Price of organic free range eggs?

I have more eggs than I can handle and want to start selling them to friends and neighbors but need help on the pricing. I do buy organic feed and use my garden produce (also organic). It is expensive but the chickens are more of a hobby for my family than a money making plan. We're really, really having a great time with them as a family and I figure that's worth more than say a family vacation or a big screen tv.

Anywho, my DH says that in order to pay for the coop my eggs need to be $57.00 a dozen. So obviously we are just looking for the pricing the market will bear and maybe pay for some feed.

Are you charging more than the store pricing for eggs? I think that it's worth more but again what will the market bear? Another guy around here charges $2.50 a dozen, but his are not organic. I wanted to charge $3.00. That is still cheaper than the grocery store organic. However I am not certified, just a backyard chicken farmer.

I am in Western PA, what do you think?

I have seen the organic egg producers in my area getting anywhere from $3-$4 a dozen.

Farmerchick would probably know better than I do though, she sells alot of eggs. She will probably be around here shortly.

Sorry I can't help ya more

You can always lower the price. It is harder to raise it. Around here (IL) $3.00 is the going rate.

If you are not certified organic you legally cannot advertise them as organic. You can say fresh, local, free range etc. but not organic.
You should charge $3.00 anyway, not less.
I charge $4.00 a dozen and thats what people are willing to pay at the farmer's markets around here and thats more than the supermarket.

I wonder if you could claim "Uncertified Organic"?

Dove

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That would be funny if it wasn't true!
Try to match the price of the grocery store organic if you can. That's what people are getting around here. Another tip is to caution people not to boil your fresh eggs because they will be hard to peel but that fried they sit up high unlike the store bought. I find that once people get used to that fresh factor they get addicted and see the value and don't quibble. But you'll never get the coop paid off!

Thank you everybody. I will charge $3.00 a dozen.

You can't say your eggs are "organic"... but you can say "you feed them organic feed" (assuming that your feed is certified organic).

I sell produce (and hopefully soon eggs!) at the farmer's market and I always run into this problem. darn USDA trademarked the word... so I say we use "all organic fertilizers and no pesticides."

At the farmer's market here, an egg seller charges $6 a dozen!!! It's hard to believe -- fifty cents an egg. And some health food stores charge that much, too, and for big-scale farm eggs (not small-farm, well-loved-hen eggs, where I honestly believe we deserve to be paid that much, even though I probably wouldn't charge it).

That's what you get for being in CA, I guess... everything's more expensive, all the foodies here drive up the prices of good old-fashioned food so the rest of us have to head to Costco.

Anyway, that was long-winded... but $3 or $3.50 sounds more reasonable (esp. if people have to pick them up at your place). Like someone said, you can always lower prices, but can't really raise them. And you can still always lower your prices for friends, etc.

When I finally have enough to sell, I will be selling for $3.50, I think. Free-roaming organic eggs here go for $4 and up at the store, so I think $3.50 is reasonable for me to ask.

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Technically, if you do less than $5000 a year in sales, you do not need to be certified, but you CAN call them Organic...BUT...you better be durn sure that you are in compliance with USDA guidelines for organic farmers!. If you call them organic, they have the right to inspect your premises at any time and if they find an area in which you are not in compliance, then you may be royally screwed. They can slap you with some HUGE fines, if they feel like it.

We had initially planned on doing this, but decided the risk was not worth it. All I need is a $20,000 fine because I violated some obscure rule I missed. We went with "Natural" instead, and are sure to tell people that we feed certified organic feed and that we do not use any chemicals or antibiotics. If their appears to be enough of a market for it, we may eventually request an inspection and pursue certification. We are charging $3/ dozen, BTW