[Ben94]

is there any money to be made in rasing day olds to POL? or is it in rasing from eggs?

[Womble]

You didn't include a 'neither' option! 


The money appears to be in either raising vast numbers at low cost, OR raising smaller numbers at very high (i.e. show) quality. I'll be honest, I don't fancy trying to make a living at either!

[Castle Farm]

To get 30 pullets to POL you;d need to set on average 100 eggs.

[hughesy]

There's no straight answer. Are they sexed when you buy the day olds? No use raising male birds. What will your feed costs be? How many will die/not make the grade/get eaten? You can work out if it's worth it on paper but that doesn't mean it will be in the real world.

[Caroline1]

I know when I have done on a small scale, there is no profit in I have done it purely for the experience. I think like most things in this industry, unless you do it on a very large scale or specialise in something you can charge a lot for there is no money in it.

[Steph Hen]

Same as Caroline1 - I don't really make any money when I raise batches of chicks from eggs.
If they are my own birds eggs, I same the £40 outlay on buying eggs in, so that's a bit of margin. If I give them some grain, once they're up and growing and that maybe saves another £10 to add to kitty.
But for me to grow say 15 pullets from eggs for 4 months, £50 is nice, but not really "making money" if you know what I mean. I normally do about  2 or 3 batches a year. Not even started yet! And sell eggs to friends, so I'm quite happy that the hens pay for themselves, and probably keep the dog fed as well.

If I were to put on a batch every three weeks, it would start to mount up, but that would be a lot of heat lamps, feeders, pens, houses, hassle, etc,  as well as too much risk of a disease outbreak or even a predator killing the lot and costing me a lot of money.