Egg Business

[Dray67]

My wife post how many dozen we have on Saturday as her facebook status and people from church replay that they want them. We deliever them to church on sunday. It seems easy.

 

[Kat'sChicks]

I started selling to locals/friends 2 years ago just by word of mouth. The business I manage sells products at farmers markets and I got some inquiries about fresh eggs there and began delivering to them while I was at market. Word got out to one of our larger customers and they contracted with me for "all the eggs I could supply"

which was tough with 20 pullets at the time. I have 35 girls right now and 25 chicks on the way in Feb., but that's not enough for NOW.
What I did was contact my local 4H groups to see if any of the kids had chickens laying and if they'd like to make a few bucks (kids always like to make money LOL). One of them is doing a large project and currently has 120 hens/pullets, so I've landed a good source of eggs. They're raised just like mine (free-range) and fed organic feed from the same farm, and he's charging me 50 cents/dozen! I'm getting $3.00/doz. from my big customer for a standing order of 40 doz./week and another that gets 15 doz./week.
I honestly wasn't looking for this kind of business; only wanted to have eggs for my family and a few extra plus just enjoy having chickens, but it's become a fun little business. I'm getting licensed by the state this spring and am working on NPIP as well. So far my county extension has said I don't have to worry about taxes etc. and my tax lady concurs. We'll look at it this fall and decide if we're officially going into business or backing off (I'll let the 4H'er take over as the next step of his project).
We have a huge "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" push here now that's really made my eggs and produce a hot commodity!