Mom's in the egg business... well, amost

[therealshari]

It's been Mom's dream to have chickens all her grown life. So it was a "no-brainer" that we'd have chickens here on our little farm.

Well, Mom's chickens are growing up... fast!

Born April 23, she got her first egg today. It was laid on the well-padded floor in front of the waterers and near the feeders.

Sadly, Mom wasn't the first to find it. But we did leave it where we found it until she could get to the coop.

Now, Mom gets all the egg money, so you can be she's getting egg-sited. The four of us eat nearly 5 dozen eggs a week by the time she's done with all her baking and cooking, so it may be a while.

 

[lacyloo]

i cant wait for my chicks to start laying like the rest of the hens.

 

[bigzio]

Too much fun! Making money won't really happen, however the joy of being able to boycott the store eggs from abused caged chickens is priceless........ not to mention they are more nutrious, hands down.

bigzio

 

[greyfields]

You might be surprised about eggs. My profit margin on a dozen eggs is greater than on a pound of ground beef.

 

[Olive]

How much does a dozen eggs go for? I'm hoping to sell eggs too. My chicks were born April 26th, so hopefully it will be any day now.

 

[therealshari]

I'm going to encourage her to sell them for $2.50 for the first dozen. You return the carton, and it get's refilled for $2.00 a dozen.

That should help solve the carton issue.

We have a number of neighbors who will get free eggs in return for work they've done... probably a dozen or two a week for a year or longer.

We also have some neighbors who have already told us they want to buy eggs from us.

Other plans include putting a sign up on our corner. We get some traffic. Additionally, we will also use Craigslist.

Delivery is optional into town Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Those are the days one of us in town regularly.

 

[Standard Hen]

You get "traffic" Sheri? It looks like you are in the middle of gods country. I hope mom has enogh chickens to supply all these eggs!

 

[FamilyOfChickens]

Quote:
Whew, I was thinking the same thing. That's A LOT of chickens!!

It all depends on what people in your area are willing to pay for fresh eggs, I think. I'd start higher at three dollars or so (that's what we get for eggs my dad brings to work!), and if people don't buy at that price, gradually lower it. My dad works in a big city, so people are willing to pay more. Where we live, however, we get about 2 bucks.

 

[therealshari]

There's a woman about 2 miles from us, known as "the egg lady" who sells her eggs for either $1.50 or $1.25 when you supply the carton.

We don't intend to enter her market. She sells all she can produce, and there are still folks who can't buy eggs from her for one reason or another... generally her waiting list.

We'll take up that slack.

If eggs do well, we'll enlarge our coop and order more birds. We're prepared to incubate eggs and have experience candling (Bev was a USDA Certified egg candler in a past life), as well as a candler.

The one thing we can't do, is get to the organic certification as we don't have an adequate organic food supply. We do raise our birds in coop with a covered run that is five times the size of the coop.

We also provide them plenty of fresh veggies and fruit in addition to their layer ration.

We're adding artificial light figuring to turn it on about midnight and turn it off shortly after sunrise. That will allow the birds to bed down naturally at dusk (as early as 4:30pm here).

By adding the light in the middle of the night, that will also help provide a heat source for our sub zero nights.

Just to give you an idea of the finances, our two dozen birds eat about 50# of 16% layer mash a week at $12.75 per bag.

We'll have to sell 6 dozen eggs a week to almost pay for the feed. That's 72 eggs, or 3 eggs per week from each of our girls.

Our personal use is close to 4 dozen per week, and our "neighborly service" is another 3 dozen per week.

That means to be cover all our "egg needs" our girls will have to produce 13 dozen eggs a week, or just shy of two dozen a day... just under one egg per hen per day.

Even if we only have 5 dozen to sell, because we've met our personal needs, we'll be saving quite a bit of money.

 

[greyfields]

I sell at $3 per dozen from the farm or $3.50 at the market and $3.50 per dozen when I visit my home office in Seattle.

Be very careful when selling eggs off your premises. You can sell how you'd like from your farm door; but as soon as you start delivering eggs you are an egg vendor. The laws in each state comply with the USDA requirements which require you refrigerate, wash, grade, size and label eggs with nutritional information, your farm's name and contact information and a use-by date. You also may not re-use containers when selling off your farm. Our state also requires an egg stamp to go on each container of eggs we sell. To get the stamps, you're open to inspection at any time to verify you are storing the eggs separately from your domestic food, candling properly, sizing properly and grading properly.

The grading just plain sucks. The candling is stupid, too, becuase you're supposed to do it for every 500 or 1000 eggs. I don't think I've sold that many yet even. :0