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In all my poultry dealings, I've never sold a bird over $20 and never bought one over $10. I recently bought 18 fertilized eggs for $25 - quite a steal, really. I'll likely be buying a few more (Bantam Cochins) soon.
But what I won't be doing is spending $200 for a few gorgeous birds' eggs. Here's the roughly best case scenario when you have a dozen fertilized eggs sent to you:
- 2, packing & shipping issues
- 1, non-fertilized egg
- 2, incubation failure
- 1, mishandling (dropping, turning failure, etc)
So now, you're down to 6 successfully hatching, hopefully. Of that 6, odds are 3 are males. (That is, you might get 6 males or 6 females, equally tragic.) So you might have 3 lovely ladies to breed with and your choice of 3 roosters. You're going to get rid of 2 males, most likely, even though most breeders will tell you, you should keep 2 and swap them out. So now, you're down to 4 chickens (3 hens, 1 roo), each valued at $50. Chances are, someone isn't going to make it to the first year. In fact, you might lose more than 1. And the price keeps going up for the survivors.
Will you make money breeding these rare of the rare birds? Sure. But you've only a very short time frame to do so because before you know it, all those eggs and chicks you sold will be grown up and breeding, too. And your former customers will now be your competitors. So your ultra rare breed chickens are now fairly common. *shrug* Them's the realities.
But what I won't be doing is spending $200 for a few gorgeous birds' eggs. Here's the roughly best case scenario when you have a dozen fertilized eggs sent to you:
- 2, packing & shipping issues
- 1, non-fertilized egg
- 2, incubation failure
- 1, mishandling (dropping, turning failure, etc)
So now, you're down to 6 successfully hatching, hopefully. Of that 6, odds are 3 are males. (That is, you might get 6 males or 6 females, equally tragic.) So you might have 3 lovely ladies to breed with and your choice of 3 roosters. You're going to get rid of 2 males, most likely, even though most breeders will tell you, you should keep 2 and swap them out. So now, you're down to 4 chickens (3 hens, 1 roo), each valued at $50. Chances are, someone isn't going to make it to the first year. In fact, you might lose more than 1. And the price keeps going up for the survivors.
Will you make money breeding these rare of the rare birds? Sure. But you've only a very short time frame to do so because before you know it, all those eggs and chicks you sold will be grown up and breeding, too. And your former customers will now be your competitors. So your ultra rare breed chickens are now fairly common. *shrug* Them's the realities.
