At the moment, raising meat chickens in batches of 150 works well for our little farmstead (though we may increase batch sizes soon), and we expect to have these batches available roughly every 10 weeks, starting in mid-April of 2026. Here’s the pricing breakdown for us to raise those chickens and provide wholesome meat for ourselves and our community. We want customers to know what they’re paying for.
We begin with 150 chicks from Freedom Ranger Hatchery, some 40 miles from our home. That cost is basically $2 per chick from the hatchery.
Then we’ll add $1 per chick to account for our time and fuel (and wear and tear) driving to and from the hatchery, which otherwise charges $100 for delivery through the postal service, which is closer to our house but still takes time and gas, etc., to get to and from.
Then the big cost is feed. It takes well over a ton of feed to get 150 meat chicks to slaughter size, and the optimal time to slaughter them is at 10-11 weeks of age (accounting for feed conversion rates, weight of resulting carcass, etc.). We’ve found a great local supplier of non-GMO grain raised without artificial chemicals (though not certified organic, it seems it could be) who uses crop rotation and cover crops to keep the land fertile. His farm is less than 20 miles from our farmstead. As a rough estimate, it should cost us about $7 per chicken to feed this local, non-GMO grain, grown without the use of artificial chemicals, to feed each batch of 150 chickens.
Then there’s the cost of partnering with a local mobile poultry processor (inspected by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture) who should be able to take care of the basic slaughter and proper preparation of a whole chicken for about $4/bird–and who could also, for additional fees customers could choose to add to their total cost, break down whole chickens into individual cuts (legs, thighs, etc.). Working with this processor, at least for now, seems to be the best way to ensure that our customers receive the best product without our having to take care of so much equipment–but we’ll be moving toward doing our own processing and would also like to invite those interested in such to consider helping us process their own chickens to save the cost of processing and appreciate in a direct way the value of local, humanely-raised meat.
So in terms of clear-cut costs, each meat chicken costs us about $10 to raise from hatch to slaughter and $4 to have processed–not counting any losses to predators, etc.
The less-clear costs come from the electricity we use to power the heat lamps that keep the chicks warm until they grow their feathers and to pump water from our well to keep them hydrated as well as the equipment and materials to house them and care for them (the big metal troughs we use as brooders, the wood shavings to keep the brooders clean, the waterers and feeders, the chicken wire we use to contain the small chicks in the barn when it’s cold outside and we don’t want them to wander into a pig pen where they might become an unintended lunch, the electric fencing that allows us to keep the growing chickens outside on pasture when the weather is warm, coolers, freezers, etc.). Those costs are less clear because they’re ongoing and variable: we can use many of these resources repeatedly, but they may wear out or break at any time and need to be replaced.
Therefore, all things considered, it’s safe to say it costs us roughly $15 to turn a day-old chick into 4-5 pounds of meat in the crockpot.
Of course, most of the cost of these chickens to us personally comes in the form of the time we must spend to care for them, checking their feeders and waterers multiple times a day, moving them into various brooders and coops to keep them safe and warm, monitoring their health and wellbeing, etc., etc.
At the moment, then, we’re comfortable charging $5.50/lb for these chickens (averaging about $25 per 4-5lb chicken)–and we’re offering first-time customers an introductory price of $5/lb (averaging about $22.50/chicken). We’ll also extend the $5/lb pricing to anyone who agrees in advance to order a set number of chickens from each batch we raise (currently on roughly 10-week intervals). And for the adventurous types we may be able to offer the opportunity for you to help us process your own birds and thereby save money on processing costs.
Other local farms are charging as much as $6/lb for whole chickens that seem to be raised like we raise ours. Income from the sale of our chickens first and foremost provides our own family with a share of each batch of chickens to grace our own table. Then it contributes to the feed costs and other expenses associated with raising our other animals: pigs, sheep, cows, ducks, laying hens, quail, three dogs, and a cat.
Email us to reserve chickens from our next batch (or to express interest in eggs, pork, lamb, wool, raw milk, live animal sales, etc.)
