annual income statement

2023 annual farm finances

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We have a hobby farm. It is a labor of love to have a small hobby farm. We do not expect to make money and every year we are closer and closer to breaking even. I have to total all of the receipts up annually so we can do our taxes. Recently, I have been slacking and waiting until the last minute. Annmarie does the taxes and this is frustrating for her. This year I will be totaling up the months as we go so as to not have to spend two days sorting, organizing and totaling a years worth of receipts.

INCOME: $11,254

Sheep sold 59 lambs (a couple of cull ewes) for $5570

Eggs sold $-344

Cows sold cows (2/3 of profit) $5121

Alpaca $0

Hay sold $807

Losses: We lost 22 sheep last year to predators. 15 lambs and 7 ewes for a market value of $3275. This is painful. We had a bunch of different hunters out and the only ones who had any luck were hunting at night with thermal scopes. They still did not kill enough coyotes to slow down the depredation. We penciled out a guard dog (need 2) and as much as they eat with the price of food it is nearly $2200/yr just for dog food. It seems like a no brainer but this was hands down the worst year we have ever had. Normally we lose 3-5 sheep to predators annually. It was just a banner year. It is fairly obvious that we cannot sustain this loss long term. We are currently looking at donkeys. So if you know of two donkeys that we can handle well enough to get their hooves trimmed and allow us to brush them occasionally we are interested.

EXPENSES: $24,725

Truck = $238 for repairs

Chemicals = $581 for herbicide

Conservation = $231

Custom Hire = $0

Depreciation = $0

Feed = $10984= only $6125 of this was for the cows. The rest was for the rest of the animals with most of it going to the sheep. I carried every bag by hand! A rough total of 209 bags of feed.

  • Cats 320#
  • Dogs 340#
  • Chickens 2000#
  • Lambs 2350#
  • Ewes 5150#

Fertilizer = $0

Freight/trucking = $0

Gasoline/Oil/Fuel = $470. I think this should be more but I could not find the receipt for the second fill. I think doing this monthly will solve some of my tracking issues as I will be able to remember what should be on the list.

Interest on Loan Equip = $0

Insurance = I missed this charge and did not track the expense. It continues to go up every year.

Rent/Lease vehicles machinery/equip = $0

Repairs & Maintenance = $1523

Seeds/plants = $381 we bought some orchard grass seed and planted it this last fall. 

Supplies = $7853

Taxes = $1212

Utilities = $558

Vet/Breeding/Medicine = $646

Purchased Animals = $48

Total for 2023 was a loss of $13,471.

On the plus side we had some major improvements. We got all of field #1 fenced so it can be used as a pasture in late summer when the rest of the farm grass has turned brown. We got the bridge concrete footings poured and the bridge in place. The ramps on both ends of the bridge still need to be finished. It is a lot of shoveling dirt! We got the bee equipment storage room installed in the old wood shed. Upstairs bathroom is 100% completed as I installed the last countertop. We leveled, insulated and walled the freezer room and got the freezers moved into it. Got the tractor mower rebuilt. Installed 12V light system in the barn. Horse trailer 100% rewired, new brakes, grease and hitch. Finished Annmarie’s office at the beginning of the year. Honestly, that is a lot of stuff!

Chicken tracker 2023

Steve HardinLeave a comment

We averaged 19.8 laying hens for the year and currently have 31 hens. We collected on average 4.4 eggs/day for a lousy production rate of 24.3%! Definitely my worst production rate ever. Our monthly feed weight was 168#/month at a cost of $62.54/month. The crazy part is our feed cost was 47 cents/egg or $6.95/dozen. Our total cost for the year was $7.28/dozen eggs. We sold them for $5/dozen. We ended up losing $344 on the chickens last year. Now mind you, every time the weather goes crazy or a raccoon showed up the chickens refused to lay eggs.

In an effort to try and keep hens from feeding the predators we added a second solar chicken door to the chicken yard. During the summer there are usually a couple of slow pokes who don’t make it to the coop before the door shuts. They sit outside the door all night and end up feeding the raccoons. Now I know there are two raccoons around the farm as I just shot at them this month. We purchased enough chicken wire to to put a lid on the chicken yard. This way the slow pokes will be protected from dying and will only be terrorized by the raccoons trying to get at them. We got the overhead supports in but the wire has not been laid out yet and stapled in place.

Bottom line, with the increase in feed prices I am going to have to raise the price. On the plus side, I am getting eggs more often and that is helping. Plus, if we can keep the chickens alive they will lay eggs. It seems like a simple concept but quite hard to execute. So the price will be going to $6/dozen. I am hopeful that with the second chicken door and the overhead wire it will make all the difference and volume will offset the feed price. We were very good this last year about keeping all of the feed receipts which is helping forecast a factual based cost not one arbitrarily chosen.

2022 farm finances / 2022 chicken financials

Steve HardinLeave a comment

INCOME: $6380

Sheep sold 25 lambs for $2000

Eggs sold $600

Cows sold 6 cows (2/3 of profit) $3780

EXPENSES: $18,440

Truck = $850 for repairs

Chemicals = $0

Conservation = $0

Custom Hire = $0

Depreciation = $0

Feed = $7469= cows $7250 alfalfa is way up! This is our single biggest expense. This year we are going to try and hold over on some grass and cut down on the grass harvested. I did not do very well with tracking the dog, chicken and sheep feed last year. I could not find very many receipts. Chicken food is now $18.50 for 50#. At the beginning of the year we were only paying $16.50 its an 11% increase.

Fertilizer = $0

Freight/trucking = $0

Gasoline/Oil/Fuel = $1096, tractor fuel cost $1062 using 205 gallons, I now have an 100 gallon tank that I filled twice last year. This is almost triple what I was paying.

Interest on Loan Equip = $0

Insurance = $1947

Rent/Lease vehicles machinery/equip = $0

Repairs & Maintenance = $5420, Tractor $1766, sprayer $400, truck $1574, side by side $ 153, water pump $1400

Seeds/plants = $348, we bought some triticale seed and planted it this last fall.

Supplies = $3992, gloves over $250, 10 yds gravel $250

Taxes = $1181

Utilities = $0

Vet/Breeding/Medicine = $1298, we got a new Border Collie puppy. She got sick once and had to be spayed. So for everyone that keeps telling me to get a guardian dog they really need to look at the vet and food bill plus the purchase price on the dog and calculate out their losses to see if its really worth it.

Purchased Animals = $1125, we had to get a new bull after 12 years! It’s time to get some new genes on the farm.

Total for 2020 was a loss of $12000. We did better on keeping some of our costs down last year. This year we are going to focus on selling our leftover hay from the barn and machine shed. We are going to put up less hay, only fill the barn. We are going to spray the weeds 3-4 times this year, I have some old fertilizer I got off the neighbor and we are going to try it for the first time. We have one more length of fence to install alongside the creek so we can give the animals another 7 acres to browse on. In the fall we will work on replanting another half of the bottom down by the school house. We keep trying to improve the forage available for the animals to eat. Having the ram get off cycle really hurt us on lamb production.

 EGG Production

Well, the chickens lost money this last year. The predators killed me and the wife says I need to focus on predators this year so they don’t kill half the flock. I want to raise the prices again, we currently charge $5/dozen but she tells me we need to double down on timely egg collection and some serious predator control this year before we can decide to increase the prices. The price of feed has not gone up since we raised the prices last year so I am going to keep them the same for now.

We averaged 21.8 laying hens for the year and currently only have 13 hens. We collected on average 6.3 eggs/day for a lousy production rate of 27%! I am sure this is my worst production rate ever. Our monthly feed weight was 154#/month at a cost of $54.25/month. The crazy part is our feed cost was 28 cents/egg or $5.62/dozen. Our total cost for the year was $6.18/dozen eggs. We sold them for $5/dozen. We ended up losing $100 on the chickens last year. Now mind you, every time the weather goes crazy or a raccoon showed up the chickens refused to lay eggs. This happened quite a bit throughout the year. We have 12 new chicks and will work to try and get another 12 to get our numbers up for this year but those chicks won’t lay for 6 months.

2020 Annual Farm Summary

Steve HardinLeave a comment

I am unsure where to begin, 2020 was a very different year when you include Covid 19 and 100+ year flood levels on the farm. We had horrible spring flooding that ended up tearing up every single cross fence on the entire farm. It destroyed the sorting areas we had set up in the barn lot and tore out entire sections of fence, washed away two bridges and tore out two culverts. This was a huge blow to our annual summer plans, it washed away the first cutting of hay and left mud and debris all along the entire bottom fields making them not usable for hay. All the hay equipment won’t do any good if there is no hay to cut. Most of our expenses were for gates and fencing to repair the flood damage. As always the IRS is dictating our categories:

INCOME: $10,061

Sheep sold 70 lambs & 28 cull ewes for $5600

Eggs sold $425

Cows sold 8 cows (2/3 of profit) $4036

EXPENSES: $32,565

Truck = $0

Chemicals = $1492 with the wet spring we had to just keep spraying to try and control all the weeds

Conservation = $0

Custom Hire = $0

Depreciation = $0

Animals = $954

Feed = $5800 = cats $171, dogs $545, Chickens $677, Sheep $383, cows $3945

Fertilizer = $0

Freight/trucking = $0

Gasoline/Oil/Fuel = $569, tractor fuel cost $388 using 166 gallons and I only use 5 gallon cans!

Interest on Loan Equip = $0

Insurance = $1947

Rent/Lease vehicles machinery/equip = $0

Repairs & Maintenance = $5420, Tractor $1766, sprayer $400, truck $1574, side by side $ 153, water pump $1400

Seeds/plants = $936, flood washed away most of the seed

Supplies = $14,578, gloves $220, lavender water $798, 10 yds gravel $195

Taxes = $0

Utilities = $50

Vet/Breeding/Medicine = $818

Purchased Animals = $0

Total for 2020 was a loss of $22,503. The flooding cost us about $15,000. It is not covered under our insurance and it needed to be fixed so we can move the animals. We built in break points along the front spring so if it floods again we only have to replace a few posts and nothing else. It would have been a great year without the flooding.

2019 Annual Farm Summary

Steve HardinLeave a comment

One of the things I told myself I would do when I started the blog was to be honest about the things that happen on a small farm and why both my wife and I have full time jobs. This year we decided to take the plunge and purchase haying equipment. The real problem with this decision is we have a small tractor and needed micro hay equipment. This is not manufactured in our country, we ended up purchasing equipment made in Italy. I wanted something new thinking that this would cut down my maintenance needs and expenses, time will tell on this decision. I will be sticking with the IRS categories for a farm as that is how my lovely bride uses the categories when she does the taxes.

INCOME total: $7600 from the sale of sheep and cows

EXPENSE total: $64,159

Animals cost $0

Truck & Expenses cost $0

Chemicals cost $0. We did not spray any weeds in 2019.

Custom Hire cost $0

Depreciation cost $0

Fertilizer cost $0

Freight and trucking cost $1916

Equipment cost $33,963

Conservation Expense cost $260

Insurance cost $1655

Vet/Breeding/Medicine cost $332

Purchased Animals cost $0. We did not buy any sheep.

Taxes cost $799

Utilities cost $0

Seeds/Plants cost $702

Gasoline/Fuel/Oil cost $400

Supplies cost $13,367

Feed cost $7306

Rent/Lease cost $924

Repairs/Maintenance cost $2535

Total Income was a loss of $56,559 for 2019. We knew we were going to have to bear a financial burden for the equipment but are hopeful that in four years we will have the equipment paid off and our expenses will drop dramatically for feed.