Pastured Poultry Profits

Pastured poultry produces a better chicken.  Small Flockers can use these methods to provide safe, nutritious, affordable, and locally grown meat and eggs for their family and community.

Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms and others have shown us the way to the future.  I have read Joel's book Pastured Poultry Profit$, listened to Joel speak at the recent seminar sponsored by Practical Farmers of Ontario, and spoke to him personally afterwards.  I believe in what he is doing.  I plan to implement Joel's system this Spring, and recommend  other Small Flockers to come join me.  Rather than keeping his success as a secret, Joel openly shares to all.


I will also share, for all members of SFPFC.

Figure 1:   PPPP (Pastured Poultry Profit Project) Base Case
based on severe restrictions currently imposed upon Small Flockers

Figure 1 above shows an Excel spreadsheet on the PPPP (Pastured Poultry Profit Project).  Right click on the image, choose "View Image", then click to magnify to full size.  Alternatively, you can download a pdf version here.

The yellow coloured cells are the ones that contain assumptions or user input that may need to be changed for different Small Flockers or situations.

As can be seen in these numbers, Small Flockers have significant price disadvantages compared to the chicken factories operated under CFO's Supply Management monopoly.

For example, I bought chicken feed yesterday at $18.00 per 25 kg. bag, or $720.00 per tonne.  CFO says the market price for chicken factories to buy feed is just $379.075 per tonne, a 47% discount compared to Small Flockers.  Same goes for chick prices, abattoir processing, and many other important costs, both fixed and variable.  Add to that the bureaucracy and restrictions imposed only on Small Flockers by CFO (eg. Small Flockers are not permitted to do marketing or advertising, etc.), and you have a nightmare.

Fortunately, we have a Dream Catcher that will ensnare those evil spirits and nightmares, providing Small Flockers peaceful sleep and purposeful lives.  That solution is PPPP (Pastured Poultry Profits Project).

This pro forma cost calculation showing that Small Flockers can still compete because we are local, our neighbours like us, and we produce better tasting, more nutritious birds at a fair price.

Our analysis shows that Small Flockers can sell their birds at $8.04/kg ( $17.69 per pound).  For a 2 kg live chicken (1.37 kg. eviscerated), it would cost $11.01 retail, sold from the Small Flocker's farm gate.

The Dec. 2014 retail price of chicken in Ontario for whole, fresh chicken according to StatsCan is $7.43/kg. so Small Flockers are at a 48% premium price, even with all of the current disadvantages or oppressive restrictions by CFO.

For me and my family, we'd vote for the better, locally produced chicken at just a 48% premium.

Perhaps that's what CFO and the Chicken Mafia are worried about.

Note that the above financial analysis covers only the direct variable costs, assuming the necessary capital infrastructure already exists, is fully paid for and fully depreciated, and PPPP is only an expansion of an existing chicken business. That may not be true in all cases.  For a more comprehensive financial analysis without these simplifying assumptions, see here and here.

Tomorrow, we'll look at the potentially better PPPP Small Flocker price for chicken if we get some of the current restrictions and competitive disadvantages removed.

For now, I'm collecting names of Small Flockers who tentatively want to raise their hand as being interested in working co-operatively to make PPPP a reality.  No firm commitment is required at this time, just that you're interested in learning more.  Put a comments below, publicly declaring your interest, or send me a private message to cdn.small.flockers@gmail.com