pulled” tools just for that purpose, but I found them hard to find, and pretty pricy. Tomato corners are similar and much cheaper. Or find someone with tiny hands, haha.
Haven, subbed, this was a wealth of knowledge.
Awesome, thanks for watching. Glad I could help.
Great video. This is very helpful. One topic you haven’t covered is the taste of these birds. Is it worth the time and cost? What have your customers said and did they create more customers for you hosting a dinner party?
People say that they taste better, and taste more “chickeny” than store bought chicken. Word of mouth is huge, and customers are people who either seek us out because of the way we raise them, or current customers tell friends how much better it is.
Great video! Thank you!
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for sharing this information really appreciate the candour
You’re welcome! Thanks for watching
Great video, thanks!
Thanks for watching!
Great job!!
Thank you!
Very informative thank you
This is awesome! Thank you
I’m glad it helped!
Great video, job well done.
Thank you!
Instead of buying ice if you have a deep freezer get some buckets from the dollar store fill them with water freeze them the night before and you can save on ice for your processing. Dump the block or blocks in the water and there you go.
I'm looking for land right now to start a farm on. It's very, very nice to see what an example of profit vs expense breakdowns look like.
I’m glad I could help!
Fantastic video! Thank you for all the priceless info! Have been looking into this & would love to do it-just not sure my area would support anybody spending $24/chicken.
When people tell me our chicken is expensive, I’ve recently been mentioning that it’s cheaper than conventional ground beef. Pastured poultry, pound for pound, is often cheaper than conventional beef.
This is fantastic info.
Thanks for watching, glad I could help.
Great video!
Thank you for this brother
You’re welcome!
As far as aprons go I'm pretty sure you can find a leather worker around your area and they can make leather aprons for you or you can try to find blacksmithing aprons they won't cut them
Very interesting. Thank you!
Thanks for watching!
Great video!
Tell parker i said hi! 👋
Thank you for the information son of Dunkey and Mr Beast. Looking to get some chickens started this summer or the next depending on how much free time we have to spare!
Good on ya.
Very helpful, thank you
I actually lol'd at "carrying water is stupid".
Awesome video! New sub
Thanks for watching!
Great great video, thank you
You’re welcome! Thanks for watching.
Nice video. Thank you! 👍
You’re welcome! Thanks for watching!
Thanks for the quality info Farmer MrBeast.
Anytime
well done. Informative . thanks
Thank you! I hope it helped.
Hello from southern Ontario Canada
great video! wondering after you bag the chicken do you freeze it? how long in the ice bath? and do customer come to your door to pickup or do you deliver?
thanks
Any chickens we do not sell the day we process, we freeze. We use dry ice to help freeze them fast if we are filling a whole deep freeze with unfrozen chickens. the chickens spend a few hours in cold well water that is exchanged untill the water runs clear, then they are put into very icy water for about an hour or two before they are packaged. some customers come on processing day, but most come later, or we go to them. We are dog tired on processing days, and the driveway by our processing area gets extremely muddy if it rains, so it's not customer friendly depending on the weather. Ideally, we would have everyone come the day we process and take the chickens home to freeze in their freezer, but we're not there yet.
Great topic.
Thanks for watching!! This video was a long time in the making.
great video, i was wondering what amount of land do you need for just one tractor? i have an acre and close to half could be used for grazing probably. im also wondering if you get eggs and if you get more than one group of birds in a year? thanks!
One tractor, if moved daily for 5 weeks, covers about 1/10th of an acre. We do have layers in a separate shelter that is not covered in this video. The chickens in this video are a meat breed, and they are butchered at 8 weeks old, before they reach egg-laying age. We could do 4 batches through these shelters per year if we could sell the chicken. I hope that answers your question alright, if not, ask away.
Very nice! I am in southeast Michigan. We run about 100 birds a year, but we don't butcher. How do you dispose of the waste? Do you do it Salatin style?
It goes into the farms massive compost piles. I made a video on those here. th-cam.com/video/Am5CBcUE-Es/w-d-xo.html
Thank you for this video
My pleasure!
Good job!
Thank you!
Did you guys only sell to friends and family the first year or did you make a website and ship? Thanks. Great video
Just friends and family. For us, it was all we could do to work our full-time jobs, grow and process broilers all summer, and sell the
To friends and family. A website, and the additional learning curve of shipping frozen product would have been too much too fast I think.
Yeah, that makes sense. One more question, where did you get the large container for the feed? Did you guys already have that on your farm or did you have to buy it?
Good video! Any advice on marketing? Where and how did you sell . Kept on ice or did you have to freeze?
We did it like the crack dealers. We gave away 50-70 or so chickens for free to people we figured would appreciate good food, and would be willing to pay for it. We called them back later and asked if they wanted to buy some more. The food police don’t like it when you sell frozen birds, se we sell live birds and process them for free.
Thank you friend, greetings from Russia, from Ryan farm, we have pasture laying hens. We will grow broiler chickens on Salatin !
Ive heard muscovy ducks are good for protecting a flock. Theyre giant woodland ducks that kind of look like turkeys, except much more docile with a shy quite attitude unless they detect danger.
Don’t think this is correct at all. We have plenty of Muscovy ducks. We find our geese and particularly our Guinea fowl are the best protectors.
Not really. Hens are 4-6#, drakes 8-12# on average. They will fly away from the predator unless its a female protecting their nest - they are super broody breed and eggs take 34-36 days to hatch. Geese are a better get for a guard.
Great video! Is your math off for the processing expenses?
We process them ourselves, so I didn’t include labor. Myself and three of our sibling process them, as we are all involved in the business. We can butcher and package 150 in about 8 hours. If you paid three people to help you, and paid them $15 an hour, labor costs for processing would be about $2,100 for 900 broilers.
Thank you so much for the work in this video. We are considering raising some broilers Joel Salatin style this year. For me the hard part is finding customers to buy your chickens. No one ever covers that. Any idiot can do labor the sales is the hard part.
So true. Selling is more than half the work.
Joel is fairly specific but I do think Richard Perkins at ridgedale permaculture in Sweden does the best job on TH-cam he also has a book and honorable mention goes to John suskovich
We've been going 7 months and are back-tracking, having just sold half our livestock. Biggest hurdle is INFRASTRUCTURE!!! Fencing, elec solar fencing, shelters, WATERRRRRRRRRRR, mobile coops, goose house, milking parlor, sheep barn, duck area ... the list goes on and on. We have resorted to rotating cows between two fields that cut the property in half, due to the elec fencing and movable WATERRRRRRRR being too complicated and expensive. So disheartening that we're not doing it the way that regenerates the land AND saves us heaps of $ in bought feed. :-(
That sounds like a lot of things to be doing just starting out. There’s no shame in scaling back and rebuilding slowly. With that much going on, it is east to get burned out.
Don't give it up just step back re-prioritize and get back to it
Rotating between 2 fields is something my grandfather has always done because a road runs between them obviously not great but that can go on for a long time without horrible damage
Set up a water lane so they always go to the same spot
@HavenDeZeeuw
Great content!!!
How long has it taken to sell the remaining 700 chickens? And what about freezer storage, what did you use and how much did it cost, it wasn't mentioned. Thanks
Great content, but I think you may be missing a few line items in expenses. Would you not add in the cost for land (lease/ mortgage, taxes), water if metered electricity for well pumps and freezers? Labor cost, your time is worth something. It's one thing to put it in your own freezer, but to sell it you have time in marketing, customer interaction, delivery cost (gas, vehicle, insurance). Income taxes
You would be surprised at what you can get for free if you have a good relationship with someone who has some marginal land.
You are correct in that there are some expenses I did not include in this video. The first year, we didn’t hardly make any money, so we didn’t pay any taxes really.
This is great
Thank you!
I noticed that in your capital equipment costs you didn’t include a stainless steel processing table or station or something like that. Where did you process your broilers?
We borrowed fold up tables from my parents the first year. We actually just scored a 16 foot counter/three sink combo with the faucets as well, no joke. You would be amazed how much equipment you can find for free or for very cheap if you put your mind to it. I think we paid 300 for a stainless steel table with a deep sink in our second year, which was a nice upgrade, but not a necessity in our first year.
Amazing video!! I do thank you for that... Are you certified to sell? what is the Gov requirement/ regulation for a chicken coop? any idea?
There is no regulation for this type of chicken shelter, and if there were, I wouldn’t really care. We are not required by law to have a certification to sell poultry either.
Although cost will vary based on your climate, cost of materials in your area and where on your property you are basing this operation.
100%
dude thank you !!
Happy to help!
Fantastic content! How many acres did you have run the chickens on? I am looking at doing this and have about 2.5 acres of pasture.
It’s about 1/10th of an acre per tracter, if it’s 10x12 and you move it once a day for five weeks.
@@hdezoo One more question: Can you make multiple passes per season with that tractor? In other words, can I run say 10 tractors across an acre 4 times in a season or is that going to wreck my pasture?
I don't know for sure. I have heard people who have done that, and had bad results, but I have never tried it. I have run broilers on an area, then run layers a few months after them and the grass liked it, but I'm not sure when it becomes too much.
Muy bien. Claro.
Sabes si los dos libros existen en español?
Espero realisar este proyecto de pollos de engordo o gallinas por huevos en Republica Doninicana.
Marc
Great video 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 ❗❗❗ PLEASE, I HAVE QUESTION ❗❗❗ How long it takes to grow a full chicken ? How many cycles can you run per year ? What is the temperature needs to bye outside ? Thank you!!
We could do three or four cycles in a year if we really pushed it. We process them when they are about 8 weeks old and they weigh over 6lbs after they are processed. They are in the brooder for three weeks or so, then they spend about 5 weeks out at pasture in the shelters. Once they are three weeks old, they can handle temperatures as low as 30 degrees as long as they are kept dry and out of the wind. We have had freezing temperatures at night for a full week, the first full week the chickens were on pasture, and they did just fine. They can handle temperatures up to 100 or so in the shelters we have. We had several weeks where the highs were 90-100 and they did fine.
@@hdezoo Thank you ! Im from Calgary , Alberta Canada lol, gets cold out here ! Lots of land, but nothing grow due the weather .
Love this vidio
very good breakdown, how did you sell them , same base as selling your milk ?
No, we sell our chicken to friends and neighbors. Milk from the farm is sold wholesale to a large processor through a co-op.
Great video. My family is raising birds to sell for the first time this year as well. I gotta ask- how did you market your product to be able to sell 700 birds your first year in business?
We gave away 50-75 for free to people who appreciate good food, and have the money to pay for it, then called them back after they had a chance to try it to see if they wanted more. It was a lot of work. Marketing is half the work. Literally half. If you spend one hour a day doing chores, it’s a good idea to spend at least that much time finding customers. We didn’t do that, and it made processing days very stressful.
@@hdezoo have the money to afford it
There’s always a catch lol
I’m not sure what you mean.
@@hdezoo affording actual food is sadly out of most families’ reach
How were you all able to sell the birds you packed yourself? I was under the impression poultry had to be packed in a USDA packing plant for sales. Thanks for the great video
It’s legal to sell chickens before you process them, so you can buy a chicken from me on a Monday, then I can process that same chicken a minute later, package it, and hand it to you. If the food is purchased from a PMA (private membership association), that makes it so the federal and state governments no longer have jurisdiction over that transaction. It’s some simple paperwork, and then any member can purchase anything (medical services, produce, processed foods like jams, casseroles, or pre-marinated chicks, and animal proteins) without any government oversight. There are other ways as well, such as CSA’s (community supported agriculture) where a customer does not buy produce directly but instead buys a share of a farms production before the season begins. There are many other ways as well.
I know this is an older video but hopefully you'll see this. How do you dispose of the carcasses, im eanting to try starting a business but this is something ive been wondering for awhile
Did you have to have an FDA inspection before selling? Everything I read seems to point to that requirement. If so, how difficult was that process? Any tips? I’m also guessing you sold them under an LLC or similar structure? Can you go into detail about the business side of things? What did you find was the best marketing tool for your area: Facebook, flyers, newspaper? Thanks for your time.
We have no relationship with the FDA currently. In Michigan, it is legal to sell live poultry, and process for free. We do that. We do have an LLC that we operate under. That part is pretty simple. We went to our tax guy and he made us an LLC, and we opened a business checking account to keep the money separate from our personal. It cost just over $1,000 to make an LLC, but we didn’t form one until our second year in business. Our marketing was based off the drug dealers. We found people who we thought would appreciate and could afford high quality food, and gave them one for free to try. We would call back a month or so later and asked if they were interested in purchasing some. We gave away 50-70 or so chickens that way. That works to start out, but we are finding that we might have to get more targeted with our marketing. I’m thinking health food stores, gyms, and maybe connecting with health coaches to sell our product. Maybe even offer a health and wellness coach a percentage of every pound of chicken they sell to their customers.
I do not have all the answers, and I can’t claim that my answers are right or that they will work for you, but that is what we have done, and are thinking about doing. There are people who are more qualified than I to give a good answer. Just a few acres farm is a good TH-cam channel to check out, as well as Joel Salatin’s videos and clips on direct marketing.
Most states allow for a certain amount of poultry to be processed and sold to the public by the farmer. Above that number, birds need to be processed under ‘inspection’ either annually or a bird by bird inspection. Check with your state ag department and Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund for state specific laws. 🙂
In WV you can have up to 3000 meat chickens and butcher at once with no regulations. You can do 10k a year before reporting. You still need to keep records if something should happen. It changed 2020 to those numbers before that it was less.
Hello, my friend. Thank you so much. Where/how do you sell the meat?
Great video! Where do you source your feed?
Country feed supply in Mio Michigan.
Do you account for the price of the land, and the costs associated with owning it, taxes etc..? What are the opportunity costs for it's use?
We made an agreement with the land owner to use that area for free and improve it.
Meat is great and I do it for myself. Usually about 10-11 birds 4 times a year. I just processed the second half (5) or my first 2024 batch last weekend and already ordered batch 2 for months end, since I wanted to get a few New Hampshire roos for breeding. However, if I was going to do something with the chickens for money, it would be eggs. It is so much less work and so much more money for the time investment. 300 birds, est 112 dozen per week @ $6 each is $672 per week. $26,800 per year for a *40 week year only* to account for winter slow down and other issues. Divide that by 2 for the first year infrastructure (which is way over estimated if you don't buy a tractor or 4 wheeler to move the mobile coop every few days) and initial pullet cost: You are looking at a first year profit of 13.4K. Second year is ~23K. This is also for 300 laying hens, so the same number of birds. Only goes up from here by adding birds. Even doubling this to 600 hens, this could be managed by ONE person spending about 4 hours a day tending, collecting. packaging and selling from a self-service stand.
All those up front costs are amortized over their useful life. You need to account for them & take depreciation and add that to your budget. Even if it's a side gig, start an LLC & expense EVERYTHING, even your TH-cam stuff. You will improve your bottom line a lot when you do.
We are depreciating them over time, but we paid for them up front, so I wanted to address it from the standpoint of real-time profitability. The tax part of this enterprise could be an hour long video, and I don’t totally understand it all yet, so I tried to steer clear of it. Also, if someone was to get into homesteading for personal use, and didn’t want to start up a whole business, the depreciation doesn’t matter as much. We do have an LLC and everything set up as well. Although I should set one up for TH-cam.