Egg Price Profiteering Where You Live Due To Coronovirus?

[gtaus]

No kidding. I mean, Im not looking to " cash in" on the egg scarcity in the stores, but I was hoping Maybe Id get some replies, neighbors or friends, would ask me for eggs. Nope. Ive been throwing out eggs or feeding them back to the chickens for months. Long before the virus pandemic.

Maybe where you live has everything to do with the demand for eggs. Where I live, the egg shelves are empty, but if they do stock the shelves, you are limited to 1 dozen eggs. Dear Wife gets more requests for eggs than my 10 hens can supply, so we have to limit our friends so everyone gets some.

 

[gtaus]

We have 11 chickens. we get 10-12 eggs a day. Hubby and I eat about 10 a week. The rest goes to the congregation and to those who can't afford them. For free.

I hope Dear Wife does not see your post!! How do you get 12 eggs a day from 11 chickens?

As I posted earlier, Dear Wife had this idea that if I somehow doubled the feed ration, that we could double our egg production per day.

 

[gtaus]

Seriously in the long run, I want the world to get back to where it was before.

+1. I think it will happen, but it may take longer than we wish. Until we have testing available to track the disease, and a vaccine to treat people, I think we might be in type of hold pattern for some time.

 

[RoosterML]

In my defense, I raise really beautiful chickens, lol! That’s a joke, I’ve never met an “ugly “ chicken! Or duck or goose for that matter.

Not true!! Silkies are ugly and I don’t even think they really fall under the chicken umbrella.

 

[gtaus]

Wow, I have a really different experience! I’m in northern MN, about an hour and a half north west of Duluth “city”. I have had chickens for 10 years or so. I have enjoyed the information on BYC, but I’ve never had much to say. I have NEVER charged for eggs. I don’t advertise. People see the chickens in my yard (I’m on a “highway “ but it’s not a major road by any means, and my driveway is technically on the intersecting dirt road) and they just ask for eggs. They always pay me, even my cute little grandma gets insulted if I tell her no! (We worked it out, so she pays the kids for collecting eggs) I have always lived in about the same area (12 miles from where I grew up) and word spread fast when I first got chickens, and people were paying (even when I explained I don’t charge for eggs) up to $6 a dozen and I just couldn’t keep up with demand. I felt so miserable telling good people I didn’t have any eggs! and that is the sum total of my chicken drama, and the first experience I really have to post about. Wow!

I have no idea how human nature works, and maybe it's just a matter of different people are different. When I gave away eggs for free, to family and friends, they did not really seem to appreciate it and never asked for more. So Dear Wife started selling our excess eggs to her friends and asking $2.00 per dozen. They were more than willing to pay the asking price and keep on asking for more. Even pre-pandemic. Anyway, I personally feel better about people getting my eggs that they appreciate. Getting $2.00 per dozen eggs covers my feed costs and Dear Wife and I essentially get our eggs for free. It's a true win-win for everybody.

FYI, Dear Wife and I would gladly donate free eggs to someone who could not afford to pay. Fortunately for us, and our friends, everyone is still in a position to afford paying for eggs. But the real thing I like is that the people we sell our eggs to are very happy with our eggs and appreciate them.

 

[BD17]

We currently have 4 laying hens. (We had 5 but something got into the coop last week and stole one of our girls ) My husband has been selling our eggs for $3.00 a dozen to his co-workers. One of his co-workers asked if we had eggs about 2 weeks ago and of course we did. His son in Maryland was unable to get eggs for his kids up their. When he finally found a pack the store wanted $6.00 a dozen. The co-worker bought 2 dozen eggs from us for $5.00 and took them to his son's house (this was before our stay at home order). I could not believe how much the stores up their were charging for eggs. Like many of you we do not expect profit from our eggs. We donate eggs to our elderly neighbors and have provided them to cub scout camp outs (another scout family have chickens to and bring eggs as well) free of charge.

 

[Mtnboomer]

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.

I keep track on Excel every penny spent on the chickens, ducks (when we had them), the garden, and hunting. I then keep track of every egg laid by date and location, every vegetable harvested, and every pound of wild game harvested. Then I use comparable prices at our local grocery store to determine value.

At the end of the year, hunting more than pays for itself and always has so it is calculated separately.

The garden produces over $1k a year in fresh veggies. This is enough to cover any short comings of the chickens which usually are close to breaking even if they don't (eggs +meat).
We just bought our house 3 yrs ago and so had to start over from scratch meaning new chicken coop, new duck pen, brooders, garden, and garden security (8ft fence). After this season, hopefully, we should be in the black for all of it. Thats about when my wife wants to add goats to our farm. Once we are in black from that, horses.

 

[Rammy]

I really don't like it when people use fear mongering. Food production is a necessary business. So is transportation. If people get sick it might slow things down a bit but there's not going to be a shortage. Everyone was screaming about the meat packing plants closing. Not all are closing so while you might not get to eat a huge Tbone every night for dinner and have to figure out how to stretch things, we don't have a lot to worry about. Not to mention, most of the US could stand to lose a few pounds anyway.


Oh man, you brought back some childhood memories there! My mom used to make the same sandwich spread

Do you have Nextdoor in your area? I put an ad on there for free eggs. I got 2 responses. I'm thinking about changing the ad to charge $2 or $3 and see what happens.

I tried nextdoor but where I live it says there was no community ? But I would be notified if one started I think thats what it said. If someone wanys my eggs Id be more than happy to give them away just so they dont go to waste. Last time I was in a store there were some eggs but not alot left and think it said there was a limit bit not sure.
Maybe I'll check nextdoor again

 

[Rammy]

Don't use market place, don't use 'sale' posts.
Just use a 'discussion' post with no words suggesting sales or costs,
pic of eggs and say 'PM for details'.
Some folks use memes for the sensitive words.

Mine would get posted after I disputed it because Id argue there were dozens of other eggs for sale on there so why cant I post one too? Then it would post.
I left FB months ago because of the drama and FB deleting or banning animals groups like some of the meat rabbit discussion groups because peta$$ now owns stock in it. Even groups about pets, lgd, and reptile groups suddenly disappeared that were on there for years. One group I was in had over 40k members. Gone.

 

[Rammy]

Have you spoken to any local mom and pop shops? Try Facebook if CL isn’t working for you.

No. But thought Id check with some food banks in the area.