With a little planning, many cold-weather chicken breeds continue to strongly lay eggs all winter long. īut, that doesn’t mean they won’t still be profitable. Cold weather areas will require supplementing your flock’s feed as well as additional tools to help your flock stay healthy during sub-freezing months. If you live in an area that stays warm, or above freezing for most of the year, chickens will be even more profitable. They don’t do as well with high salt, fat, or sugary foods.Īs a general rule, most breeds are great at foraging and finding bugs and vegetation during warm months. They can eat kitchen scraps, compost, and vegetable waste that we usually throw away. You’ll want to keep a few males to keep the eggs fertilized if you are still growing your flock or to replace hens that slow or stop their egg production.Ĭhickens have relatively low feed costs. Most of the male chicks can be used for meat as young pullets and the female chicks can be used for eggs. If those eggs are fertilized, you can grow your flock of 6 hens to a flock of over 40 chickens within 8-9 months (or less).Īt that point, the eggs your hens produce will be significant. Some breeds lay more than 300 eggs on average a year. Most chicks will start laying eggs between 3-5 months. Your flock will significantly increase over the course of a year. If you purchase even a half dozen chickens and a rooster, you can hatch a significant number of those eggs. One important factor in making chickens the most profitable is to have access to a rooster. Likewise, if you use that same breed and the cocks grow twice as slow as a meat chicken breed, you will spend double the cost on feed for the amount of meat you produce. A lot of breeds are touted as great dual-purpose chickens.īut, if you have a dual chicken breed that lays half the eggs of another breed, you will make half the money. To make chickens the most profitable, you will want to choose chicken breeds that are either top egg layers or great meat chickens. It’s important for you to know how you want to make money on your chickens. Bill Gates recently hailed chickens as the best animal to raise people out of poverty in Africa.Ĭhickens provide both eggs and meat. Then, we’ll cover other factors of raising profitable farm animals.Ĭhickens are one of the lowest cost animals to raise, but they are very popular for many uses. Let’s dive into each animal and how you can make it more profitable. Feed drastically raises the cost of raising certain animals and will eat into your profits. This list didn’t include cattle, pigs, or horses because it is extremely difficult to make a profit on those animals when you only have a few acres and have to purchase feed. The top 10 most profitable animals for small farmers are: What’re the most profitable animals to raise on a small farm? The most profitable animals to raise on a small farm are animals that don’t take a lot of space, reproduce easily, and cost little in the feed. Check out this article on the most profitable livestock to raise if you have more land. Do you have a few acres or are you looking to purchase a small homestead? Raising farm animals for a profit with a few acres is a different endeavor than if you have hundreds of acres to raise large herds of animals.
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