Pricing opinion? Have a buyer for ALL of our excess rabbits!

I recently posted for advice about our CL ad to help us sell any extra meat rabbits. Well, today we had someone ask us if we would sell ALL of our surplus rabbits to them every two months when they are ready. We would sell them live, and the person buying them will ONLY be using/selling them to people for food in his area!

I've already researched, and we don't need any licensing to sell them this way, as long as they are live and only for food/fiber purposes. He wants them because he already has local demand in his area (about an hour and a half from us) for smallish quantities of organically raised local meat.

The price I set on my CL ad is $25-$35, with the buns being 4.5-5.5 pounds. Obviously this is a retail price - for anyone who sells wholesale, what do you think would be a fair price for organically fed rabbits that we don't have to process? It's hard to say for sure, but I think we will only have 10-15 extra rabbits each breeding cycle, but this should go a long way toward covering our feed costs!

Thanks in advance for any ideas on this, we're really excited, because this will be a LOT easier than selling one by one!

First off, let me say:
:congratulations:

I can't help you with retail value. I'm notorious for underpricing what I sell.
Besides, only you really know how much you are putting into them in feed and supplements, and what prices for organic meat are like in your area.

Thanks!

I will sit down and analyze my exact numbers. We track our pellets to the oz. fed per day per litter, and of course know the total litter weights at processing. I think what I need to think about is what the goal is - do I want to offset all the feed costs? or just try to come as close as possible.

Using a quick number of 4 lbs of food per pound of final body weight of the litter (including the does) looks something like this:

Our current batch is 22 kits -and I am assuming a final average weight of 5 lbs per kit at processing time:

22 x 5 = 110 pounds live weight
110 x 4 = 440 pounds of feed

We pay just under $28 for a 50# bag of pellets, so $ .56 per pound, for a total of $246.40

If we hold back 1 doe for breeding, and 10 kits to eat ourselves, we have 11 to sell. To clear our pellet costs, we need to sell the remaining 11 buns for $22.40 each. That's a LOT for wholesale, when he can probably sell them for $30-35 for a 5 lb rabbit.

If I subtract back out the hamburger price of $2/lb for what we eat/keep, I could subtract:
55 lbs x 2 = $110
$246.4-110 = $136.40 divided by 11 rabbits sold, at $12.40/5 lb rabbit.

We could probably split the difference and sell them for $18 for a 5 pound rabbit.

I don't believe we actually use 4 lbs of pellets per pound of body weight, that's something I will drill down to with all the data we have collected over the 4 litters to date.

We pay a negligible $8 per bale of hay (all organic, hence high prices), and I think about $1-2 per month per adult for herbs and seeds, so that would be covered at the $18 price. Another thought - he hasn't been able to find a source for organic rabbit meat to sell (doesn't care about certification), so he's probably willing to pay more and pass that along.

Thoughts? Thanks again!

I would stick with the price you advertised to begin with, when you start cutting prices, even at discount because of bulk purchasing, some start to question the quality you are actually selling and think they are getting the bad end of the deal

Ooops! My bad - he didn't find us through the CL ad, though DH did tell him about it when they were talking. Looking back at my OP I can see why you thought he found us through the ad! That was more of a - wow, can't believe we found this guy right when we were getting ready to sell excess buns!

This man is someone who owns a feed store and is building up a selection of organic/naturally raised items and selling that as well. He is already selling some kind of small pigs, ciders, baked goods and some local produce. He will only be buying any extras that we have at processing time. I will also continue to try to sell some locally - I have 5 sold as of right now, so really only have 6 left over this round, unless we decide we don't need 10 rabbits ourselves when the time comes. Our freezer is VERY well stocked right now, so we might just need six or so in January. The best part is that there's no number commitment on our part, he would just take any we have available. Obviously it's better for us money wise if we can sell them all locally at the higher price!

He definitely would not be able to make a profit if we sold to him at the CL price!

Rabbit sold in grocery stores around here can go for as much as 14.00 a pound. That's organic and dressed. Retail price.
Maybe find out what he will be selling them for and price accordingly....If he is selling live the price is not so high.
Most folks who will eat a rabbit from Whole Foods would rather starve than butcher their own though... :lol:

Around here you can't even find organic rabbit meat in a store, probably because anyone who has it just eats it or sells to a small handful of people! I know that IF you can find it, nonorganic/dressed rabbit in a store is about $10/lb, so $14-16 would probably be right. Looking at it that way, at a 50% dress out (low), a 5 lb bun yields 2.5 lbs of meat, so $25 would make it $10/lb once dressed.

Another thing I was looking at is local CL prices that people are selling their meat rabbits for - and it ranges from $14 to almost $30 for non-organic. I think I even saw one ad for $35 for non-organic. Prices are just all over the place, which makes it hard!

One thing I was discussing with DH - this guy is going to have to house/feed these buns until he sells them, so that has to be factored in as well, though that's really up to him to figure out.

My neighbor raises her turkeys organic, that feed is not cheap...She told me that the price would be so high for one of the turkeys that she wouldn't even try to sell them. So when her hens start to lay again she will give me a couple of chicks...SWEET!...

We buy an organic turkey for Thanksgiving, and NO, not cheap. But I get a couple dozen dinners worth of amazing soup from it afterward, so I justify the cost that way!

Ah I see. You still may want to go with that pricing though, or straight figure your costs as said you would at some point and then decide if a discount from your original price would be in order. I'm used to dealing with fickle people, they say they want it and will pay decent price, but when it comes to it they refuse and I'm stuck holding the bag. At least if you stick near your original price and then end up having to advertise, if he sees the advertisement he won't think he was being charged too much (or too little) to begin with.

I think it's a little different with people who own stores and are used to buying wholesale and selling retail. He would know that he couldn't make a worthwhile profit if I sold to him near my retail prices.

The tough part for me will be figuring out what's fair while still covering our costs plus some extra to cover some feed for buns we eat ourselves! It will help a lot if we can sell 50% of our surplus locally, then he's really just a safety net for what we have left over. This way we won't be feeding rabbits past processing time, and won't be putting more than we need into our freezers.

After reading all the posts, Comet007 it seams that all you want out of this deal is to cover your cost of feed. You could look at him providing you your pellets? Not sure what the details would look like just a thought.

Comet,

First of all congrats! Not everyday you get a `bulk sales` deal right out of the gate.

I looked at your calculations. I did not see that you included the feed cost of your breeders as well. Or did I miss that?

You could take this perspective. What would be my families personal consumption rate for rabbit on the table? One a week maybe, 52 rabbits per year. Add in your feed costs for the stock for sale + the personal consumption as your base sales price. Doing it that way your `profit` is feeding your family for free for part of the food bill. Just a thought.

Thank you both for the feedback! We are just looking to get the cost of the feed back - or as much of it as possible. That way our "cost" for the meat we eat would just be our labor and any capital improvements.

As for the calculations, yes, the cost of the does maintenance is included. I used the 4 lbs of feed per pound of final weight because I know that number is a lot higher than what we actually use, including our breeding stock. At any given time we are feeding 2 bucks, 3 working does and 2 does that we are growing out. Looking at our numbers for the first 4 litter sets, we are under that 4 pound mark.

I've come to the conclusion that if we sell maybe 1/3 of our surplus at retail pricing locally, and 2/3 at wholesale, we should come very close to covering our costs. I still need to refine the numbers before we reach a final agreement, as I won't have the final numbers for round 4 until processing in January.

As for this round, we already sold what we needed to locally at retail pricing, so he won't be getting any buns from us at processing time in January (unless we decide we have enough in the freezer/pantry and sell him half of what we planned to eat).

We just had two more litters born yesterday, but since two of our does miscarried half way through the pregnancy (our original does who had been runts), we won't have any surplus in the March rabbits either, unless we again decide that we have enough in our larder and just sell him all but the best doe that we would keep from these two litters for breeding. We do have a TON of food in our house right now. Pretty much something stored in every room and closet lol. Plus, the closer we get to July, we have to free up freezer space, as we get well over 100 crab every year, plus some salmon in the Fall. It's a nice problem to have!