Pheasant.com Blog | Wish I Had a Crystal Ball

Buy pheasant chicks online Buy chicks online button

Wish I Had a Crystal Ball

On January 31, 2010 in General by spope

It’s been very cold, and the hunt clubs we supply within 200 miles of our farm have had their business affected. We hear that the upcoming week will bring much warmer weather and we are looking forward to moving more birds regionally. We sent a truck and trailer with 3400 to Washington and Oregon on Thursday and the drivers reported that they arrived 6 hours ahead of schedule – with the birds in great shape. With impeccable preparation we are able to deliver birds nearly 1800 miles without a hitch. Every now and then we seem to need to get a wake up call, as when we miss a preparation step – we pay.

Our seminar signup is going great. With all the bad news in the papers and on the internet about the economy – I certainly was hesitant about whether we should host the seminar again or not. We set an initial deadline of January 1st for signup – and my model for the seminar showed we needed at least 50 paid attendees to break even. In mid December we had 13 signups and I think on January 1st we had 23. But similarly to a lot of businesses I hear about – people still planned on coming, they just wait and signup later than in the past. As of Friday (1/29/10) we had 65 paid attendees and we have another 10 people on the fence. I am truly excited about the seminar, and I want to make it the best seminar yet. We have the details of the seminar (the rooms, the meals, the speakers, etc.) all worked out – and I’m calm, for now.

Our food products business is slow. January is typically a slow month, but January 2010 was the slowest yet. I’ve heard some rationalizing from my staff that the reason is our distributors loaded up in December (and paid in January) to make their year ends look good. I’m not sure I buy that theory – regardless – sales in the next month will prove or disprove the rationale. We’re not sure what to do regarding FP production in 2010.

Our retail chick sales are good. Fewer and fewer pheasant hatcheries are selling chicks nationwide (shipping via USPS). On the other hand our commercial day-old chicks sales are down, partially because we boosted delivery charges the past few years. We have literally forced a few of our really good commercial accounts to look for chicks from more nearby hatcheries. If you remember fuel prices nearly doubled in 2008 – and for us to deliver chicks to, for example, a Kansas commercial account – our cost of delivery went up significantly. I wish we had a crystal ball so in 2008 we would have known that fuel prices would have gone down again in 2009. We have always absorbed some of the delivery costs – but we raised our delivery charge for 2009, again using the Kansas customer as an example, significantly. Understandably, our Kansas customer found chicks from another supplier close by. So the fuel prices have begun to regionalize the day-old pheasant chick business. Throughout the pheasant business, the delineation between the very best mature birds and the very best chicks vs. the poorest mature birds and poorest chicks has narrowed. It will be our charge to figure out ways for us to delineate our chicks from the rest. We have a few really good ideas in process, and within a year or two – we plan on bringing those ideas to the marketplace.



Comments are closed.

Related Posts