By the time commercial production breeds have reached 18 months of age they are laying at less than 70%. Below is the information from Hendrix Genetics on ISA's.
http://www.isapoultry.com/Products/...2007-6a ISA Brown FP product performance.ashx
If you want figures on their other production breeds...
http://www.isapoultry.com/Products/ISA/ISA Brown.aspx
My experience with ISA's seems to reflect this info. So, like my past flocks from year to year, I raise up chicks each Spring (usually start laying in July if I get them around March 1) and sell off last year's hens in Aug/ Sept when the pullets are able to carry the load for my existing egg customers.
Then I usually pick up a few new egg customers in the Fall and through the holidays, seems to drop off in January, which is fine since egg production slows down anyway, then we start with new chicks all over again in March.
Feed here (northern NV) is running around $12-15 per 50 pounds and scratch is around $11 for 50 pounds.
I charged $2/dozen up until this January. Then I raised my prices for NEW customers to $3/dozen. Since egg customers have a tendency to come and go, within a year or so they will all be at $3. And if someone is loyal enough to hang around for longer then I will keep them at the original price until I just can't anymore. There is some great software available on the forum to keep track of what each egg is costing you by recording how many eggs you get each day and how much feed you are buying. This software has been able to keep me enlightened about what each egg is actually costing us so that we are charging enough to cover our costs. From the entire year of 2010 our monthly cost per egg ranged from 4 cents to 29 cents with an average for the year of 14 cents. That works out to $1.68/dozen. So $2/dozen was barely making it, I prefer not to deal with odd change when I deliver eggs, so we just went to $3/dozen...also as a hedge against the issue that feed cost is still rising and I don't want to raise prices twice in the same year. The egg price also needs to reflect any supplies needed as well as replacement chicks each year. Although, generally I can sell my flock of 18-month-old hens for about what the new chicks and their starter feed costs each Spring.
What you can charge really depends on where you live and how you market. At first my neighbors were all excited that we were going to have eggs to sell. (we live in semi-rural, suburban) So I put a sign on my mailbox when I had extra eggs and I couldn't even get ONE person to buy eggs for $2/dozen. But then a friend started buying our eggs, and happens to live closer into town in a wealthier housing area. Her neighbors are willing to fork over $4-6/dozen at Whole Foods Market for cage free brown eggs. So when I have excess at this point my friend puts the word out to her neighbors and getting $3/dozen is no problem. We also have a local breakfast cafe (small, family owned) and they will buy our eggs for $2/dozen...I drop off there when things really pile up...sometimes during the summer when egg customers are on vacation, whatever. Most of our customers are through work or business acquaintances (our accountant, dentist and staff, co-workers). And we try to arrange things so that we don't have to go out of our normal path to/from work to deliver eggs to them since gas has gotten so expensive. right now we have all of the egg customers we can handle with 21 laying hens, I get about 15-17 eggs per day, 9 dozen/week. I have standing weekly orders for 8 dozen with a few others that call ~monthly to see if we have extras to sell.
