Price of EGGS

[LittleBits]

Since this is about selling eggs, could anyone tell me if there are state regulations about it? Like say, do you have to candle them first? Grade them? If someone gets sick and says it was your eggs that did it - does anyone know anything about this kind of thing? Can you reuse the egg crates? If there is a different forum for this or if anyone has a link to find information, I'd appreciate it! New to this chicken-egg business! Thanks!

 

[dbear]

Each state has different regulations for egg sales. In KY you can sell 60 dozen per week in new or used containers before needing a permit. You can go online to your state ag dept and find all regs for your state.

 

[LittleBits]

Thank you, dbear. I'll do that! That's a lot of eggs - guess ii won't need to worry about selling too many!

 

[Ghetto Dunn]

I get 3.50 a dozen and sell 6 dozen a week. I can not keep up with are clients.

 

[SD Bird Lady]

I don't even bother selling mine. I use them to trade its more economical. Most people sell for $1.00 a dozen ( very rural everyone has chickens). That is cheaper than what you get icky eggs for at the store, $1.81. Yes cost of living is low in SD but so is pay. It all evens out haha

 

[Janiecoke]

I get 2.00 or 2.25 a doz in rural Ms. It helps with my feed costs.

 

[sparrker]

I get 3.50 for XL and jumbo, 3.00 for large. We live betwen Syracuse and Oswego NY and I am sold out of eggs everyday. I sell them at work and at my parents house which is on a fairly busy road in a higher income area. My parents have their farm and we still work 150 acres of land with crops, so it works out nice to sell eggs there. Also I have 70 laying hens and all the money is going into an account for our daughters, who are 3 and 5, to futher their education when they get older.

 

[LittleBits]

I am wondering if anyone has regulations in their state such as being required to candle the eggs, using new egg crates, or anything else that would maybe add to the expense or cost?

Or are these things necessary when you are selling to people you know: friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc...

I have found some regulations in our state but I don't know anyone who follows those rules. Haven't sold any eggs yet, because I need to work all this out. Would love to defray some of the feed costs. My but those chickens eat a lot, waste a lot, too.

 

[critterwhisper]

Once my girls start laying, i am charging $2.50 a dozen,unless they bring their own carton then its $2. I already have 6 families waiting for mine to start laying,also considering if i have a surplus of eggs thinking of setting up a the local farmers market.curious and gonna look up my state regulations also

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

I am wondering if anyone has regulations in their state such as being required to candle the eggs, using new egg crates, or anything else that would maybe add to the expense or cost?

Or are these things necessary when you are selling to people you know: friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc...

I have found some regulations in our state but I don't know anyone who follows those rules. Haven't sold any eggs yet, because I need to work all this out. Would love to defray some of the feed costs. My but those chickens eat a lot, waste a lot, too.

Depends on the state. Search your state's Revised Code and Administrative Code. Your state Farm Bureau might help you find laws, too. Finally, the municipality and the county where you want to sell eggs might have health department laws regarding retail egg sales. We have to mark out any markings on the cartons if we were to re-use cartons and we have to add labels with specific information on them. Because that looks terrible, we do use new cartons.

We do follow all applicable laws. Here is Ohio, that precludes us from selling eggs retail at farmer's markets. We'd need to keep the eggs below 40 degrees F, and some health departments near us want that to be in a mobile refrigerator which costs $$$, so there's no point selling them since our profit per carton is low. Some municipalities would want us to have a license, which would also kill our profits. Instead, we wholesale to a small grocery co-op. We still have lots of handling and labeling laws to follow.

With cartons costing us 30-40 cents each, our egg costs for a finished, washed dozen ends up to be around $2.73/dozen if you amortize over the whole year and remember to include the feed the hen eats while she's a pullet and moulting and not laying. We sell cartons wholesale for $3/dozen, and the store marks them up from there. We're sure not getting rich, but it means I keep my hens for free. We sell to a woman who then passes the eggs along to her customers at $4/dozen. We do sell to some friends for $3.50 dozen here and there, which I suppose is not strictly by the books since we deliver the eggs to them. We also have drive-up customers and sell to them for $3.50 which is legal since they buy them on the premises where they are produced.

I'd love to sell some of our meat birds, but Ohio law stops me from doing that unless the customer comes here, picks out a chicken, and takes it home alive OR we do the processing on site and the customer comes here to pick them up. But since we figured out we were making $1/chicken and that $1 sure as heck didn't compensate us for having to process the chicken, we only do meat birds for ourselves and pay someone else to process them. But since they are processed off the property, I can't sell them under Ohio law. Blah.