Possible profit from unwanted chicks?

[whod]

From what I've been led to believe the brothers of commercial laying
hens are usually of no value to the companies and are sorted out and
discarded when they are a day or two old. They are either killed or left
to die...either way not being used or wanted. There are also some
old chicken houses around that could be made into decent places
to raise chickens, but they are out of date according to the standards
of the growing companies to the point that they're not worth bringing
up to compliance by the people who own them, so they sit there
doing basically nothing. I'm wondering if it could be profitable to get
the chicks for very little money or possibly free, and get cheap rent
for a chicken house that's doing nothing, and raise them up to sell for
pet food or something? If not that, maybe it would be possible to give
them access to a big yard and sell them for human consumption as
reduced cruelty free range chicken, or some such thing. Does
anyone think there could be hope for something like that?

Thanks!
David

[Derek Moody]

In article <5lhrn4d73b405nftc...@4ax.com>, <URL:mailto:whod@.>
wrote:

Very unlikely I'm afraid. The strains that are discarded are so specialised
as layers that they wouldn't be expected to do well as growers. Breeds that
can do so are already used as such.

The value of a day-old isn't a great deal more than that of the egg it came
out of so there's not enough margin to be made there to compensate. :-(

You may do better with the second part of your idea - a premium product
using a traditional or rare breed might, if combined with traditional
butchery and hanging to promote flavour, find a niche market. You'd need to
do some careful market research though and your feed costs are going to be
high compared to the large scale commercial growers. I'm sure Jill will be
along rsn with some practical points and ideas.

Cheerio,

--

>> de...@farm-direct.co.uk
>> http://www.farm-direct.co.uk/

[Christina Websell]

<whod@.> wrote in message news:5lhrn4d73b405nftc...@4ax.com...

Unfortunately the boys bred from layers cannot fatten up into anything that
is useful. Their destiny seems to be minced up at a day old while they are
still alive.
Yes. It does really happen. Or they are frozen at day old for food for
snakes.

Tweed

[Mitch Dickson]

<whod@.> wrote in message news:5lhrn4d73b405nftc...@4ax.com...

David, they are of the wrong breed to commercially raise as fryers. However
for you own consumption they would do fine.

Mitch