Hi @Darre11 You may well be right. I know as much about chicken...

Hi @Darre11

You may well be right. I know as much about chicken farming as I would like to know about root canal surgery without an anesthetic.

That said, sales costs per chicken (actual cash costs after subtracting bird addition cash expenditure) are currently running at about 70c per week. My uninformed cursory search on the internet indicated that the bulk of this would be feed costs. But you're right, perhaps when costs were running at about 80c (or higher), the 10c (or so) difference was due to older processes or lack of automation.

I'm not sure it makes a great deal of difference. Whether it is automation or feed, the advantages or disadvantages are available to all (and arguably available even more so to the larger players). Remember, if all players have access to the same cost advantages, in an industry where the customer calls the shots (supermarkets), those margin advantages should be competed away.