Our girls aren't quite old enough to lay yet but I was interested in hearing something from people that sell their extra eggs. There are just the 2 of us in our home but with the new chicks we're getting next month, eventually we could have up to 19 egg layers, way too many eggs for us to eat! I was wondering how much you all get for a dozen eggs in your part of the world. How do you find your customers? Where do you get your cartons for packaging the eggs (online company, donated from friends/family, feed store)? If you clean up the eggs before selling, what do you clean them with? Really, just anything that you would like to share about your experiences with selling eggs would be interesting to me. Thanks!
NorthFLchick, Welcome to the chicken world! Price: Before I started selling my extra eggs, I did a search on craigslist to see how much I should ask. For me I sell my eggs for $3 a dozen and most of my customers ask me why I'm not selling for more. If you take a look in the grocery store for brown eggs, they are anywhere from $5-7 in my area. I also did some research and picked up a couple dozen from a local farmer that sold theirs for $2.50.. but I found that they didn't candle them and I purchased 1 dozen that had 6 eggs cracked. I always candle my eggs and only sell good clean eggs. Plus, the larger ones, I just keep anything sub-par for myself. Cleaning: I do it 2 different ways, depending on how clean the eggs are. If relatively clean I just wash with water. If quite discusting I first wash with water and then rinse in water with a splash of clorine. That may sound odd, but about 20 years ago I had a new pump put in my well, when the guys came out to do the work, they dropped in a handful of clorine tables to purify the water after all the work they had done. Customers: I have more that I can handle. I sell mine at work and once word gets around that you have eggs, people stop by to see if I have any. Cartons: Once people find out that you sell eggs, whether they buy them or not they will start saving you egg cartons, clean and dirty they show up at your door. I have also purchased 100 cartons from a company on line, but have rarely used them. I have not sold eggs from a farm stand/refrigerator. I have heard stories that once you do that people think they have the right to walk on your property to check out your chickens. One friend of my DH had unsavory people wandering around his property (at least that was his friends words) If I ever get to the point of selling from my farm I will find a way that the people enter and leave the property, in a loop so there is no way for them to drive through and get out. If anyone has stories of selling eggs from their property, I would interested in hearing about it... do you run into people wandering on your property? Do they steal your money? Smash your eggs? I assume that the FL = Florida? If so, keep your weather warm cause I'm headed down there in April... and I'm so tired of our cold weather here! Good luck with your chickens.
I sell mine at a beer joint that I attend regularly. I know a LOT of people because I've lived in the same place for almost 50 years and everybody knows that I have chickens & quail. These people are older, upper scale city people that think a homegrown egg is just plain neat and are willing to pay for the novelty. The average person doesn't care or complains about paying $1.96 per dozen @ WalMart. I don't do business at my home because I don't want people coming by scooping out my place, then coming back later to steal all my stuff. I rinse the eggs with warm, almost hot water and store them in the fridge. I hit the ones with poop stains with a nail brush because nobody likes crappy eggs. If you keep clean straw in the nest and collect eggs several times daily it lets you gather cleaner eggs. I also warn people to crack eggs in a separate bowl, not straight into what they cooking, because there could be a surprise inside the egg. I'm not going to pay .50c - $1 for an empty egg carton. The sellers on sleazeBay that sell 50 used cartons for $25 then charge you another $25 to ship them can go pound sand, as well as the retailers with their 25 cartons @ $27 with free shipping. I have plenty of friends out there who will save me their grocery store cartons for free. I start out by giving away 4 or 5 dozen eggs. Each dozen will be an assortment 80 gram jumbos, large, med, even 30 gram peewees and be white, brown and blue eggs, whatever I happen to have on hand at the time. That way people can make up their mind what they want to buy. Write your name on an empty carton and give it to me and I'll bring it back filled with eggs in the next day or so and if your not there I'll leave it in the cooler. $5 dozen Brown Jumbos, $3 dozen XL/Large, $2 dozen med & smaller. I can't furnish a steady supply right now, just a few random dozen per week but it pays for the feed and gives me something to do.
Sell our eggs at work and to friends for 2.50 doz. That's just enough to pay for feed an scratch. Also get all my egg cartons from them and there family. Will once and a great while put add on Craigslist to trade 1 doz. eggs for doz cartons but not that often. Wash my eggs in warm to hot water then store in frig. If one is just a little dirty I'll use a sponge with scotch brite pad on one side. If the eggs was found under roost or to dirty It gets tossed away.
I sell for $3.50/dz, higher end of going rate around here, I don't have a lot so sell just to a few friends/acquaintances. I don't wash or refrigerate eggs, I keep the coop floor shavings dry and nest straw changed out so unless it's really muddy out they're clean most the time, my customers know this and don't seem to mind....whether they wash before use and/or storage, I don't know. If I do get dirty eggs I wash, scrub with both hands under warm water, air dried and refrigerate for my own use. They sell pretty quickly, within a week of lay usually and it pretty much covers the eggs I eat and my basic feed costs. Cartons get reused.
