What does it cost to raise 100 broiler chickens?

The cost to raise 100 broiler chickens is mainly chicks, feed, bedding and routine supplies, with housing and equipment counted separately. Your actual total depends on feed prices, feed conversion, losses and whether you sell live birds or pay for processing. Include your own labour when deciding whether the flock is profitable.

For example, consider 100 Cornish Cross chicks in a backyard mobile tractor at about 70°F, targeting roughly 5.7 pounds live weight at 49 days. Using Broiler.ai’s North American planning defaults—feed around $0.19 per pound and chicks at $0.80 each—the supplied budget works out to about $192 for feed, $80 for chicks and $56 for other expenses per batch: approximately $328 altogether. These are planning figures, not current market quotes; replace them with your own prices.

With the example’s 6% allowance for losses, about 94 birds reach sale, making the operating cost roughly $3.49 per finished bird. The supplied live-sale budget projects about $474 revenue and $145 remaining per batch before any costs omitted from the budget. It uses a realistic feed conversion of 2 rather than the breed’s published 1.72; do not assume ideal breed performance when buying feed.

Startup housing and equipment are budgeted separately at $1,050. Across five batches a year, the supplied figures give $726 annual operating profit and about 1.4 years’ simple payback, provided all relevant expenses are covered. Standard broiler production planning practice also stresses working capital: you buy feed before sale income arrives. If you plan to sell dressed chickens, add processing, packaging and chilling costs, and price by carcass weight rather than live weight.