But, being cooped up in the house like this has its advantages. Thinking about what to do with the farm over the next year, for example. I had some vague goals in an earlier post, but now it's time to start thinking seriously about how this farm is going to generate some income in 2023.
We have four viable methods of bringing in revenue here: Eggs, chickens, pork, and vegetables. Bunnies will be a fifth option if things go as hoped in the spring. We thought we were getting baby bunnies last month, but it didn't pan out that way. We'll let the bunnies do their thing properly in the spring, and see what kind of results we get.
So, here's a quick rundown of how to make money on a small hobby farm. First, the eggs. At current prices, eggs run around six dollars a dozen in the big chain stores like Walmart and Sobeys. We're currently selling ours for four, although five isn't out of the question considering the value we'll be offering. After all, our eggs come fresh from a farm, not an egg factory. At the current rate of laying, we are getting about a dozen eggs every couple of days. Factoring in that we eat some of the eggs ourselves, we're looking at getting about 150 dozen eggs a year, assuming we don't see an uptick in laying. Even at five dollars a dozen, that's only $750 for the year, which really isn't much at all. Either we do get more eggs from our chickens in the summer, or we get more laying chickens. Otherwise, we're not even breaking a thousand in the year, and it costs that much just to feed them.
Meat birds are another money-maker. Our meat birds last year were Cornish Cross, an excellent, quick-growth breed that comprises the vast majority of commercially-produced chicken. They grow really fast; eight to ten weeks from hatching to butchering. They eat a LOT of food in that time, but they are big birds. Our average from the twenty-four we had last year was 6.75 pounds. At four dollars a pound, that's a $27 bird. The chicks are affordable; we can easily buy fifty of them. Raising them free-range saves a bit on food, although they aren't much for eating grass and bugs. Still, at $27/bird, that's $1350 for fifty birds, and that's if we don't cut them up and sell them in pieces. And we can do that at least twice a year, depending on how well the weather holds out. We're going to learn to butcher them ourselves to save money, which increases the profit line.
Next, pork. Our pigs were a great success this year. They were healthy and huge, and brought in enough money to pay for all the expenses incurred in acquiring them last year and still have plenty of meat left over. Selling packages of various cuts brought in about $300 per package, and we sold five packages. That's $1500, or $750 per pig, and that doesn't include the bacon, which we are also going to sell at $10 for half a pound. We got forty pounds of bacon in total from the two pigs, so that's a lot of half-pounds. We're not selling them all, but even half gets us another $400. Our goal next year is to raise three pigs and sell most of the meat.
All together, the eggs, chickens and pork can be expected to bring in about $7500 for the year. That's not a lot, especially since a lot of it will be taken up in actually feeding these animals. But that brings us to part four, the veggies.
Veggies are a big market; people are always on the lookout for quality products. It's not something I can dive into in a short post like this, but I'll be doing some more investigating into how we can make the farm profitable, or at least producing some income. I hope to have more details in a later post.
So, farming is quite an experience, but making a living at it isn't going to be easy. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. And who knows? Things can always change.
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