What to do when Animals are Slow to Sell

In this blog I will use our two main farm animals -chickens and goats- to explain a few things you can do if animals are not selling as fast as you anticipated.

Chickens

We bought 150 Whitening True Blue chicks in March, it is now July, and we have about 40 left to sell. We have several possible options to still make money on these chickens.

Eggs

Since the pullets are only weeks away from laying, we could keep them and sell their eggs, however this would mean building additional housing as well as continuing to move many chicken tractors every day when we had planned on only moving our small flock of egg layers and selling all the pullets by the time they were 6 weeks old.

Meat

This wouldn't be an option for our breed since they are not a dual-purpose breed, are very small and have already consumed enormous amounts of feed (for their body weight egg laying chickens eat more than meat breeds). If you are raising a dual-purpose breed, you can butcher any that don't sell.

Continue to try to sell them

So far this is what we are doing, since they aren't laying yet and we wouldn't make money eating them we will continue to try to sell them raising the price $5 a week to cover feed costs and continue to make profit.

Here’s the link if you are interested in our pullets. 🐓🐥🎉

https://www.longcreekfarm.net/chickens

Goats

We have been able to sell all our goat kids quickly as long as they are weaned during the early spring rush, however if the kids are born in April-July it can be more challenging getting them sold.

It wouldn't be unlikely for a kid to take a long time to sell (we have had both doelings and bucklings take until they are 5 months or older to sell).

A big issue with goats that take a while to sell is that the bucklings have to be separated from the does once they are about 3 months old and the doelings have to be taken away from the herd if you want to put your buck back in.

So, once your buckling need to be separated from their mother and relations, you can either put the kid with your buck if he is in a separate pen from the does (you will have to watch them carefully at first since bucks can be very aggressive, especially to a younger goat) or you can put the baby in his own pen but he would need company.

Female kids can stay in with the does until they sell.

Selling kids can get tricky once they are no longer small since people tend to either want little kids or adult goats.

For goats that are slow to sell there are only really two options, raise them up for meat, or find a different market that may be interested in what you have available.

For example, if you have been trying to advertise a buckling as coming from good milk lines and you aren't getting interest you could try selling him to people who make their own dog food or you could advertise to those who want a brush clearing goat.

Most animals will eventually sell, you may just need to experiment with different prices, pictures, use a different advertising platform, or even market to different people, but if they don't you need to be prepared to raise them for as long as necessary or process them.

If you are interested in reading more about selling animals read this blog

How to Succeed in Selling Animals for More $$