Pastured Poultry Pricing Model
Do you actually know what it costs you to raise a chicken?
Most small farms don't. They price by copying the farm down the road, or by what "feels fair," and then wonder why a season of hard work left nothing behind. The difference between a poultry enterprise that pays you and one that quietly costs you money usually isn't the birds, the feed, or the market. It's the math.
The Pastured Poultry Pricing Model does that math for you, live, as you type.
What it does
Enter your real numbers: chick cost, feed price, bedding, bags, ice, propane, and anything else you spend. The tool instantly shows your true cost per pound and the minimum price you need to hit your profit target. Change any number and watch every result update on the spot.
It handles the details that trip people up:
It prices the birds you lose, not just the ones you sell. Every chick that doesn't make it took money with it. The model spreads those sunk costs across your sold birds automatically, so your price reflects reality.
It knows margin math. Cost times 1.3 is not a 30% margin. It's a 23% margin, and that mistake silently costs small farms real money every season. The tool gets it right and shows you margin and markup side by side.
It tracks your actual flock. Log losses week by week (or day by day) in the built-in Tracker, and the tool calculates your true mortality rate and how much feed your lost birds consumed before dying, then applies both to your pricing with one click. By your second batch, you're pricing on your own data instead of estimates.
What's inside the tool
- Flock & Costs: every expense in one place, with unlimited custom cost lines for labor, transport, market fees, or anything else
- Performance: live weight and dress-out inputs, plus a sensitivity table showing how your price shifts across your flock's real weight range
- Pricing: set your price by profit margin, markup, or manually, with a visual breakdown of where every dollar goes and a click-to-apply price reference list
- Parts: compare whole-bird revenue against selling by the cut, with editable cuts, yields, and prices
- Projections: annual revenue and profit, break-even analysis, and stress tests for feed price spikes and higher mortality
- Tracker: the week-by-week loss log that turns your real flock data into sharper pricing
Built-in presets for Cornish Cross, Freedom Rangers, Red Rangers, Naked Necks, and Heritage Turkeys get you started in minutes, and a Custom option works for any bird raised on purchased feed and sold by the pound.
You can save unlimited named scenarios (spring batch, fall batch, "what if feed jumps 20%") and print a clean one-page batch summary for your records, your lender, or your kitchen table conversation.
Included with your purchase
- The interactive pricing tool (HTML file). Open it in any web browser on your computer, tablet, or phone. No installation, no account, no internet required after download. Your numbers save automatically on your device and never leave it. Nothing is uploaded, tracked, or shared.
- The Companion Guide (12-page PDF). A plain-English walkthrough covering your first 15 minutes in the tool, the five numbers that drive your price, how the math works, pricing strategy for direct-to-consumer sales, a full batch timeline, the common mistakes that quietly eat profit, and a printable batch day checklist.
Who this is for
- First-time meat bird raisers who want to price their very first batch with confidence
- Established producers who suspect their "profit" is really unpaid labor
- Homesteaders deciding whether selling birds is worth scaling up
- Anyone raising broilers, rangers, turkeys, or other poultry on purchased feed and selling by the pound
The honest details
Your data is stored in your web browser on your own device. That's a genuine privacy feature, and it comes with one tradeoff: clearing your browser data erases saved numbers, and data doesn't transfer between devices on its own. The tool's Print Summary feature and saved scenarios make it easy to keep permanent records, and the guide covers this in the FAQ.
This is a planning and pricing tool, not financial or legal advice. Always verify your state and local requirements for on-farm poultry processing and sales.
From our farm to yours
We built this tool for our own flock at Getaway Homestead because we couldn't find anything that handled the real math of pastured poultry: the dead birds the survivors have to pay for, the difference between live and dressed weight, the margin arithmetic that most pricing advice gets backwards. We use it for every batch we raise. Now it can work for yours.
Know your costs. Price with confidence.
Product Details
- Format: Digital download (1 HTML file + 1 PDF)
- Delivery: Instant download after purchase
- Compatibility: Any modern web browser (Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox) on Windows, Mac, tablet, or phone
- Internet required: No. Works fully offline after download
- Account or subscription: None
- Updates: Version 2.1
- License: Single-farm use