AgTalk Home
AgTalk Home
Search Forums | Classifieds (50) | Skins | Language
You are logged in as a guest. ( logon | register )

Cattle Or Chickens
View previous thread :: View next thread
   Forums List -> Stock TalkMessage format
 
bob1968
Posted 11/28/2012 16:51 (#2721790 - in reply to #2721300)
Subject: RE: Cattle Or Chickens


I'm not a chicken farmer but am familiar with the industry. Here we have 4 integrators to choose from. I'd never consider poultry if you only had one integrator. Like AJ I'd always referred to the poultry industry as indentured servitude. Used to be after 15 years or so you have your equipment loan paid off and have a chance to make some money. Seems like now a days integrators are asking you to upgrade equipment for efficiency (theirs, not necessarily yours) even before your old equipment is paid off or anywheres close to being worn out. Poultry industry is tight with depressed chicken prices and high feed prices. Integrators are always looking to dump their bottom end growers and pickup someone elses top end growers. Average growers are treading water. All growers seem to be getting longer layout times between flocks. Usually flock guarantees are $/1000 with no guarantee how many 1000 birds you might be given to raise. We've got new environmental regulations that have jacked up the cost of building a new poultry farm and increased the annual operating costs. If you don't have environmental regulations its only a matter of time, they are coming. The only way I see to make money in poultry is to buy an existing farm cheap from someone who wants to get out or is being forced out of the industry so bad they'd sell at a loss, which is happening. Bottom line is it's a lot of money invested for minimal return and you're at someone elses mercy to make your payments. Only good thing is it provides an excellent source of fertilizer. I'm happy to buy my litter and would go back to commercial fertilizer before I considered building a chicken house(s). Have some cattle experience but not in it big enough to make or loose too much money. Only advice on cattle I could offer is cheap feed, either grow your own or have access to a reasonable by product.
Top of the page Bottom of the page


Jump to forum :
Search this forum
Printer friendly version
E-mail a link to this thread

(Delete cookies)