animalfarm
Chillin' with the herd
I sell mine for $5.50 a doz. $7.00 for duck eggs. There is an additional charge for the cartons. Kinda like bags at the store. The price will be going up if people want to keep getting eggs. I am with Royd. People need to stop giving eggs away for less the cost of producing them. I find it hard to believe that feed costs alone allow for a $2.00 doz. habit.
My customers want true free range. Free range chickens does not translate into no feed chickens. If you want them to lay well, they still must be supplemented and they do eat their fare share even with free range. Chickens don't range all that far; the ones that do are coyote/racoon/hawk food and another one bites the dust. A flock of 50 hens can take out every bug around in short order. I have mobile coops but they still cannot be placed out in no man's land. A pile of feathers does not return to the coop at night and lay an egg the next day.
Chickens are not miraculously self replicating in a manner that keeps the eggs coming. When they go broody, they don't lay eggs for months. No eggs to sell. They still eat. They don't free range.
One can hatch replacements but that requires paying the electric bill for the incubator and the brooder box and then those chicks eat for 6 months. No eggs to sell from them either so those costs must be included in producing the eggs that are for sale while this is all going on. It is a fallacy that hatching chicks is free.
If I were to buy ready to lay hens at say, $10.00/hen, 100 hens would cost $1000.00 and I would need to sell 5 doz.@$2.00 doz. eggs for each hen before she covered her purchase price and meanwhile she is still eating without yet turning a profit. Thats a total of 60 eggs or 2 months production if the hen in question dutifully lays one egg per day. Multiply that by 100 hens. I use 100 hens as that is the max. #we are allowed to keep for egg production here. So, not much of a living to be made even at $6.50 dozen and a maximum of allowed layers.
To sell a spent hen as a soup chicken, I must pay for government approved processing. $6.00 per chicken; meaty or spent layer hen. That price goes up every year as the processor wants to keep his living wage intact too. So, very difficult to use that as an avenue for recouping expenses as no one wants to pay that much for a soup hen and I sure as heck ain't giving her away. I would like to stay out of the poor house for a few more years.
If one is seriously selling eggs to make a living, the hens must be replaced more often to keep the egg production up to scratch or, if keeping hens longer, or without winter lighting to satisfy the customers desire for humanely kept hens, the price of eggs must reflect that as well. At $2.00 a doz. I would be down sizing drastically and only producing the amount of eggs that I personally needed. Small farmers, and I do emphasize small, simply cannot make poverty wage working 24/7 with that kind of pricing.
I have 50 hens counting point of lay replacements that I hatched myself so I know I am going broke faster then I care too.
By the way, when preparing to boil freshly laid eggs, put the eggs into boiling water; not cold, and cool them down under running water when finished. Most of them will peel cleanly without a fuss.
My customers want true free range. Free range chickens does not translate into no feed chickens. If you want them to lay well, they still must be supplemented and they do eat their fare share even with free range. Chickens don't range all that far; the ones that do are coyote/racoon/hawk food and another one bites the dust. A flock of 50 hens can take out every bug around in short order. I have mobile coops but they still cannot be placed out in no man's land. A pile of feathers does not return to the coop at night and lay an egg the next day.
Chickens are not miraculously self replicating in a manner that keeps the eggs coming. When they go broody, they don't lay eggs for months. No eggs to sell. They still eat. They don't free range.
One can hatch replacements but that requires paying the electric bill for the incubator and the brooder box and then those chicks eat for 6 months. No eggs to sell from them either so those costs must be included in producing the eggs that are for sale while this is all going on. It is a fallacy that hatching chicks is free.
If I were to buy ready to lay hens at say, $10.00/hen, 100 hens would cost $1000.00 and I would need to sell 5 doz.@$2.00 doz. eggs for each hen before she covered her purchase price and meanwhile she is still eating without yet turning a profit. Thats a total of 60 eggs or 2 months production if the hen in question dutifully lays one egg per day. Multiply that by 100 hens. I use 100 hens as that is the max. #we are allowed to keep for egg production here. So, not much of a living to be made even at $6.50 dozen and a maximum of allowed layers.
To sell a spent hen as a soup chicken, I must pay for government approved processing. $6.00 per chicken; meaty or spent layer hen. That price goes up every year as the processor wants to keep his living wage intact too. So, very difficult to use that as an avenue for recouping expenses as no one wants to pay that much for a soup hen and I sure as heck ain't giving her away. I would like to stay out of the poor house for a few more years.
If one is seriously selling eggs to make a living, the hens must be replaced more often to keep the egg production up to scratch or, if keeping hens longer, or without winter lighting to satisfy the customers desire for humanely kept hens, the price of eggs must reflect that as well. At $2.00 a doz. I would be down sizing drastically and only producing the amount of eggs that I personally needed. Small farmers, and I do emphasize small, simply cannot make poverty wage working 24/7 with that kind of pricing.
I have 50 hens counting point of lay replacements that I hatched myself so I know I am going broke faster then I care too.
By the way, when preparing to boil freshly laid eggs, put the eggs into boiling water; not cold, and cool them down under running water when finished. Most of them will peel cleanly without a fuss.
