Printing Egg Cartons

fortcypher said:

Thank you so much! I did read the rules for selling in PA on the Penn State Ag Extension page. Sounds very similar to what you all have in Ohio. I run a Mary Kay business, so I'm used to the separte accounts and extensive tracking/receipt saving. I just hadn't thought about that for him. But so valid and important. I'll have to ask my tax prep lady how it works with the farm thing. He got most of his feeders/brooder/waterers for birthday presents (the poor kid really wanted them!) But there is so much more to come Thanks for the encouragement to treat it like a "real" business.

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Get him to start keeping records while young, and it will help him manage money for his entire life. I think he can do it. Good luck!

Also, if you have a good tax lady, have her look into what taxes he'd pay based on his age, and have her run the numbers a couple of different ways. Tax rules are different for kids. When I was young I worked for my Dad and got paid "in kind" with livestock I then sold for my pay, and I paid no taxes at all until I was 18.

WoS and fort cypher both give good advice. There is a lot to consider that I didn't get into because I thought my original post was already too long!

You also have to consider local town ordinance. Our town has no ordinance or restrictions on children selling stuff and considers it like a lemonade stand. There are two ways you can approach it: do you want your child to make some spending money (lemonade stand approach)? Or do you want to run a legitimate business complete with the tax-exempt farm status, accounting, etc?

When our daughter's operation was small, we took the lemonade stand approach. She kept production records from day 1, she paid for her own feed and she kept her money in a crock jar on her piano. After her egg business took off, and we began to get requests for meat chickens, with the potential of generating more inputs and sales, we rolled the entire operation under our farm. She's still the "face" of the egg business (who doesn't like a cute kid running her own business at 12), but all sales, taxes, etc are under our farm and we pay her the net proceeds just as any family farmer would pay their kids to work the farm. Best advice is to find a CPA that specializes in tax returns for farmers if you want to go full blown business. Otherwise, if you are not already a farm with a tax ID and just want your child to earn a little money while learning responsibility and life lessons, then take the lemonade stand approach for now.

As far as egg cartons go, VA allows you to sell eggs in used egg cartons so long as you either cross out the grade or put a sticker on the carton that states "ungraded". But it was our experience that none of our local customers who come to the house to but cared about the reused cartons. To the contrary every one of our local customers brings my daughter used egg cartons. The only reason we are switching to buying our own cartons with our farm labels is because we are now selling to stores and at large Farmer's markets and as others have stated, you want to "do it right". When your cartons look professional and legit, your customer base will grow. But just starting off as a kid, I recommend what we did and start with used cartons, mark out the grade, write a price on them and let the kid sell eggs to locals. As word of mouth spreads, and you sell more eggs outside your circle if friends and family, then you can spend the extra money on your own cartons. But that's just my advice. I'm relatively new to this forum and not totally familiar with it, but if you can email me with questions, I will be happy to tell you what had worked for us. But I don't disagree with anything Walking on Sunshine and fort cypher said. They recommend covering all legal bases, which is a good thing.

Here's the info from PA, via PennState Ag Extension:
"Many individuals with small flocks of laying hens prefer to market their own eggs. If an egg producer has less than 3,200 laying hens and sells eggs within five days from the date of lay and sells eggs predominately within a 100 mile radius of their production or processing facility, then the following summary of regulations will apply when selling eggs to the consumer.

All eggs must be maintained at 60 degrees F or less from the time of gathering to the time of sale. This also applies to eggs sold at farmers markets or at roadside stands.
Each carton, flat, or container of eggs must be labeled with the following information:

• Name and address
• Date of lay
• Statement of identity (eggs)
• Net Contents (in 3/16 inch high letters)
• "Keep Refrigerated"
• Egg Handling Instructions

If you do not weigh the eggs or if they are mixed sizes, and you do not wish to assign a grade, they must be labeled unclassified. You also must remove dirty, leaker, or loss eggs."

Here's another question for the egg sellers. How do you handle your customers when your chickens molt? I'm reading up on it. It seems to take a long time and no eggs to sell. Do they all do it at once and you have no eggs for weeks on end? BTW, we were offered some 16 mo. hens @$3 each to fill in the gap until the chicks are ready to lay late this summer. By the time the chicks are pullets I'm guessing the hens will be ready to make soup?

fortcypher said:

Here's another question for the egg sellers. How do you handle your customers when your chickens molt? I'm reading up on it. It seems to take a long time and no eggs to sell. Do they all do it at once and you have no eggs for weeks on end? BTW, we were offered some 16 mo. hens @$3 each to fill in the gap until the chicks are ready to lay late this summer. By the time the chicks are pullets I'm guessing the hens will be ready to make soup?

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It's a giant pain, that's what it is. Some hens will take their time moulting. Some will look like they've been plucked. And yes, mostly the whole flock moults at the same time and you have no eggs to sell, especially in the fall. You'll also have a drop in egg production in the spring when they do a mini-moult. My flock is starting. I keep a production log, and at the beginning of February I was getting close to 50 eggs a day from 49 hens. Yesterday I got 36 eggs from 48 hens (we had a hen randomly die on Friday).

I see moulting as the perfect time for deworming. We deworm in the fall with Ivermec which has a two-week withholding period for eggs. We do it at the height of the moult so we have many fewer eggs to throw away. Then we up the protein in the feed and turn on the lights, which helps to kick them out of the moult and bring production back up more quickly. In the spring, we use Eprinex which has no egg withholding. Remember to rotate dewormers so you don't create resistant parasites.

I am honest with my customers. I tell them in person and on our blog that hens moult twice a year, and we'll have fewer eggs available then. Haven't lost a customer yet.

If someone wants to give you laying hens for $3 each, BUY THEM. I could sell a 16 month hen that's currently in lay for $10-12, easy. Just follow quarantine proceedures and don't accidentally carry disease to your chicks.

Whether or not you consider these hens "spent" this fall is up to you. We keep red sex links about two years depending on how well they're laying and how large their eggs are, and heritage breeds and easter eggers three years. Broody hens get a home for life! We do have problems with RSL eggs getting too large for the egg cartons when the hens are older. In a commercial layer operation, they'd control the egg size by withholding certain amino acids when the egg reaches 90% desired final size, but of course I don't have that capability.

I do have one totally unrelated piece of advice for you. When I started doing this, I was very hard-nosed about it all and got rid of hens on a strict schedule. I sold off a hen that was a total sweetheart and liked to be petted and had a name (Brownie Princess) because she was in her second fall and didn't produce well anyway, since she was a pureblood Ameraucana. I still feel sad that she's not around, and I'm not sure my son has ever forgiven me. So my unsolicited advice is, allow yourself to have some pets that aren't subject to standard business practices. If you really like a hen and she's rising three, so what? Keep her and make yourself happy.