How to calculate how much eggs are costing?

[igorsMistress]

When I calculated my costs per dozen I didn't include my coop cost. It was a one time expense. I do include maintenance costs for litter and a fresh coat of paint and that's not much.

I ferment feed and weighed out what I use daily. Then counted the eggs until that bag of food was gone. I tracked added treats and scratch during that time too.

In order to know what it costs though, you really need to track for a full year or longer; egg production drops in winter but you're still feeding the birds.

 

[Circle W Farms]

Thanks for everyone's replies they are very eye opening. I have my SCDA egg permit so I can sell to restaurants in SC. The restaurants that I am looking to sell to are little mom and pop operations that are using about 300 eggs a week. Now with all ya'll advice I will have to figure out if I can make money or not

 

[K813ZRA]

Well, if you consider my feed costs in total I am at about $4 a dozen because I lose on the duck eggs and they eat a lot of feed, a lot. If you factor out the ducks and consider feed costs only I am probably at about $2 a dozen for my own eggs based off of feed. But I sell about 14 dozen a week at $2 so I make $28 a week in the heavy laying months. However I pay $0.50 for an empty egg carton so that is minus $7 a week. So after that cost I am at around $84 dollars a month on the eggs that I sell. I pay $56 a month for feed. So you would think that puts me at $28 a month ahead for selling my eggs, right? Well, as I said I also have ducks and their eggs do not sell in this area and I can not eat all of these eggs myself and they eat almost twice as much as a chicken but I only have half as many so it is about a wash. I spend at least that $28 a month in feed on my chickens.

Now, I do get compost from my birds too so that is helpful. They also eat things like ticks and other bug. They bring me and my wife and even some of my neighbors joy etc. Plus I have plenty of eggs to eat, give to family and sell to recover some feed cost.

So at the end of the day what do I pay for a dozen eggs at home? I have no idea. If you consider feed, probably nothing because I sell eggs. However, I have three 'coops' with about a total of about $2500 into them plus the cost of electricity for raising new birds and you name it. So I am probably going to always be $2500 in the hole because I can not recoup that cost due to the fact that selling eggs is a wash.

Having said all of that, my eggs taste better and I like having chickens. So much so that I am raising another 100 this year...lol. This gets more and more expensive each season.

 

[aart]

Thanks for everyone's replies they are very eye opening. I have my SCDA egg permit so I can sell to restaurants in SC. The restaurants that I am looking to sell to are little mom and pop operations that are using about 300 eggs a week. Now with all ya'll advice I will have to figure out if I can make money or not

Best of Luck to you!
Please do come back and update this thread,
when you know if it will work out ....or even if it doesn't.

 

[Faraday40]

How do you pull that off...do you really know which hen laid which egg??

You have a very cool thing going, great marketing, and great skills to be teaching your daughter and at the schools. Either she's tiny girl or that cockbird is HUGE....Beautiful! Kudos great post.
Now, do you keep meticulous records as to costs and sales ...or not so much?

My DD's 5'4". Our English orps are jaw-dropping HUGE. (Especially the lav & blk/lav splits. Hens are about 9-10lbs)

We can tell the diff hens' eggs by their eggshell color & shape. It helps that we have 10-15 hens and not 50. We also have a mixed flock, but purebred orp roo. The 3 new orps who hatched last summer are tricky since they just started laying, so for now, they just get "orp" written on the egg. The neighbor kids LOVE the bantams, so they're always picking out the cute little eggs. I guess it's a specialty market, and I doubt I'd ever sell them otherwise. LOL

When DS was 3 he insisted on only eating HIS chicken's eggs. We always let him pick out his breakfast egg and laughed about it until the day we ate out at a restaurant. He asked for a hard-boiled egg. When he took a bite, it fell from his mouth & he began to cry, saying, "I wanted a REAL egg." That's when I realized he had never eaten a store egg. The waitress brought him another & we got to experience the same but louder & more intense reaction. He's 8, so I now get to remind him of his egg tantrum every time we go out to eat.

We keep very detailed candling & hatching records. (Mostly because the hatchings are usually part of a sci experiment.) We also separate the incubator eggs at lockdown into little "chick jails", and then leg band or mark the chicks with food coloring/Crayola marker after hatch. When someone buys a chick, they know the exact time/day of hatch as well as the individual parents.

I do not keep very detailed records of costs & income. It's more of an envelop system. We have a pet budget that also includes 2 100+lb dogs. The chicken envelop earns enough to feed the flock & the dogs, plus I like to use a little of it buy a new fruit tree or bush or a few perennials each year. The dogs are now 11 & 10 years old, so the dogs' vet bills can no longer be covered by the flock. ( If I included the coop cost, there would only be loss. LOL)

If you count my time, I'd lose money on teaching at the schools. It's a labor of love. Before I had my own kids, I used to hatch every year in my middle school sci classroom. Each grade had a diff focus. I miss teaching, so it's one way I can give back. I have a lot of fun with the little ones and enjoy their questions & stories. Think of it as "chicken therapy" but with a lot of words. Most suburban kids have never seen a chicken. You'd be surprised how many people think that a rooster is needed for a hen to lay eggs or the confusion over simple terms like chicken, hen, & rooster.

My classes often start out with a conversation like this:
What's a chicken?
a chicken lays eggs
So does a hen lay eggs?
yes, a hen is another name for chicken
Well is a rooster a chicken?
No because he doesn't lay eggs.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

I also label each egg with the hen's name & date laid.

I do this also... people (my neighbors) really like it.

And yes, I can tell them apart since I worked hard to make a pretty basket. Not true for my pure breeds though.

I also am considering expanding into the school hatching market. Mostly as a way to gives some kids who may never see a chicken in their life the opportunity for such a fun and exciting learning experience.

One thing I wish to mention... my home owners insurance takes issue with me selling ANY of my products even if I make zero $. They want me to get a farm policy or to sign a farming exclusion! They don't care that I operate within the rules of not being considered a producer but only considered a back yarder by authorities and the exemptions provided.

When does it change from a hobby to being report able as income? And when it is... food doesn't get sales taxed (CA), so I won't have to collect tax... but when I do file my standard return for income taxes... it cost me about 12% to the feds and 7% to the state. So they would let you take out the cost of your building/expenses and even claim a loss for the first 2-3 years where you get a credit towards your total income if you have any. But there after the government would get 19% of my take. Which if your making money... some is better than none.

Anyways... what part of this is a hobby that keeps me sane and NOT postal... don't they understand?!

I will work hard to make sure I stay within hobby guidelines to avoid all the extra bureaucratic crud. But this is PART of what keeps me from getting NPIP, even though I feel it would fit my goals better and I would like to have a KNOWN clean flock.

Oh, to be a kid again and not know this stuff!
Except not really.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

I have my SCDA egg permit so I can sell to restaurants in SC.

One way you might be able to save on feed cost... is by asking these restaurants to save their veg scraps from prepping for you. I have one that is willing, but with my birds already free range ( is my biggest savings. and less than 10% savings from doing fermented feed, but way more than 10% of my time wasted, no longer do it)... And veg stuff isn't really all that nutritious in my opinion... but if your birds aren't able to free range, it might be an option.

Sprouting is also a good choice... but savings and increase in weight is ALSO exaggerated there if read the actual studies.

Also have to count the cost of your permit if there was one. Good for you for doing your homework and ALREADY having it!

My goals have changed so many times. Hope you have fun and it works out great for you!

 

[bruceha2000]

How do you pull that off...do you really know which hen laid which egg??

I do, one of the reasons I have several breeds and only 17 hens, some of which don't lay much anymore. Besides shape, size, color, markings some of my girls prefer certain nests. It is only an issue for me when new pullets begin to lay, then I need to be observant to who is in the nest and what their egg looks like. For a period of time, the "source" of an egg can be a mystery.

Besides date laid and hen name, I put the weight in grams on each egg. Not important if you have store eggs that are all the same USDA size (for example Large is > 57g, < 65g) but when some girls are laying in the low 50s, some mid 50s to low 60s and some in the high 60s and low 70s, the equivalent of 2 Large eggs is easy to figure out when they are individually labeled. For instance, only 1 of my Exchequer Leghorns is currently laying and her eggs are 44-46g. 3 of those equals 2 USDA Large.

consider feed costs only I am probably at about $2 a dozen for my own eggs based off of feed. But I sell about 14 dozen a week at $2 so I make $28 a week in the heavy laying months.

How does one make money if the eggs cost them $2/dozen to produce and sells them for $2/dozen?

When he took a bite, it fell from his mouth & he began to cry, saying, "I wanted a REAL egg." That's when I realized he had never eaten a store egg. The waitress brought him another & we got to experience the same but louder & more intense reaction. He's 8, so I now get to remind him of his egg tantrum every time we go out to eat.

There are other things one can have for breakfast when away from home Of course one has to have priorities. Some of the other options are waffles, pancakes and French Toast. These are inedible with fake maple syrup so unless there is an acceptable "fruit syrup", none are something I would order. Corned beef hash is good

One thing I wish to mention... my home owners insurance takes issue with me selling ANY of my products even if I make zero $. They want me to get a farm policy or to sign a farming exclusion!

Who is your carrier? I would have an issue with Liberty Mutual if my profits from egg sales hit some percentage of my total income. I can't imagine how many eggs I would have to sell to make even 0.1% of the amount of money we need to make to pay the bills.

 

[wcbpolish]

Instead of going by week I go by 'bag cycle'...how long it takes them to go thru a full bag of feed.

Thanks for posting the photo of spreadsheet. I keep a spreadsheet too, but it is monthly, but there is a column for eggs produced by species. Helps me visualize/plan when to save hatching eggs.

You can make daily tally marks on a calendar....a BYC calendar that is hanging in the kitchen.
Collect eggs for the day and mark them immediately on said calendar.

I also keep a calendar next to where I wash eggs. Record number of eggs by species, and on the back page is a tally of how many of each type of predator I have "removed" from the farm during the year- possum, coon, skunk, etc. I do this because I want to know if I'm making an impact on the population in the long run - will numbers be the same year to year (this is year #1 of doing this, BTW)

Start your egg prices as high as you can for your area,
easier to reduce price later if necessary,
than increase it because you're losing money.

I sort of agree... but not entirely. But it IS easier to lower prices than to raise them! My old customers kept their pricing, newer ones pay more now. New customers sometimes get "sale price" which is the same as the old customers pay... when I need to move some eggs. I plan to raise prices at the beginning of next school year (most of my customers are teachers that I work with... I think in terms of school years rather than calendar years.

Oh... and for the record, I LOST $250 last year on the poultry... and that's not counting electric. :-(
But I was building pens, etc as we had just moved back to the farm

 

[bruceha2000]

So, if I'm calculating my egg costs, I need to amortize that fixed cost of $600 over some time interval. Tax and accounting rules give us varying time intervals to use. But a really convenient interval is to consider the entire 'producing' lifetime of the six hens. If I say they're all reasonably good layers, producing 500 eggs in a lifetime before they're "retired," then I'll get 3000 eggs from them before my coop building cost is depreciated

Accelerated depreciation? Doesn't seem reasonable to depreciate the coop based on the productive lifespan of the first 6 hens that use it. It can house dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands of hens over decades and still be a useful structure.