Chicken prices

[MossRoad]

I prefer the dark meat, but when you buy wings, legs, thighs or quarters you're paying for a lot of bone and other waste. Some of it can be used for soups, but not a lot. When I see thigh quarters for $1.49/lb and boneless, skinless breasts for $1.99/lb, the choice is fairly easy.

Chicken quarters here are regularly priced at .69/lb at grocery store, .49/lb for 10lbs at butcher, .45/lb for 40lb at butcher.
Boneless chicken breasts are regularly priced at 1.99/lb at grocery store, $1.59/lb for 10lbs at butcher, $1.50/lb for 40lb at butcher.

 

[k0ua]

His 9-10 cents would be very good. But that only covers his compensation for housing and raising of the birds, it does not include the chick or feed cost. Feed is the biggest cost by far.

Yes, and of course his price per pound is affected by the amount of feed Tyson has to provide. The better the grower you are the more money you make as your efficiency come up. He says a lot of people go broke by not being very hands on with programing and maintaining the feed equipment and watching the flock all the time. Of course the business is all computerized, but there are still tricks to growing more pounds of chicken with high feed efficiencies, but it requires attention to detail all the time. Apparently there is a lot more to growing chickens that most people realize. A lot of things can go wrong, and go wrong in a hurry. The chickens can get too hot, they can get too cold, they can run out of feed or water and it all affects the bottom line real quick.

 

[fried1765]

Chicken quarters here are regularly priced at .69/lb at grocery store, .49/lb for 10lbs at butcher, .45/lb for 40lb at butcher.
Boneless chicken breasts are regularly priced at 1.99/lb at grocery store, $1.59/lb for 10lbs at butcher, $1.50/lb for 40lb at butcher.

Must be nice to have a butcher shop nearby.

 

[MossRoad]

Must be nice to have a butcher shop nearby.

We've got 3.

 

[tallyho8]

I don't actually raise my chickens for meat. I raise them for the eggs. I free range them all day and put them up at night. They run around eating bugs and grasses and about anything that doesn't move too fast although they can catch flies. Eggs by chickens that free range on the farm and eat things other than pure chicken feed have darker yolks and much, much more flavor than store eggs.

When our chickens were molting and we could not get enough eggs, my wife went to the grocery and bought expensive "organic", "cage free eggs" and "yard eggs". None of them came close to tasting nearly as good as our free range eggs. After the chickens get old enough they lay very little if at all and then are only good for chicken stew. Sadly, most of our chickens die of either dogs or old age because after my wife names them and raises them a few years she can't get rid of her "pets".

Beef is so expensive right now and chicken is so cheap that all the burger joints are now making and pushing chicken sandwiches.

 

[Norm W]

After they quit laying and have become a "Pet", when they die they become a plank chicken. By that time they are so tough that you nail the carcass to an oak plank. Roast them over a slow fire, basting with salted butter. After an hour you can scrape off the chicken and eat the plank.

 

[Jstpssng]

After they quit laying and have become a "Pet", when they die they become a plank chicken. By that time they are so tough that you nail the carcass to an oak plank. Roast them over a slow fire, basting with salted butter. After an hour you can scrape off the chicken and eat the plank.

Mine are like those of the poster's above you; they generally die before I have to worry about them. The oldest I've had one get is 5 YO. One day last fall she was acting doggy so I put her in the coop. An hour later I went back and she was laying dead and in pieces in the driveway... I suspect that a crow went in to steal eggs and found her instead.

 

[JethroB]

Chicken quarters here are regularly priced at .69/lb at grocery store, .49/lb for 10lbs at butcher, .45/lb for 40lb at butcher.
Boneless chicken breasts are regularly priced at 1.99/lb at grocery store, $1.59/lb for 10lbs at butcher, $1.50/lb for 40lb at butcher.

Those are really good prices at your butcher. He's not marking up his cost much. Wholesale prices of chicken are pretty low right now except for wings.

 

[jmc]

Those are really good prices at your butcher. He's not marking up his cost much. Wholesale prices of chicken are pretty low right now except for wings.

Dave Barry exposed the chicken wing business. According to him, you order a plate of buffalo style wings and you gnaw on them for awhile. Then they clear your table, run the bones thru the dishwasher, put some more sauce on them, and serve them to the next guest.

 

[oosik]

I just got another supply of skinless, boneless chicken breasts and chicken tenders at the local grocery store. Price is the same for either - $2.99/lb. Last time I bought a 40# box of split chicken breasts - $1.69/lb. I have to ask the butcher to hold a box for me to pick up.

 

[GeneV]

5 bucks at Costco for a juicy rotisserie chicken, meaty, perfectly seasoned, already prepared....delicious. Me and the wifey get 3 dinners from one of those things. We buy 2 of them, freeze one to eat later in the week.

I raise ducks for eggs.

 

[EddieWalker]

We have about a hundred egg laying chickens. We will let some of the broody girls sit on eggs until they hatch, and then pull the chicks, and there are some that hide out somewhere and surprise us with a half dozen to a dozen baby chicks all of a sudden. But when we hatch them naturally, we end up with half of them being roosters, which are the devil, and they have to die. Laying chickens are not very good for eating, so I just pull their breasts and use it for dog food. We have 3 crock pots going almost every day to make our own dog food.

We also buy birds from Ideal Poultry. We pay extra to get just hens. Usually we get from 20 to 30 at a time. Mostly we buy them to get more color in our eggs. We're selling close to 15 dozen eggs a week at $4 The main reason is for the flavor, but they always comment on the different colors and how much the enjoy that.



Sunday, my wife went to Aldi's to buy groceries and saw ten pounds of chicken quarters for $1.97 She grabbed 4 and then later went back and got 6 more. Now she is talking about heading back today and getting another ten bags.

Considering the amount of effort that goes into raising baby chicks, and the upfront cost of buying broilers, there really is no reason to do it yourself when you can buy them for so cheap. If they become harder to find, like so many other things, then we'll probably get into raising broilers. We are going to build another large coop for our layers and convert our smallest coop into an empty area that we can use when bringing new birds into the flock, or birds that get attacked by predators and need to be kept confined until they heal, and maybe for broilers if that needs to happen.

 

[MossRoad]

5 bucks at Costco for a juicy rotisserie chicken, meaty, perfectly seasoned, already prepared....delicious. Me and the wifey get 3 dinners from one of those things. We buy 2 of them, freeze one to eat later in the week.

I raise ducks for eggs.

When we buy those rotisserie chickens, I take my large knife and split them right down the back into two halves. We carve the breast off, the wing, and the thigh and leg. I usually eat the thigh and leg, my wife takes 3/4 of the breast, and I pull the meat off the wing and the carcass and make a chicken salad sandwich for lunch the next day. We freeze the other half for another day. So, yep, two meals and two sandwiches out of the one chicken for $5.

 

[Wakey]

I was having this discussion again yesterday, raising birds anyway. As for chicken prices, I eat beef. Chicken is chicken but the wing is the thing.

I have filled my freezer with $7.99 lb strips and $8.99 ribeyes. Ingles puts them on sale constantly, (pork also) not so much with chicken (wings).

I’ll spatchcock a whole chicken tonight on the grill, ever tried that? Basically you cut the backbone out and crush the chest plate of the bird so it lays flat. This way the dark meat cooks on par with the white meat. That’s the trick.


Crispy Spatchcock Chicken on the Big Green Egg - The BBQ Buddha

 

[Oaktree]

Sunday, my wife went to Aldi's to buy groceries and saw ten pounds of chicken quarters for $1.97 She grabbed 4 and then later went back and got 6 more. Now she is talking about heading back today and getting another ten bags.

Am I reading this correctly? Is it 10 lb $1.97 or is it $1.97/lb (I'm guessing the latter). If the former, was it some sort of loss leader (not familiar with the store)? There's no way you can even produce chicken for .20 /lb, let alone make a profit on it.

 

[EddieWalker]

It was less then $2 for 10 pounds. This is why she wants to go back and get more!!!

 

[MossRoad]

It was less then $2 for 10 pounds. This is why she wants to go back and get more!!!

That's cheaper than dog food.

 

[tallyho8]

It was less then $2 for 10 pounds. This is why she wants to go back and get more!!!

That's the same price I paid in the first post but my store had a limit of 4 bags. I wanted to buy a lot more to use for dog food.

 

[JethroB]

That's cheaper than dog food.

At that price everyone is losing money except the farmer that raises them on contract. Much cheaper than that and the poultry companies will sell LQ to be made into pet food. It's rare though.