How to price my eggs has been a huge headache for me. For one, I had been paying between $5-$7 for organic, free range eggs prior to getting my own chickens, and I didn't even blink. I was just thrilled to find them. When my chickens first began laying, the eggs were teeny tiny, so I charged $3 for a dozen because you really needed to use two eggs to get one. I had two hard-core customers at this point, and as the eggs became bigger, I kept thinking, hmmm, I should charge more, but I HATED the thought, and kept selling them for $3. Most of the time I would assure myself that it was fine, I wasn't in it for the money.
Then my sister, who was lower on the totem pole of customer because she lives further away and so someone else always got them first, started giving me $5 a dozen, so that I would hold them for her. And of course I did! I get between 9-12 eggs a day, and I really only have three regular "customers," one being my sister and then two other friends, who always take 2-4 dozen a week, but they don't want to pay $5! So I said fine, but I am actively seeking other customers, and THEY will take priority to you guys, who I have always provided as many eggs as they wanted, even limiting my own supply from time to time to meet their demands. Ridiculous that we have to have egg wars, but when I was out in the coop today, cleaning it, chasing down chicks in order to clean their winter-dirty butts, and watching them frolic in the grass that at last has no snow on it, I thought to myself WHY would I second guess the pricing of SUPERIOR eggs? My customers (friends!) know me, they know I am feeding them 100 percent organic, soy-free non-GMO food, that they are free-ranging on grass that has never seen any chemicals or fertilizer, ever, and that when I say they are fresh, I mean they just popped out of their little chutes fresh!
My new scheme to find new customers (friends!) has been to bring eggs to them in any way I can. Last night I went to dinner at a friend's house and brought them some eggs. They do not eat organic, so when I told them that I was selling them for $5, you could see that they thought I was nuts. (I did not charge them for the gifted eggs!) This morning I received a call that, after eating them for breakfast, they could clearly see that they were incomparable to the eggs they have been eating their whole lives, and they would like at least one dozen a week, for five dollars!
What is ironic is that my two cheapo friends DO buy organic, DO know the cost of their counterparts on the grocery store, but are trying to get away with it because they are friends. Hey, they aren't out there cleaning the coop!
I live in N.H.