Edit: Apparently I need to explain. I’m a farmer. Not one farm - not one single farm - I know will sell you either chicks or full grown chickens as some part of their regular operations. Mainly because it’s a pain in the ass and not profitable unless you are highly specialized and only producing chicks, in which case you are probably contracting with someone like TSC, using the cheapest feed imaginable and likely not making much money.
Now I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions to this. There are probably hobby-ish farms around that will sell you a few chicks for random reasons. And you might get lucky and some farm has an excess for some reason, but generally any farm that’s producing eggs or meat birds needs to keep those chicks. I mean, I’m not kidding, it’s a real struggle to make any money at all even with eggs at $7-8 a dozen.
But you are not, typically, just going to go down to your “local farm” (remember those?) and buy chicks. Go ahead, if you don’t believe me call around.
Uhhhh what? It sure as fuck does, in many regions of the world, and HAS for centuries. It even works that way in the US, in a lot of places - unless you happen to be in a weirdly cutthroat-capitalist area somehow.
I’ve edited my original post to explain why I say this. It boils down to this: it doesn’t make financial sense to raise chickens for sale to random people. If there is one thing you can count on, it’s that farms simply can’t afford to do things that don’t make money.
But go ahead and try it. Call the 5 farms nearest you to ask if you can buy chickens or full grown hens (roosters don’t count!) and report back. If you are lucky there is some hobby farm that doesn’t care about making money… but that’s gonna be the exception.
Wtf are you talking about? We often rent out or sell our layers all the time. We contract with Miller’s for our broilers and fryers as well. I’d be happy to sell someone who calls a setup. All they have to do is build their coop as that’s out of my purview. I’m not a hobby farmer either as my contracts pay my mortgage and fund my retirement savings and the kid’s college fund.
Well good for you, you are either solely or primarily a chicken operation although I suspect by USDA definition you are in fact a hobby farmer - no offense here, just pointing out the economics of it matter. The original comment here asserted people could just go to any random farm, show up, and buy chick(en)s. I don’t know a single commercial operation that would do that. And the funny notions people get about ag in general are, well, mildly annoying.
It’s the scale of realized profit over time. And I said USDA but meant IRS. If you were filing a schedule F I’d have expected you’d have been very aware of this, corrected me and understood that it’s important to get that right lest the IRS label you a hobby farm, aka “not-for-profit-farm” (not the same as 501c*) which has huge implications for taxes. That you immediately got offended is telling - being a hobby farm doesn’t mean you aren’t a good farmer or large-scale one but it does mean you don’t do it as your sole source of income or even necessarily for a profit, which is foundational to my claim.
My claim - and it’s only one simple claim - is not unfounded and can be easily verified: anybody here can call up local farms. I’d bet not 1 in 10 commercial farm (ie not a hobby farm) anywhere in the US would want to sell you chickens, and that’s being generous. That you are literally a small scale chicken farm that you run for extra income, if you are paying attention, aligns with my point. Edit: I should point out here that your sample size is 1. Mine is maybe 15 local to me where we’ve specifically complained about this to each other and another dozen or so around the country who’s sentiment about this I’m familiar with.
Alas, I wasn’t aware that I needed “credentials” to make this simple and again easily verified statement, but I have 20 years experience as a commercial farmer selling organic specialty crops retail and wholesale with farming being my sole source of income during most of that period. Production > 50-100k lbs annually. And yes, profitable… enough that I retired this year to save that last little scrap of my health I have left.
In truth this is a pretty stupid ‘discussion’. The only reason I even responded is because I’m a bit sick of the overly romanticized pastoral paradise view of farming that views farmers as country bumpkins and not a business. People have no conception that farming is fucking hard and we’re not there for your amusement. I got this type of call periodically - “hey will you sell me just one little pet goat/cow/chicken/rabbit?” or worse “can I come pet your goats/cows/chickens/rabbits?”. Even talking to these people costs me time I don’t have. It’s not an income stream it’s a pain in the ass.
I tend to hope they were meaning getting accidentally fertilized chicks, which happens. I bet they could get a free cat or two while they’re there.
I assume you mean fertilized eggs or… just chicks? I suppose some might give them away. I don’t know why you would though. For anyone I know, myself included, chicks mean income. You are replacing expired layers. Or you feed them to the cats.
You could try a local farmer
LOL. Doesn’t especially work that way city boy.
Edit: Apparently I need to explain. I’m a farmer. Not one farm - not one single farm - I know will sell you either chicks or full grown chickens as some part of their regular operations. Mainly because it’s a pain in the ass and not profitable unless you are highly specialized and only producing chicks, in which case you are probably contracting with someone like TSC, using the cheapest feed imaginable and likely not making much money.
Now I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions to this. There are probably hobby-ish farms around that will sell you a few chicks for random reasons. And you might get lucky and some farm has an excess for some reason, but generally any farm that’s producing eggs or meat birds needs to keep those chicks. I mean, I’m not kidding, it’s a real struggle to make any money at all even with eggs at $7-8 a dozen.
But you are not, typically, just going to go down to your “local farm” (remember those?) and buy chicks. Go ahead, if you don’t believe me call around.
Uhhhh what? It sure as fuck does, in many regions of the world, and HAS for centuries. It even works that way in the US, in a lot of places - unless you happen to be in a weirdly cutthroat-capitalist area somehow.
I’ve edited my original post to explain why I say this. It boils down to this: it doesn’t make financial sense to raise chickens for sale to random people. If there is one thing you can count on, it’s that farms simply can’t afford to do things that don’t make money.
But go ahead and try it. Call the 5 farms nearest you to ask if you can buy chickens or full grown hens (roosters don’t count!) and report back. If you are lucky there is some hobby farm that doesn’t care about making money… but that’s gonna be the exception.
Wtf are you talking about? We often rent out or sell our layers all the time. We contract with Miller’s for our broilers and fryers as well. I’d be happy to sell someone who calls a setup. All they have to do is build their coop as that’s out of my purview. I’m not a hobby farmer either as my contracts pay my mortgage and fund my retirement savings and the kid’s college fund.
Well good for you, you are either solely or primarily a chicken operation although I suspect by USDA definition you are in fact a hobby farmer - no offense here, just pointing out the economics of it matter. The original comment here asserted people could just go to any random farm, show up, and buy chick(en)s. I don’t know a single commercial operation that would do that. And the funny notions people get about ag in general are, well, mildly annoying.
I don’t think 20k birds count for hobby farming. What credentials do you have to support your frankly wildly unfounded claims?
It’s the scale of realized profit over time. And I said USDA but meant IRS. If you were filing a schedule F I’d have expected you’d have been very aware of this, corrected me and understood that it’s important to get that right lest the IRS label you a hobby farm, aka “not-for-profit-farm” (not the same as 501c*) which has huge implications for taxes. That you immediately got offended is telling - being a hobby farm doesn’t mean you aren’t a good farmer or large-scale one but it does mean you don’t do it as your sole source of income or even necessarily for a profit, which is foundational to my claim.
My claim - and it’s only one simple claim - is not unfounded and can be easily verified: anybody here can call up local farms. I’d bet not 1 in 10 commercial farm (ie not a hobby farm) anywhere in the US would want to sell you chickens, and that’s being generous. That you are literally a small scale chicken farm that you run for extra income, if you are paying attention, aligns with my point. Edit: I should point out here that your sample size is 1. Mine is maybe 15 local to me where we’ve specifically complained about this to each other and another dozen or so around the country who’s sentiment about this I’m familiar with.
Alas, I wasn’t aware that I needed “credentials” to make this simple and again easily verified statement, but I have 20 years experience as a commercial farmer selling organic specialty crops retail and wholesale with farming being my sole source of income during most of that period. Production > 50-100k lbs annually. And yes, profitable… enough that I retired this year to save that last little scrap of my health I have left.
In truth this is a pretty stupid ‘discussion’. The only reason I even responded is because I’m a bit sick of the overly romanticized pastoral paradise view of farming that views farmers as country bumpkins and not a business. People have no conception that farming is fucking hard and we’re not there for your amusement. I got this type of call periodically - “hey will you sell me just one little pet goat/cow/chicken/rabbit?” or worse “can I come pet your goats/cows/chickens/rabbits?”. Even talking to these people costs me time I don’t have. It’s not an income stream it’s a pain in the ass.
So you don’t have any experience raising livestock or farming produce then. Noted.
I tend to hope they were meaning getting accidentally fertilized chicks, which happens. I bet they could get a free cat or two while they’re there.
I assume you mean fertilized eggs or… just chicks? I suppose some might give them away. I don’t know why you would though. For anyone I know, myself included, chicks mean income. You are replacing expired layers. Or you feed them to the cats.