To show Marshall Farms that we as a ferret owning community are NOT in
agreement on these issues I've copied them in on the reply.
 
>From:    Pam Grant and STAR* Ferrets <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: MF tracking solution
 
>The cost?  About $7.50 per chip to MF.  [...] MF does not want the added
>expense, despite it's low cost,
 
$7.50 is the cost of "hardware".  The cost of inserting the chip, logging
the records, purchassing computer systems to track this information and such
far exceeds $7.50 per ferret.  But lets ignore that for a moment.  Your low
cost item is three quarters of a million dollars per year.  MF allegedly
sells about 100,000 ferrets a year.  Their income (NOT profit) is about 7
million.  This uses $70 per ferret wholesale which is probably a bit too
high.  Even if "way over" it does not affect this argument.  10% of income
is not a small cost item.  For comparison imagine adding over $1500 to the
cost of every new car.  But lets bring back the cost of inserting the chip
and tracking the data.  How about ten minutes added total?  A measely ten
minutes.  well ten minutes times 100,000 is a MILLION minutes.  Thats 16,667
hours.  A person works normally less than 2,000 hours a year.  50 weeks
times a forty hour day.  Thats with out any vacation or seick time, just
holidays plus a day or two.  Its a well established fact that a person's
salary is about half their cost.  We'll pay these folks fairly low salaries,
$5 an hour.  So their cost is $10 an hour.  That 1,667 hours is about 9
employees.  We'll let one be the "boss" and have some administrative duties
including verification for half the time but still work barely above minimum
wage.  Those nine employees would cost $180,000 dollars.  I write software
and run computer systems for a living.  The software required could easily
cost $100,000.  Programmers costs LOTS of money.  Computer hardware required
would cost nearly the same.  The systems guy to keep it running would cost
(not pay - cost) more than $100,000 of pay and expenses.  Someone good like
me would cost a whole lot more.  This would have to be some sort of LAN
setup with data entry PCs and a couple of server class machines.  I kept all
the numbers LOW just to avoid nit picking arguments of someone thinking
they'd cost less.
 
I disagree about low cost.
 
I'll not comment on the "me first" bit.
 
bill killian
zen and the art of ferrets
http://www.zenferret.com/
mailto:[log in to unmask]
[Posted in FML issue 1991]