We are shipping birds like crazy and I believe we have produced the best looking birds ever this year. The temperature is getting colder at night which will result in our birds coloring out a little more quickly. In the pic above is a lane full of long tailed cockbirds ready to go.
Commodity prices continue to be at nearly all time high price levels and the result is our feed expense is up 35% from last year (and this even takes into account that we booked 40% of our feed at prices $50/ton less than the current price!). So not taking into account increased fuel cost and labor costs, our cost per bird has risen over $1.00/bird from just a year ago. If we don’t take into account the savings we accomplished through booking feed at the discounted price, our per bird cost has risen $1.35 from a year ago. We want to lock in our feed costs for 2012, but the prices offered right now are so exorbitant, we can’t see locking those prices in.
Across our industry (and all animal agricultural industries for that matter) producers are struggling just to meet expenses. Without a major commodity price drop, I believe that there will be a number of producers that will close their doors, and I predict that the remaining producers will be forced to raise their prices significantly (just to cover costs) for the 2012-13 season.
