“I would like to start chicken breeding next season. What breeds are popular, hard to find, and will sell well?”
We see variations of this questions often on chicken communities every end of season. Can we share a few honest, unfiltered thoughts on this?
1. Chicken breeding will not make you rich. Small-scale breeding might, if you are lucky, help cover the basic running costs ; feed, electricity, water, infrastructure, but it will never generate enough profit to adequately pay for your most precious asset:
Your Time.
The endless hours spent keeping them alive & happy, + to run as a small business ; acting as the photographer, social media manager, customer service rep, and packing department… do not underestimate these hours.
All these hours that could be spent with your family that you can’t buy.
2. If you choose a breed just because it “sells well,” you will eventually burn out. You have to genuinely be interested in the breed itself. True breeding requires studying the standard, having the eye to identify weaknesses, strengths, knowing how to improve the line. To learn this, you need to invest intense time and attention. Without actual love for the bird, it becomes boring, and your line will simply never improve. You may remain as a seller, never a breeder.
3. You cannot run a business involving animals solely for financial gain. There are way too many parts of this work that require personal sacrifice. They need care on public holidays, when you are completely exhausted, when the weather is terrible and during the off-seasons when you are making zero money.
4. Selling is the easy part. After-sales is where the real work begins. Remember that all humans are different and there are many times when common sense simply does not apply. The online chicken community can be incredibly brutal at times. If you are not mentally prepared to handle the people side of things, do not even bother starting.
We have been in this chicken circus for close to a decade now. Looking back, we probably started with a similar mindset; wanting something popular that would sell. But over the years, we learned there is so much more to this than we initially thought.
We are incredibly grateful to be where we are today, able to do what we truly love. Sadly, every year, we see many people jump into breeding, only to quickly fall out.
Please know this,
Breeding is a labor of love, not a quick cash grab.
