How much land is required for 4 chicken houses? As I understand it there are minimum acreage requirements that have to do with separation for the houses, runoff concerns, etc

Paging Furflyin and Swampy.

You will regret the chicken business, especially with propane as high as it is right now.

With all do respect I disagree, people have made a living in the poultry buisness since the fifties, some years are better than other. I grew up around broilers, some years was great some wasn't. BUT if you enjoy it, then have at it.. My $.02

From what I hear the growers around here are now being paid a fuel premium, for propane, to offset the cost.

There is money to be made in chickens, but a lot of work comes with it.

Wiley, I couldn't say exactly. There is actually no minimum acreage amount. There are however, setbacks that are required to be met. So many feet from a property line, so many feet from a dwelling house, so many feet from.......

You could contact the NRCS office tomorrow and find out for sure.

It's not big money like it was in the 80's. Most companies pay a fuel "bonus" but it's not a large amount. Most companies pay a new house bonus, either by the square foot, or so much added per pound of meat produced.

Poultry houses are a good way for somebody that owns land to add to their income and offset their fertilizer bills.

Back in the day a person could buy land, build poultry houses and build a nice house and the chicken houses would pay for it all and still leave enough to live off of with a supplemental income from a spouse. Now, the houses will pay for themselves but with little left over.

The key is owning the land, if you have to buy acreage it makes things tough. Chickens are like everything else; they don't pay what growers want, but those who have them make a living, and there are new folks lining up everyday wanting to build houses. If growers were not making money they would quit.

Got an uncle that been in it for 25 years or so,he seems to do pretty well with it,he owns the land and has 8 houses

with the price of building the houses a lot higher than ten years ago. that with the cost of propane and electricity, its not the money maker it was in the past. not to mention that the cost of land is way higher than ten years ago. most of my family has raised chickens for over twenty years. we were just talking Sunday about this same subject. they all said that they could not build the farms they have now with the cost of everything being so high. without having some other kind of income.

Price of land around my neck of woods, is $500 to $1000 cheaper a acre than 10 years ago..

Why is that?

Economy crashed, Big money makers went under. Prime example, some land that was beside me is 12 year old cutover, a guy bought it for 1500 a acre 7 years ago, he went under, put it up for auction, my nieghbor bought it for $800.00 a acre.

I bought prime pasture land for 2300 per acre, now its worth about 1500 to 1800.

There is a lot of land for sale around here, that has been for sale for a long time.

I'm not going to build one, but what would 4 new houses cost on land you already own?
When I was much younger (in the 60's) we had a couple of houses, no automatic feeding so we fed with 5 gallon buckets all day long. Not a lot of money, but we ate a LOT of chicken.

My parents had 2 houses all my life. Lots of work to them. Seems the biggest thing my parents had problems with other than high propane cost was every few years you get a new whipper snapper straight from Auburn that just got his poultry sience degree to be your field man. Him being fresh out of school he knows it all!! That being said they come up with all this new high tech equipment every few years that you're required to change or they can cancel your contract. Just more expense that did't improve a thing!! My dad just grew his last bunch because they were wanting to make some changes that didn't make since to keep growing plus he will be 70 in October!! Just my .02 worth.

If it's 4 of the "Mega houses", the 66' x 600' houses, 4 of them will cost around $1M.

WOW!! had no idea they were 250,000 each! Worked in them as a kid. I heard they came a lone way since the late 80s

Yes...about $250,000 each. The capacity is about 2X what it used to be also.

We, NRCS, don't put stipulations on the site of the structure that contains the birds. We just have regulations that are agreed on by ADEM on the spreading of the waste. In the document at this link
http://efotg.sc.egov.usda.gov/references/public/AL/tg590.pdf
on table 9 we have the required setbacks for spreading. The setback for any structure to store waste in that we provide assistance on is at this link
http://efotg.sc.egov.usda.gov/references/public/AL/tg313.pdf

If you look at page 11 table 5 it has the minimum setbacks for waste storage facilities and if I remember right, actual structure for containment setbacks are not much diffence. It also reference ADEM
Administrative Code Chapter 335-6-7 where I think all the distances are sited.

I would also contact in the company that you would potentially be growing for and see what kind of regulations that they have.