Info On Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, & Other Poultry.
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How much do yall charge for a dozen medium/large eggs? My mom was thinking $1 per dozen.

I live in Massachusetts and we get 2.50 per doz. that is a good price here for fresh eggs.

Depends on your location. Some can easily get $5/dozen. Too many feel they have to compete with the cheap stores. They don't realize they have something special to sell.

In OK, that's what we sell our eggs for. Brown eggs usually sell for more. Sometimes we sell our larger eggs for $1.25-$1.50 Egg prices have gone up considerably. They used to be $0.89 for a dozen of white eggs! Now they are $1.39! It's a little ridiculous!

Rogo16 This is what you said Depends on your location. Some can easily get $5/dozen. Too many feel they have to compete with the cheap stores. They don't realize they have something special to sell. So what do you sell your eggs for? Or do you even sell eggs? With all your super laying hens you should have lots of extra eggs. Just curious. Rog Oh and Southwest USA is where ?

We sell our brown, blue, green and white "organic, range free" eggs for $3 to city-slickers here. Funny thing is that the chickens are "free range" because they have a big backyard to run around in. The feed is organic from our local feed store.

Our chickens are for enjoyment not as a money maker - the money we do make goes towards movies and ice cream.

Hello,

Can´t help but underline what Rogo16 said!

Fanciers are NOT egg-producers, they have special hens that lay special eggs. To give away 10 eggs under 3 EUR is a shame. If people don´t want to pay for quality they should go and buy somewhere else, just my opinion.

We seldom sell surplus eggs, and we get 3.00 to 5.00 EUR (3.70 to 6.17 USD) per carton containing 10 eggs, we don´t even sell our bantam eggs for less. People here are happy to have the possibility to buy "true tasting" eggs, if they want cheap "flat tasting" eggs they go to a store. We have one friend who says his children love to eat our eggs so much he willingly pays 7 EUR (8.64 USD) per carton;-)

This said i have to add we DO NOT make any profit by selling our eggs!

We spend WAY more money on our chickens so we don´t earn a single cent by selling some of our eggs. We drive every single sick chicken (and also every single sick chick) to the vet and we never leave under 50 bucks there, this month (like almost every other month) we paid more than 100.00 EUR (123.40 USD) only for the vet;-(

We don´t kill our roosters but keep and feed them, we buy fresh salad (a carton for 7.00 EUR per week) and raisins for our flock. We buy vegetables and fruits worth minimum 10 bucks per week for our flock. We buy lots of grains and lots of hay/staw, we buy minced meat and so on. We would need to sell our eggs for at least 1 dollar per egg to make any profit. LOL

Hope it helps,

best greetings,

Joachim

Right now I only have a couple dozen to sell each week or so and I have a waiting list at work for people who want them. In this area (Wash.DC metro) where I work, free range eggs in store go for 2.99 and up. Organic eggs will fetch 3.99+. Unfortunately I cannot sell my eggs as organic, only free range and I get 2.50 a dozen. My loyal buyers have actually told me they would be willing to pay more (haha...they are HOOKED) and they do not want to share my eggs with any of the other doctors/nurses that I work with. One was so desperate that when she saw me bring in a dozen for someone else, she offered me $5 on the spot to take them!! When my new chicks start laying in the fall, I will raise the price, probably to $3. They are eating us out of house and home! My daughter gets the money as she collects, cleans (if needed) and packages the eggs. She is responsible for buying the feed out of her profits. This is more of a money management project for my daughter than it is a profit making venture for me!

Two factors to consider: supply and demand plus your reason for selling eggs (or is that three reasons?).

If you can find people willing to buy a dozen eggs for $5, or, rather, if you can convince them that they should pay that much because your eggs are farm-fresh, full of Omega-3, and superior in taste, quality, health benefit, and the chickens they came from were uncaged and free range, and their supplemental feed contains no animal proteins, fats, or by-products, plus by buying from you they are improving the local economy, your community's quality of life, and in general are taking steps toward saving the planet [Marketing 101], by all means, do sell them for $5. However, if you are overrun with eggs and can't get rid of them at $3 or $2 or even $1.50, you may have to sell them for a buck. Your eggs are a better product than factory-produced eggs sold in a supermarket, so you should charge more than the supermarket does.

Your reason for selling, however, must be a factor as well. If you are raising chickens for fun, you can look at it as an expensive hobby. Any eggs you sell then becomes a matter of others helping you defraying the cost of your hobby.

If you are actually trying to make money, and especially if you enjoy the marketing and business aspects of selling eggs, then you need to calculate what it costs you to raise and feed the chickens and how many eggs are produced, and then go out and charge what will make you at least a small profit. If it costs you an average of $60 a month in feed and overhead expenses, and your hens on average lay a dozen eggs a day, you would have to charge $2 a dozen just to break even -- and that's if you are able to sell all the eggs.

Where you sell them makes a difference too. If you are selling them at a road side stand, where people will not bother to stop without a good reason, you might get one price. If you take them to an farmers market, where people congregate for the purpose of buying natural food products, you can expect another, higher price. If you are selling them to friends and neighbors, you may not wish to charge as much.

We sell ours for $2. We lose money. We charge a good bit more than the grocery store does for its cheap eggs, but much less than they charge for Eggland's Best and organic eggs. Egg sellers in the local farmers market charge $3 and more, but we are selling to friends and co-workers.

When we were still selling eggs at $1.50 a couple years ago, some of our customers insisted on paying us more. That convinced us it was time to increase the price.

Wow, lots of replies. Well, I understand what a lot of you are saying about better quality = worth more money, but I guess you also have to take into consideration your location. People around here dont make as much money, so things are cheaper, therefore some would probably not agree to something as high as $5, but you never know. Any profits i get, i am going to use to take care of my chickens, but i am also using it as a means of profit, even its its only a little bit. (I am saving it for a trip to the U.K. in my senior year.) Also have to realize that this is 'supposed' to be a business, because it is my SAE(Supervised Agricultural Experience) for FFA(Future Farmers of America), and i want to get a good grade. so I guess i'll just have to find out how much people are willing to pay.

I was thinking $2 at first, then my mom says, no, $1, and I was like...im going to make no money..lol

Like Wyattdogster, we have chickens for personal satisfaction and teaching the kid how to do chores. Teen earns her chore allowance this way.

We sell to friends and neighbours for 2.50 dozen. If I have a surplus I make teen sit outside post office and sell to passersby for 3.00 dozen. Some buy, some don't.

When we started, 4 years ago, feed was $6 a bag. Now it's $9 a bag. My prices have not gone up to reflect this cost. We are not making money. The teen gets the egg money, but in truth we subsidize the chickens. I do not know how cold it gets in Missouri in winter, but what really adds to our egg cost is heating the hen house for 5 or 6 months of the year. That 250 watt bulb and 100 foot extension cord SUCK the energy!

My purpose of keeping poultry may be different than some of you. They're here to keep the insect population down around here. I don't sell eggs.

I don't feed commercial feed. I feed the free ranging flock whole grains, Bermuda hay, diatomaceous earth. Because the birds are omnivores, they need animal protein so all excess eggs are fed back to the birds raw.

If we ever get any rain - it's been 6 months - I will cut back on the grain and the birds will consume more grass/weeds. Right now the acreage is bare.

I trade my eggs at work right now for egg cartons - 2 eggs per dozen size carton. They give me 6 cartons, and I give them one back full. Now that the hens are more mature and laying more regularly, and I have boxes and boxes of egg cartons, I will have to make this same decision very soon.
Does anyone give a discount for buyers who supply their own carton, or charge a premium for buyers who dont?
-jo

Hehehe Jojo,

Nope, not us! If people give back the cartons then they can buy eggs from us again, if they don´t give back the cartons they don´t get any eggs from us anymore. May sound harsh but it works;-) Otherwise we won´t get cartons because we don´t buy them.

Best greetings,

Joachim

@Rogo16: Good point, i like your point of view;-)

We are a magnet for used egg cartons. Friends who don't buy (or don't regularly buy) eggs from us, knowing we accept cartons, seek us out as their personal egg carton recycling center. We must have a three year supply in the garage. Paper egg cartons do may fine fire starters for a wood stove, however. Wouldn't make sense for us to link it to egg price.

Here outside Nashville I ask and receive $3.00 per dz. Most want brown but some are happy with a mix of brown and white. My kids (2 of them) sell at church and each get to keep $1.00 per dz. sold. The "house" gets $1.00 for feed and cartons. The stores charge about the same for brown eggs, free-range, so I price accordingly. Plus, my customers know me and how picky I am about what I eat so $3.00 is not a stretch at all. 1 free dz. goes to the egg salad lady at church, too, who makes egg salad sandwiches and sells for church camp $$. We only have about 5 dz per week to sell since we eat ALOT of eggs!!

Vanessa

I've got hens that lay brown eggs and some lay blue/green ones. I used to give my surplus eggs away to friends at the office. Lately, I have a lot of surplus and I decided to sell them for $2/dozen instead of giving them away. A few people don't want to pay that much but most feel that the fresh eggs are worth the price.

Hello,

Well, why don´t you give surplus eggs back to your birds? If people don´t value your eggs then they should go and buy somewhere else;-) Regardless where you live: $2.00 per dozen is CHEAP, just my opinion. That´s 17 cents per egg, not much considered the fact that a hen needs more than 20 hours to "produce" an egg. That makes less than 1 cent hourly rate;-) I know this is not a fair analogy, but i think people should value the effort a hens has while making an egg more. People nowadays take eggs for granted, this is no good in my humble opinion.

Before selling eggs for less than $3.00 per dozen you could bake cakes and stuff for church (for free of course), or you could make advocaat (for yourself or for gifts), here´s a link to some recipes: http://www.the-coop.org/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=000209;p=1

Just my opinion, though;-)

Best greetings,

Joachim

I sell my eggs for only $1 a dozen on my little roadside self-serve stand.
I should really ask for more but people out here are rather cheap.
Also, I'm not into it for the profit. I just want to earn money to pay for feed.

Hi, I too sell for $1.00 a dozen. At first I had a hard time finding customers and gave away several dozen. This gave me customers and now I sell most of my eggs. At one dollar, I don't cover all my costs, but close. Really it is only feed costs of about $15.00 a week. I truly wish I could sell them for more, but people are cheap around here and I have even lost some customers due to the one dollar price since they can get them for less in the store. As for cartons I can not afford to lose customers even if they don't bring back the carton as I requested. However, we have a store here that has a recycling bin for egg cartons and have gotten several through that. Of course I only take clean ones and run them through the dishwasher prior to using them. I guess it all depends on where you live.

I sell mine for $3.50 a dozen. Commercial white eggs in the store cost $1 and it makes sense to charge a bit more for a more "premium" product. When I used to charge less, people acted surprised and thought I was charging them too low.

A local farm sells their eggs in the store for $5 a dozen and market them as fresh. People love it! (I'm in Hawaii, if that matters)

My customers, neighbors, friends and family give me all their egg cartons.

We have some amish up here in Wisconsin that you can buy eggs from for only 50 cent a dozen. That's a good deal! I imagine you could get at least $1 a dozen as long as they aren't cracked and are clean. Good Luck, sillygoose4ever!

I sell my eggs to the local All natural grocery store. They pay $2.50 and sell for $3-3.50 or so. I usually sell about 6 doz a week. I have 22 layers (3 roosters) so they usually pay for themselves. I got the chickens just for the fresh eggs ourselves and they are just so cute and fun to raise. 25 birds was the min. I could order at once and didn't want to wait for the order at the feed store in the spring. In the future I would have less, but I will never be without aleast a few chickens EVER

we sell our organis free range eggs for $3 per dozen (canadian). we could charge $4. the battery eggs in the store here are about $4 so i guess we could really charge $5. i guess it all depends on were you live and wether people realize how much better home raised eggs taste lol.

I only sell mine for $1.00. I should charge more but that price pretty much covers the cost of chicken feed and shavings. I'm not out to make a profit but to cover the cost of my hobby. I have some regular customers now, but before, I wouldn't always sell my eggs out at my Sat egg stand, especially in bad weather or in winter.
I'm a teacher so I get free egg carton donations from students. HOWEVER, one summer I was short. I ended up paying a fortune on cartons through a catalog. (Anyone interested in buying like 80 cartons at a discount?)
What's interesting is that my 3 regular customers are not native to this country. Two families are Mexican (most likely illegal) and the others are an elderly Austrian immigrant couple.

While doing research ,came across information saying it takes 4 pounds of feed to produce a dozen eggs. I was surprised by that, seemed high.

I have been keeping records of eggs laid, versus feed costs for quite a few years. I cost out the eggs at 50 cents each which is just a little below what free-range organic eggs fetch in most of our supermarkets. Of course battery eggs are cheaper but they are yucky to eat and I never buy them. So far my costs average out evenly over 12 months. If I sell the extras, I always ask $3.00 a half dozen, but most of the time they feed extended family and in return the family helps out with something towards the feed, or they bake us cakes which we don't have time to do.

i sell my eggs for $1.25 a dozen. .25 cents covers the egg cartons. a friend of mine was selling his for $2.00 a dozen. he got me into chickens. now he doesnt raise chickens anymore. i get 40+ eggs a day.

People are funny. I used to have Easter Egg mutts, and had no luck selling the blue/green eggs at the local farmer's market. People thought they were rotten, or had something "wrong" with them and refused to accept them (at ANY price). I tried explaining that the color is only on the shell, due to the breed of the hen, and that the taste & color of the contents were unaffected...no dice.

But the market here is a flop for selling eggs anyway. I'll sell my extras for $1 a doz to my neighbors once in a while, but at the farmer's market, people would balk at $1 a doz. Most of the time people would ask me why they weren't as cheap as at the store (55 cents at the time)- well duh, the feed ain't free and neither are the eggs. (These were the same twits who would gladly pay outrageous prices for home-raised produce.)

Needless to say, I culled my layer flock (just have a few bantams and ducks now) and quit trying to sell eggs altogether. What I don't use, I boil, smash & feed right back to the birds.

It really varies. My husband's co-workers go crazy for our eggs and right now we're charging $2/dozen and requesting they return the cartons. Most comply with that. I sell some for $1/dozen to neighbors, who are really friends, so I'm just trying to be fair with store prices for them. But the vast majority go with my husband to work and when he shows up empty-handed, they BEG. We're actually increasing our laying flock right now, just due to the demand at his job. He said they are driving him nuts so we had to get more hens going! LOL!