Egg Price Profiteering Where You Live Due To Coronovirus?

[TSP]

With the whole corona virus thing, I saw this and have to wonder...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/27/health/chicken-egg-flu-vaccine-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

 

[gtaus]

Store bought eggs were $0.88/doz, brown "cage free" eggs were $2.00/doz and "organic" "cage-free" were up to $3.50/doz. I have not seen an increase yet.

Don't get me started on the BS labels of "cage-free" "organic " etc. It's just marketing.

Anyways, local farm fresh eggs can be found on almost any road you drive down around here. The locals sell for $1.50-$2.00/dozen.

I don't sell mine but give extras to friends, family, and neighbors.

I keep track of every egg laid valued at $2.00/doz and every expense. Surprisingly enough, i get enough eggs from march-october from 9 hens to pay for their feed (free range birds eat a lot of things other than feed when its available). Unfortunately, they more than make up for it from nov-feb when they eat me out of house and home. Luckily, thats when the meat harvests come in to save my budget!

I agree on the labels. Anyway, I know what I feed my chickens and they have a pretty good life. In return, they give me lots of good eggs some of which Dear Wife and I enjoy, the excess we sell for buying more commercial feed.

When I first starting getting eggs, I gave some to family, but they never seemed to appreciate the eggs and never asked for more. So Dear Wife started selling eggs to her friends for $2.00 a dozen and the friends are very happy. They are asking for more eggs than we have available and are thankful for what we can sell.

I just made it through my first winter with laying hens, and I was getting about 180 eggs per month for 10 hens. Not too bad. Now that the weather is warming up, I am getting over 210 eggs per month.

I also have a spreadsheet that I track every egg laid, by weight and color. Even though we sell our eggs for $2.00 per dozen, I have been "fake" selling our eggs back to myself at $4.00 per dozen (local store prices for pasture eggs) to knock down my initial high expenses last year of building a coop and run, feed, plus misc equipment I had to buy. I never got chickens to make money, but it looks better for me if I see the cost per egg going down in price on my spreadsheets.

One thing I did all this past winter was grow barley fodder for my chickens. It was just a supplemental to their commercial feed, but I thought they really appreciated the fresh green barley fodder every morning. Anyway, growing barley fodder is a very inexpensive way to add some variety to their diet and it's all good for them. Now that spring is coming, I plan on planting some barley seeds under grazing frames and try growing it that way until next fall.

 

[gtaus]

Where all do you live, all your price are very low, I bought eggs from bakyard raiser in my area, they all sell 5 dollars/dozen pre and in the pandemic

I live in northern Minnesota. The eggs prices at the big box stores, pre-pandemic, were less that $1.00 per dozen white eggs, up to about $6.00 per dozen for the brown eggs labeled "organic." Now, if you can find eggs on the shelf, you can expect to pay double the pre-pandemic prices.

 

[gtaus]

I guess somewhere there is a warehouse full of eggs and toilet paper

I was wondering about that too, however, I recently saw a business news report on the toilet paper issue. Here is what I learned.

Household toilet paper is made by different companies then commercial toilet paper suppliers who sell to schools, restaurants, etc... The companies selling toilet paper to stores for household use were already operating at, or near, 100% capacity. So when the pandemic hit and there was a run on toilet paper in the stores, they had no excess capacity to turn out more toilet paper. It would not make sense for them to build more factories to produce more household toilet paper because we don't expect this pandemic to last forever.

On the other hand, the companies selling toilet paper for commercial use have a stock pile of toilet paper that they cannot sell. Evidently, it would take far too long to work out contracts for the household stores (WalMart, Target, Menards, etc...) and besides, households don't really want to buy the commercial quality toilet paper. Household toilet paper if far softer, and thicker.

I think, after reading some of the posts on this thread, that there are egg sellers that have supply contracts with commercial businesses (restaurants, etc.) but no contracts to sell to the WalMarts, Tagets, local grocery stores, etc... Probably a similar situation as the toilet paper issue, except that eggs have a shelf life so I would think nobody wants to warehouse eggs.

 

[gtaus]

LOL,LOL! Why don't you let your wife know that the Hen Party Union will only let them lay one a day and by the way, they need a 'paid' vacay with mealworms each day!

Honest to God, Dear Wife thought that if I maybe doubled the amount of feed to the hens every day, then we could get twice as many eggs to sell to her friends.

 

[gtaus]

I have sold mine through a local farm store. He paid me $2 and charged $3, which people were happy to pay even before this recent supply chain disruption. He is retiring and closing the store. Usually though, I donate them, to the local “Mission” or “Rural Ministry.,” which both have a food pantry. Most recently I gave 126 (7 cartons of 18) to a family with twelve children. I like giving them away and when I was still working I could absorb the feed cost. Now that I am retired the cost is significant. But so long as I can do it, I will.

There are a lot of unsung heroes on this BYC forum donating eggs to charities. That is great. I am "semi-retired" and my $2.00 per dozen eggs sold pays for my commercial feed costs. So I pretty much break even at the end of the month. That's all I care about. I never got chickens to make money and knew that would not be possible when eggs sold locally for as little as 88 cents per dozen at the big box store (pre-pandemic).

 

[gtaus]

I'm not SELLIN any eggs right now, because I quarantined myself on my compound ….. BUT if you call first, and bring me a pack of smokes, your eggs will be waiting at the top of the driveway !

The response has been good ! So much for quitting !!

Because I care, I encourage everyone to consider to quit smoking. But I don't want to preach about it. Given the price of smokes these days, I imagine you are bartering up in value.

 

[gtaus]

The egg price issue has nothing to do with eggs or chickens. It has to do with the mills. Look the feed most of us use is a processed product. The mills that produce that feed are shutdown due to the virus. "But I can get feed in the stores!" Yes and no. Again, for the large producers who buy product by the semi load, they will see the affects first. We on the retail side have a short benefit that the logistics have an inventory of feed. Eventually we will be affected as well.

No feed, then the egg producers are sending their flocks to slaughter IF there is a processor open. With no feed, no eggs. This problem is playing out in the beef industry as well. The fact is we could be in a world of hurt. I have been keeping a keen eye on the virus situation in relation to the MidWest. The average age of a farmer is 66 which is in the target range for those most impacted by CoVid19. Spring planting is coming up shortly. Think the worst sort of Murphy scenario and it could be very bad for us all.

I have increased the amount of feed on hand should we have a retail shortage.

Fortunately for me, our local feed mill seems to be unaffected by any shutdowns. Having said that, I do have about a 3 month supply of feed on hand - just in case....

 

[gtaus]

Agriculture is exempt from the shutdown. If the feed plants shut down, it's because they want to. Ask me how I know. I found out 3-4 weeks ago that I'm an essential employee. Today is 15 days straight averaging 50-60 hours a week. And I've never gotten paid for my eggs either. I raise them for my family and give the excess away. I told my wife that my chickens are a money-losing proposition!

I am very thankful that Dear Wife is able to sell our excess eggs to her friends. That is enough to pay for our feed costs and Dear Wife and I always have fresh eggs for ourselves too. A win-win for everybody as her friends really appreciate my fresh eggs.

 

[gtaus]

My son took us to Duluth once. Amazing altitude and views. Are you near there? Son lives down in Plymouth Minn. He's not too impressed with my chickens! HaHa!

I'm more north central Minnesota. Duluth is a 3 hour drive for me. Yeah, city people sometimes don't get too impressed with the way food is actually grown/raised. You don't have to think about it until the shelves are empty.