Little brag moment :D And a question too

[AmyLM]

Well its official. I went from having zero eggs a month ago to selling 170 eggs in a day and a half (thanks to my husband being lazy and not selling any while I was gone for a week to my grampas funeral). Well... Now seeing the Scratch Jar filling up rather quickly (egg money goes to buy feed.. hence scratch jar) he has no decided that maybe 36 hens (many are bantams) just aren't enough. LOL SERIOUSLY!!

He said we should expand the planed remodel on the barn to house more egg layers. He wants easter eggers and cuckoo marans because we only have 1 EE and he LOVES her huge green eggs.

How did this go from my little suggestion of "lets get a few chickens since we now live outside city limits" suddenly become "lets find a rental property and raise organic free range birds because obviously there is a huge demand...

*watching my husband go chicken crazy is so entertaining!*

Ok here is the questions:

1. If we DO go all out and rent a place to raise birds for eggs and possibly meat *not sure* is there a way to do it cost effectively that stays organic and cruelty free? We want to keep our prices down but also not go bankrupt in the process.

2. What are other breeds that lay 'fun colored' eggs? Our customers are going INSANE for non-white eggs.

 

[ChicKat]

Nice story AmyLM,

Some Welsumers lay terra cotta eggs with dark brown speckles. Henderson's chicken chart gives info about breeds and their egg colors:

http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html

selling 170 eggs in one day is certainly a lot of eggs!

 

[Daisy8s]

You must have quite a customer base if you could sell that many eggs in one week. Congrats!

A couple of thoughts before you invest money into expanding, though.
1. Consider how you'll cope when the layers stop laying during their molt.
2. Will you add artificial light in the winter when laying declines--if so, add this into your costs.
3. When your first birds begin to age and their laying declines you'll need room to raise up the next generation of birds. It'd be best to have birds at all ages--pullets, 1-yr-olds, 2-yr-olds, etc so that some are hitting their peak laying while others are declining. Where will you house the young birds until they're ready to start laying?
4. How will you get your next generation--will you have a rooster and allow some hens to go broody or will you invest in an incubator, or will you purchase new stock each year? If you are purchasing new stock how will you ensure that no diseases are introduced to your flock?
5. A bigger flock means more manure--if you want to be organic perhaps you could compost it and sell it as another product of the farm. If you do this be sure you build the composting area well so it's easy to manage and consider how you'll package it.
6. Regarding your questions about cost effectiveness and being cruelty free--free ranging addresses both of these concerns. But, you will need lots of room to do this to an extent that it actually cuts down on your feed bill while maintaining healthy birds. You can put birds into "tractors" so they are protected from predators. Look up Joel Salatin for ideas about building those tractors, though there are lots of other ideas out there also.

Good luck!