The cost price of a chicken

The flock is sold, the money is in your hand. Did it make a profit? Without a precise figure, it's impossible to say.

This figure is the cost price of a chicken. What each chicken has cost you, from arrival to sale.

Without it, it's impossible to know if a selling price is good. I will show you the five-step method, using your figures.

First step, count the chickens sold. Not the chicks placed. The sold ones.

A dead chicken in the third week has already eaten. This feed is paid for, and this chicken will never be sold.

Take one thousand chicks placed, and fifty dead. The flock has eaten seventy bags of fifty kilos.

By the thousand placed, three and a half kilos per chicken. By the nine hundred and fifty sold, nearly three point seven.

These two hundred grams of difference are the dead that the sold ones pay for in their place.

Second step, add up all the expenses of the flock. All of them, even those we forget.

The chicks and the feed, of course. The feed alone represents sixty to seventy percent of the cost.

But also heating, litter, cleaning, water, electricity, the veterinarian, wear and tear on the building.

And your own work too. Even if you don't pay yourself, your days have a value.

Third step, divide this total by the chickens sold. You have your cost price per chicken.

I cannot do this calculation for you. Your prices are not those of your neighbour, nor mine.

And if you sell by the kilo, divide also by the kilos sold. You will have the cost price per live kilo.

Fourth step, compare to the selling price. The difference is your margin per chicken. The only figure that indicates if the flock has made a profit.

Fifth step, the most useful. Recalculate by changing only one figure at a time.

The dead, the price of the bag, the kilos of feed per chicken, the selling price, the waiting days. You will see which one really weighs.

When I do this calculation with this year's prices, one result stands out.

One kilo less of feed per chicken weighs more than the savings made by producing its feed. For you, it may be another figure.

And for you, have you calculated the cost price of the last flock, or do you estimate it by eye?

Send us your placed, sold and bags eaten to 05 44 83 27 79, our WhatsApp for information. The free flock record book is for that.

The chicks of the next flock, it's at 07 07 72 78 67. Subscribe. Then, the extra kilo of feed.

Since two thousand six, our chicks have been born in Agnibilékrou. With Nextekci, every customer is a satisfied poultry farmer.