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North East Texas | Like Cobb mentioned you're going to want to go with broilers.
Contract details will vary greatly depending on the integrator and area. The more integrators in one area the better the contracts will look as far as incentives and pay. Usually to get a new contract or a higher paying contract you'll need to do some upgrades or change out some equipment to meet new specs. A lot of people complain about this but you either buck up and get it done or get left behind.
Right now I've got one employee for every 120k square feet growing a 9lb avg chicken. If birds are big and mortality is up it's all I would really want them working. This spring we will be moving down to a 4.5 lb avg bird and it wouldn't be hard at all for one guy to work 200k square feet of housing and still have time at the end of the day for other tasks. There are efficiency's to be gained with more square footage under one roof of course. My houses now are 40x500 and new houses for Pilgrims are 50x600. I had the chance to build 8 new houses last fall but felt the pay wasn't adequate so I held off. Low and behold the upper management of the complex are trying to get all our farms an out-right pay raise right now lol
Pay back time will vary depending on contract but around here a farm will be payed off in 10-12 years. Litter income is not included. The biggest obstacle is usually folks who "need" a new truck every year and buy more land to farm using the money from the chicken farm. What ends up happening is the land doesn't pay for itself so the chicken farm gets spread thin, then they complain they don't make any money with chickens. I'm not kidding lol
I will say if you want 8 houses for example, try to split it into 2 farms of 4 houses and get twice the paydays per year. This will enable you to spread your land base for litter application, make it easier to get houses ready for birds during a short downtime, and helps to avoid adverse events (bad batch of chicks from hatchery, feed mill issues, severe hot/cold weather, ect) hitting you all at once.
I just smile when people bash the poultry business yet in my area it's absolutely been the most consistent money maker.
I say go for it and go ahead and build more than you think you should. You'll wish you had after a couple years. My dad first built 4 houses, then 2 more a year or so later, then wanted to add 2 more to make it an 8 house farm but the integrator didn't need anymore capacity by then. | |
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Poultry Barn Question
