Can anyone speak to how well they did financially after following Joel Salatin's chicken farm model?

I'm an aspiring permaculture homesteader, though I'm considering different livestock or poultry farming as a business. So, I was looking for feedback on anyone that tried Salatin's methods or perhaps suggest other types of livestock/animal husbandry that are more profitable/manageable. Real numbers helps frame the picture too. Thanks in advance!

I'm interested in this, too.
I have read a couple of his books, and watched some YouTube where people are trying modified versions of the chicken tractor style that he advocates. I can see the logic and how it would be a good system for someone with a decent sized piece of pasture, or only a handful of hens/meat birds.

So far, I haven't seen anything that makes we want to jump up and build a tractor. I will admit to being interested, and would probably reconsider or run a trial to see if it would work for me just with smaller numbers overall.

I hope that there are some Chicken Tractor people willing to share their experiences.

I have not done this. However, I've been looking at it. Here's a guy that does it, in a different chicken tractor design. In this video, he lists his expenses for a single batch of chickens. He includes feed, hired help in his expenses. I don't think the land and tractors themselves are included.



Paul Grieve started with 50 birds in 2012, not knowing anything about raising chickens. If I understood correctly, he did not take any loans. In the video, he says he started the business five years ago, this is his set up in 2020. He estimated making a $5 profit per bird. He also has a wholesale business too. I did not catch which setup he meant with the $5 figure.

The second guy in this video states that his start-up costs were $700.



Me? I'm not looking to get into a full-time job. But maybe a couple of cycles a year? I could do that.

Some things to think about...
What are your land constraints? I only have an acre, and much of it cannot be used for this. We think we are too slopped for it to work. One of the farmers I listened to leased some land in between it being grazed by somebody else's beasts.

How much can you reduce your spending? Often success is possible through lessening your money going out as well as increasing what is coming in.

I raise Freedom Rangers, not CRX, and I use a semi-free range method rather than tractors.  Not counting land, fencing, and such, my total costs for 100 at a time are about $2/lb.  I could maybe get than down a little, but not a lot without going to a massively larger scale.  If I were raising 300+ at a time I could get those costs per bird down quite a bit, but then I'd need more land too.

I can sell them to strangers for $5/lb.  So, gross profits would be about $15/bird (5lb average).  But I'm also not paying for hired help.  So $5/bird gross profit is probably about right for retail sales once hired help and a share of infrastructure costs are added in.

A Salatin or Suskovitch type of tractor based system is profitable, but the number of birds required to make 6 figures is huge.  At $5/bird that's 20k birds.  At least here in WA at that kind of scale you would have to get licensing no different from raising 1mil birds a year, IIRC.

And remember that making $100k raising chickens is about like making $60k working a medium or large corporation due to the value of benefits like health insurance, retirement, vacation time, paid holidays, them paying half of FICA taxes, etc.  You'd need to be making $140-160k on chickens to have the same material lifestyle of $100k from an employer.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:I have not done this. However, I've been looking at it. Here's a guy that does it, in a different chicken tractor design. In this video, he lists his expenses for a single batch of chickens. He includes feed, hired help in his expenses. I don't think the land and tractors themselves are included.

Paul Grieve started with 50 birds in 2012, not knowing anything about raising chickens. If I understood correctly, he did not take any loans. In the video, he says he started the business five years ago, this is his set up in 2020. He estimated making a $5 profit per bird. He also has a wholesale business too. I did not catch which setup he meant with the $5 figure.

The second guy in this video states that his start-up costs were $700.

Me? I'm not looking to get into a full-time job. But maybe a couple of cycles a year? I could do that.

Some things to think about...
What are your land constraints? I only have an acre, and much of it cannot be used for this. We think we are too slopped for it to work. One of the farmers I listened to leased some land in between it being grazed by somebody else's beasts.

How much can you reduce your spending? Often success is possible through lessening your money going out as well as increasing what is coming in.

Great videos, thanks for sharing them.

One thing to point out in the first video where he says he can make $200k per year on 20 acres raising chickens.  Bear in mind that this is assuming you have 20 useable acres.  Depending on the topography, geometric shape of the property, soil types, drainage, need for driveways/pathways, trees, home site, setbacks from wells, etc. you might need a lot more than 20 total acres to have 20 that are useful for raising chickens.  It also depends on selling parted out chickens.  That realizes more value (he gets as much or more for just chicken breasts as he'd get for the whole bird, plus the other parts he can sell) but also requires a lot more labor.  IIRC to qualify for USDA exempt you have to sell the chickens whole, they can't be cut up.  He mentioned the possibility of grazing chickens more than once, but look carefully at that.  If you overload the grass with chicken manure you'll kill it rather than fertilize it.  Joel Salatin, IIRC, says not to run a chicken tractor over the same patch of grass more than once a year if you stock them at similar densities as his tractors.  You will also need to look into licensing requirements for the type of sales you want to do, and understand the compliance requirements for USDA regulations, or what is required to qualify for USDA exempt.  The compliance costs for selling your chickens is in many cases the undoing of small-ish farmstead meat sales, so don't underestimate those costs (in terms of both $$ and your own time).  

Not trying to discourage anyone from making that leap, but if you don't think of these things chasing the dream can turn into a nightmare.  

I don't really ever intend to shift from backyard chickens for my own (and friends/family) consumption to anything larger.  The cost of buying or even leasing land for that is insane in the Puget Sound.  The 5 acre lot next door I could maybe buy at some point, and due to water rights issues preventing development it's only worth maybe $10-20k right now.  But if those water rights get sorted out it'll quickly become worth $100k+.  Even if I could buy it today for $10k I'd have to put a massive amount of work into making it suitable to pasture chickens on, and would likely need another $10k and a year or two to accomplish that.  And that ignores that I'm in a residential zoned area, not agricultural, so running a commercial chicken operation would get me in trouble somewhere.  Which means if I were to go commercial I'd have to either buy or lease agricultural land.  

In your area, do you have to get a special work-around for selling meat as opposed to selling live birds?
I know here, that's one of the factors the can be quite confusing. As I understand the current laws, I have to have special certifications - butchery, meat handling, maybe have authorized facilities that are inspected regularly - before I can sell meat. I can sell live birds, as long as I behave somewhat intelligently, and then you can either hire me to slaughter your bird, or take it to a butcher.

I know from past experience that butchery is the most expensive part of raising your own meat - and the number of small town butcheries is dropping as the more urban areas spread.

I agree that the upfront costs would be intimidating. Trying to mentally justify an internet order to expand my flock by tens of birds is sending me into nervous fits due to certain local economic realities, to do the same on a larger scale, as would be necessary to make the plan work would be the very definition of "Investing for the future".

Thank you for the linked videos. I look forward to watching them.