Is small commercial egg business feasible?

Date sort Score sort
DanIndiana

DanIndiana

Songster
9 Years
Aug 27, 2010
156
1
101
Valparaiso, Indiana
I just read this article that was published by Penn State in 1999, titled Small-Scaled Egg Production agalternatives.aers.psu.edu/Publications/small_scale_egg.pdf . It showed a hypothetical budget for a small 1000 hen operation with a net profit of $23,000. Is this a realistic scenario? That was 12 years ago, and it may not be much money, but I'd be thrilled to come away with that much even. I haven't found much on the internet about endeavors of this size range.
 
Here's a start..

Production:

1000 Hens

6000 eggs/wk

26,000 Doz. /yr. @ $3/doz.

$78,000 Annual income

or

26,000 Doz. /yr. @ $2/doz.

$52,000 Annual income

Assuming excellent lay rate and most ideal conditions (in other words, not likely)

Feed:

4oz per bird/ day

250lbs. / day

91250 lbs / yr.

1825 bags @ $14/per.

$25,500 for feed /yr.

Other Expenses:

Bedding, medications, restocking birds, grit/oyster shell and cartons.

500 bales of straw/hay @ $4/per - $2000/yr.
1000 hens @ $2.05/per plus shipping - $2150/yr.
450 Bags Feed (for rearing non-laying hens) - $3150/yr. or $6300 every other year
26,000 cartons - $6500
Grit & Oyster - $1800/yr. (guess)
Water/Power - $4000/yr. (guess)
Medications - $4000/yr. (guess)

Total other expenses 23,600

Note: this is excluding up front capital investment, rents or taxes, and most importantly labor..

This also excludes transporting eggs and meeting FDA regulations, meaning they would probably have to buy from your farm.

So yes, with the most ideal conditions I'd say you can make money. You'd need a place to sell all those eggs for $3/doz though. Personally, It sounds like a lot of work.
 
how would you get started and established selling the eggs? id also be interested in something like this, just have no idea how to get my foot in the door. who do you talk to about this to get someone buying this amount of eggs from you?
 
Yes I was able to do it cage free.

In my experience the prices are way off.
I had 500 chickens and i got no way near even half way of what they say.
The prices have gone up drastically. You have to remember you need to find an outliet to sell you eggs first and figure out the price. Most places follow the "egg market" which most all egg producers must follow I even have to follow it or the stores i sell to would kick me out. If you are selling to grocery stores you must remember you need to make sure to label correctly. I get my cartens free since i live on a commercial farm and processing is free too but i need to lable the eggs which cost 2-3 cents each. Some places need to to be checked by the usda. PLus you need egg boxes. which are around a doller each now. (used to be .50 cents) Also hand washing 760+ eggs a day would be a ROYAL pain. If you have any spicific questions message me or ask here. I can help since i already have wen though haveing a lot of chickens and selling/marketing my eggs.

word of advice if you do try this make sure you have every nickle and dime accounted for before going head long. because if you don't watch everythign very carefully it can go from a black number to a big fat red number in 2 weeks. Also diseases bad feed. and everything also account for a lot of loss. winter is alos a hassle becasue you need to figure out a way to water them without it freezing at all. if it freezes its pretty much kiss your money good by or be giveing water every hour. just being withough water can cut your production.

I did make money but no its nothing i can live off. I did use the 2.00 a dozen as the book says. If i were to live off the chickens i would probalby need around 7-10 thousand. but i do have buyers and my eggs go out the door fast. Its pretty much only get as many chickens as you can sell eggs. or you will have a back up and the eggs will go useless.
 
Last edited:
Quote:
Unless you buy ready to lay pullets...

We have a 2500 hen layer operation here. We sell the majority of the eggs to an organic farmers' co-op in bulk. The extent of our work is caring for the hens and packing eggs, in bulk, for weekly pickup. The co-op handles processing, packaging, marketing and distribution.

You have a few options here. There is direct marketing which would involve selling from your premises, door to door sales routes, or farmer markets. There is retail marketing through small specialty stores or food cooperatives. It is unlikely you going to sell eggs to a local chain supermarket unless they have shelf space set aside for local products. Otherwise marketers usually pay "slot fees" for shelf space at the large stores.

While Urban Grower was close in that estimate, I see a few issues there. A large operation is generally not going to buy bagged feed. It will be ordered and delivered by the ton at a much lower cost. $4000 a year for medications? No medications here as we are organic. Grit and oyster shell? A good layer ration doesn't require much extra. Raising your own pullets? If you have extra facilities to do it. I generally consider that a separate enterprise.

We buy ready to lay pullets and put them into production for a year. At the end of the year they are sold to live markets or processors. We clean up, give everything a rest for two weeks (this helps to break the parasite cycle) and start over again. Keeping different ages of birds on the same property can be problematic for commercial production (especially in organic production) since there is never a chance to break any disease or parasite cycles and biosecurity can be difficult in such close proximity.

Here is what we did in 2010:

Sales (including bulk egg sales, direct egg sales, and spent hens) : $97,000

Feed: $40,000
Pullets: $15,000
Electric and Propane: $3200
Egg cartons for direct sales and other consumable supplies : $1600
Repairs and maintenance: $1200
Organic certification fees: $1100
Office expenses: $600
Farm Insurance: $1000
Farm Portion of property taxes: $1800

Profit: $31,500

This does not include the depreciated cost of $100,000 in facilities or the associated mortgage interest.
I also let the neighbors cut three acres of alfalfa for use on their farm in exchange for about 75 bales of alfalfa a year and occasional use of their skid steer for barn clean out.

You can see photos here:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=2328-wisconsin-layer-barn
 
Wow. Thanks to everyone for responding. Extremely helpful.
That looks like a nice operation, Mac In Abilene. I was wondering if you are able to do that with 'family labor' mostly, or do you need much outside help?
 
My wife and I do it. It takes one person about three hours or the two of us about an hour and a half each morning to pack up the eggs. The rest is pretty much automated. As long as there is feed in the silo they get fed by timer. I walk through several times a day to check on everybody, but there isn't a whole lot of labor involved outside of packing eggs each morning. I get some extra help from my brothers/uncles/cousins during clean out times or when we are loading or unloading birds, but that's once a year.

If we had to process and carton the eggs, that would be another story, but there's small scale equipment that can help with that too...
 

Similar threads

bulkwarrior
thinking of starting a small scale commercial quail business. Is it profitable?
Replies
0
Views
1K
bulkwarrior
bulkwarrior
TwinWillowAcres
Help me with logistics, please
Replies
2
Views
619
TwinWillowAcres
TwinWillowAcres
judithkorff
Small commercial quail operation
Replies
4
Views
4K
TwoCrows
TwoCrows
call ducks
My view on heritage, how start breeding them, why they have little commercial value for farms and m
Replies
9
Views
2K
Elemes
Elemes
F
    • Like
    • Love
How Many Eggs Will My Hens Really Lay?
2 3 4
Replies
32
Views
17K
Fred's Hens
F

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom