Dr. Bruce, What is a cwt? I'm guessing 100 lbs? I buy 17% protein layer pellets (mixed grains, soy meal, etc.) in 50 lb. bags for $8.95 + tax. This would be a little bit cheaper (by maybe 50 cents) at another store, but it's outside of my ride's preferred driving range. If I'm right about the meaning of cwt, my feed cost is about double yours! "Mash" does mean the mixed stuff, right? 50 lbs last right about 3 weeks now that the hens are fully mature (9 months).

I was getting 8 eggs a day out of my 10 hens, but for the last month output has been a bit erratic, ranging from an occasional 3/4 to 7/8 a day. Still I seem to average 3.5 - 4 doz a week. (I don't keep daily records.) Say 11 doz eggs every 3 weeks into 9.62 would make a cost of about 88 cents per doz for just feed.

When I have customers, I charge $1 a doz which is what I've seen the chain grocery stores here charge for brown eggs. I think customers have been pleased with the eggs, but just don't eat that many (cholesterol conscious).

My chicken hut is probably pretty cheap shelter, but, with the welded wire fencing for "sheathing" and for the run, and with the tarps, housing costs ran about $100. I had the 2x4s already on hand for the roosts, and have spent little on feeders ($3 for two 2 ft. lengths of aluminum vent pipe, each end slit to fit partially into emptied tuna cans, to form trough with "hood"; cradles from pieces of fencing hold this together and clip onto wall or run fencing) or waterers ($3 for a large metal pan in which I have three 2 liter soft drink bottles with a hole in each about an inch from the bottom. I also have three fencing cradles to hold small stainless steel or plastic bowls I had on hand and 3 liter soft drink bottles turned upside down. The first arrangement is a bit cumbersome to refill.) But it would take a couple or more years to just to recover this cost if I sold all the eggs.

In short, it's a good thing I didn't go into this for profit! I've enjoyed the birds and the egg supply, and cleaned out the hut's litter yesterday to put in the compost bin. The ladies have also fairly well cleared an invasion of green wandering jew (from a hanging basket a neighbor threw down the corner of her yard), as well as other pesky weeds, and fertilized as they worked. They are certainly more useful than my indoor cats, much as I love the latter.

I recently began feeding the oversupply of eggs to the hens, scrambled in the microwave. The eggs, not the hens. ;-) They love it, but I have wondered about the large increase in protein this creates in their diet. I could feed scratch to offset this, but the feed store I go to does not seem to have scratch, nor grit. Perhaps I asked the wrong person there.

Any comments are welcome.

When you said that "I think customers have been pleased with the eggs, but just don't eat that many (cholesterol conscious)" you should read some of the health research done on chicken eggs that have proven that eggs are actually very good for you, despite all the bad media it gets. After all, not all the cholestrol consumed enters the bloodstream right away, and some fat is necessary to transport essential nutrients throughout the body.

I sell a dozen brown eggs for $3, while the grocery stores sells locally raised brown eggs for $5.69. I make a huge profit selling eggs while still being a lot cheaper than competitors, which my customers love. There is a big market for fresh, free ranged, brown eggs.

Josh, the prices you quoted do NOT sound right. $5.69 for a dozen eggs? $3 for a dozen?? My supermarket sells eggs for about 70 cents. I sell mine for $1.
Where do you live that eggs could possibly cost as much as you're quoting??

Here, a dozen goes for aroun$1.30.....fresh brown eggs like I produce can go for $2 or more.

I'm flabbergasted that a dozen eggs could cost $3, let alone more than $5! Are you talking about in the grocery store's "organic" food section? Even so! Quite seriously, I don't think I would ever pay so much. Nor, as far as I know, would most people I have ever spoken to (in my life!).

I'm eating eggs daily. It's not I who needs to read about eggs, but all my prospective customers. I really don't feel it's my right or duty to try to tell people not to follow their doctors' orders! Actually, it's the doctors who need to learn more about nutrition, etc. And proper research needs to be done and made available without the "Shaklee sales approach". (No offense to Shaklee dealers or customers, but my family was almost unceasingly bombarded by a Shaklee dealer neighbor at one time.) I have a cousin whose cholesterol remains high in spite of being a vegetarian (he eats fish and occasionally chicken or turkey) and having cut practically everything even mildly chlosterol-ridden from his diet. I sort of think his body feels it needs more chlosterol for whatever purpose our bodies produce it, so it's cranking it out. Anyway, because of my Shaklee experience, and because I'm just not a cheerleader-sales type, I don't really try to "sell" my eggs. I just tell people I have them and how much I sell them for. If I could deliver them, I could probably sell them more easily, and for enough more to cover that cost somewhat. But, I don't have a car. And I certainly wouldn't drive all over town, but do something like deliver to particular office buildings or that sort of thing.

Also, I can make no claim to having "free range" eggs. My birds get to scratch in their run and briefly in the rest of the yard several times a week. But as long as I'm feeding them commercial mash (or homemade rations, if that were the case), they are not free range. Nor pastured, nor confined range. "Range fed" and "pastured" imply that animals forage freely for all their food. And even my limited flock of 10 would need considerable area to supply all their food needs. They should qualify as organically raised and I can explain to customers just how they are kept and fed, though I'm not going to the trouble nor expense of trying to get some sort of certification for this.

$5.69!!!!!

I agree that some fat and some cholesterol is needed by the body. I don't think the body would manufacture it otherwise. I think that all the fat and all the cholesterol, as with all of any other nutritional component, does not become assimilated. The digestion of most of us is not quite so efficient as to use 100% of all food consumed. I would be twice the size I am if that were so. And I'm big enough, thank you very much!

Josh, are you living right by the only exit/entrance to a large commune of health nuts? <grin> I too am curious where you are that such prices are charged. You don't have to give your address, just something like "inner city area in large midwestern U.S. metropolitan area" or whatever. The stores I've been in here stock only a very small supply of brown eggs compared to white. And the state next door, Mississippi, and Arkansas just north of us as well, are major chicken and egg producers. Special sale prices on a dozen normal large white eggs have been below 50 cents(19 cents, 39 cents) often over the last month or so.

$5.69!!! <grin> I can't get over it. What's this world coming to?!

What sort of prices are others of you paying for your feed, those who buy commercial feed? Have you done any egg cost analyses?

Well...

Compared to you guys $5.69 is sort of high...yikes. Where I live many people are totally in love with health foods...if you have a garden and you don't use pesticides and other nonorganic chemicals, or if you raise chickens without using artificial hormones and chemicals then you can make BIG bucks selling your "natural" products. Thankfully, most people don't lie about what they are selling, although one egg carton that I read claimed that its eggs were free ranged, vegetarian, and fertile. According to them, fertile eggs were healthier (yeah right...what vitamins can the male's microscopic cell add to an egg?). I was also wondering how a chicken can be "free-ranged" and still be "vegetarian". How can chickens in a pasture not eat bugs and insects, not counting little mice and rats which they seem to love (I can prove this fact since my chickens hunt rodents for fun and to eat...gross).

I don't advertise what I sell, neither do I claim to be free ranged, organic, natural, vegetarian, healthier, etc. I raise my chickens in 2 large, wire cages that I move around inside a pasture. This method is called "confined free range" and allows the chickens the benefits of free range grazing while still protecting them from predators.

Since I don't advertise, people find out about me through word of mouth. Besides me, I think there is only one other person who sells eggs. This person is a major company and raises his flocks on pasture sprayed with chemicals and other harmful substances. I don't know how you can charge $5.69 for a dozen fresh eggs, especially when the hens are supposedly organic yet are raised on such bad ground.

I pay twelve dollars for 50 pounds of chicken feed. I use layer pellets that are twenty-percent protein. My barred rocks love to get extra protein, even though it makes them very fat. They still lay extremely well, despite their size. Letting them eat grasses, weeds, and table scraps lowers the amount of feed I need. Using a chart in a book I did a simple equation factoring in feed costs, price of eggs, etc. and found out (to my immense surprise) that I was making a...pretty good profit.

I plan to encircle my property with fencing and let my chickens run loose. That might lower the amount of eggs I get (and find) but, what with the money I'm making, it wont matter too much. I'm still the cheapest source of fresh brown eggs, I think, because even the eggs shipped in cose five dollars or more. You have to pay a lot for fresh eggs, unless you buy the cheap brown eggs from big companies (which are really old, I checked and my friend was disgusted with the results).

Oh yeah, you asked where I live. Um...its a pretty rural town several miles away from a suburban area. Lots of room, which is a great advantage especially if I want to expand. My "dream" is to finally get a flock of about...a thousand. Of course, I would have to buy lots of property which would seriously offset my profit because land here is pretty expensive (just like the eggs?).

Josh: Please tell us what state you live in, or what country. The only place I've ever heard where you can get that kind of money for eggs is in Europe or Japan.
Our feed here in the frozen north woods of Michigan is $9.50 per hundred, and our farm-raised eggs sell rapidly for $1.25 a dozen. Thanks.

Hi from Europe, Belgium, Brussels.
In our stores cheap eggs are $1.00, so called free range are $3.00 a dozen.
I could easily sell any number of fresh eggs for $3.50 to $4.00, people around keep asking, but whenever I have a few to spare I give them as a valuable present to close friends.
In the countryside backyard-raised eggs get sold for $1.90, but there lots of people keep a couple of hens.

I feed a 16% mix of grains and layer pellets that costs $9.00 per 25 kg = 55 pounds.
My hens eat an average of 4.50 oz per day each. If they lay 200 eggs per year that would bring the feed cost to $0.70 per dozen eggs. A first class point of lay pullet costs about $6.00. Add some grit, shavings, dust and wormer and my guess is that my eggs cost me $1.00 a dozen.

Please note that I keep my hens for fun, not for profit. And I enjoy them very much. Anny

Hello,

I live in the United States (not Europe or Japan :)

I could get feed for about 9 bucks per fifty pounds, but it's a 16% layer ration and my hens stopped laying when I tried feeding them it. Oh well, since they're pets I kind of spoil them and feed them all sorts of treats and "expensive" food. I guess that's why I never had the nerves to eat them when they slowed down (although they'r laying a lot again). I'm not sure how much they eat, I sort of give them a handful and a half of food twice a day (more or less depending on the weather).

Anny, I also give my eggs away every once in a while. The 3 houses around mine have tasted what truly FRESH eggs taste like.

Josh, you still don't say in which State eggs are soooo expensive, I wonder?

Hello, prices of eggs in Quebec, Canada:

on sale: $1.99 dozen ( every say they must be realy old )

jumbo: near $2.99 dozen

free range, organic food $4.89 dozen big, they call that in french: poules en liberté, in english: liberty poultry.

I give them to my boss, the family, I sale the extra for $2.00 dozen and I am not able to answer the request. I see that I can do something whit that.It is just a little hobby for me, poultry in the backyard, they are a small bunch of pets.

Right know we have some television reporting on the agricultural farming methods of production, on eggs, poultry for meat, pork, veal... and every one is speaking on that. I saw one and it was obvious. My food store sale them for $2.75 dozen, and he is not able to answer the request, it is free range poultry. He told me: I must increase the number of my hens, it is good money. So, may be, where you live, what the people know and want make a difference.
Johanne in Quebec

Can anybody confirm LAMartha's definition of free range?

Can they be on pasture free but in a coop at evening?
Can they be suplemented with aditional grains or mash to accomidate their nutritional needs to keep the birds healthy and productive?
Do they have to be on a certified organic pasture without supplements (mash)to be considered free range?
Can you purchase organic lay mash and grains and still sell at a profit within reason.

I live in Los Angeles,Ca and just sell to a small surbuban community and actually turn a profit. I sell my multicolored eggs (brown or green) either by the egg (.25-.30) or by the dozen ($2.75 - $3.25)depending on size of the egg. I sell the burgandy colored (french maren) eggs as gourmet, which they are.

I told you my pricing so that you can realize that depending upon the market you are selling to determines your prices. Two communities away you can get fresh eggs for a dollar a dozen because everyone has chickens. The people I sell to don't want to get into their cars to get them, they would rather pay.

Good Luck wherever you are.
I look forward to your answers.

Just found this web-site, love it! I kept a small flock (8 hens, 1 rooster) years ago. Got back into it two years ago. Of course, at first we just had two chickens, then adopted the sole survivor of a massacre, then 4 more, then, well you all know the rest. Now we have 20 hens, 2 ducks and 2 geese. As far as egg sales go, my son who is 10 is in 4-H and has established a nice little business selling brown and green eggs for $2.00 a doz., plus we deliver to seniors, and will sell 1/2 doz for $1.00. We live in Southern California and at the local farmers market eggs sell for $3.00 per doz (I just can' justify that!). My son sells all the eggs we have available, we are working our way through a variety of egg recipes and having a ball with the chicks. Our flock is mixed (we just can't decide what chicken we like best) we have RIR, barred Rocks, ameracauna, Buff Orpingtons, and a nice big, old utility hen (she's six and lays 2-3 eggs a week) I see a chicken retirement home in my future. We pay 9.85 for 16% 50 lbs lay pellets, 6.59 for 50 lbs oyster shell. I was happy if they paid for their own food, but now we definite make a profit. Sorry to go on and on, but I just had to comment on egg costs, since I knew where Josh was coming from, I knew he probably had to be from SoCal.
katiezack

At the local sale barn eggs fetch 7o cents a doz., chickens are a buck, geese 2 bucks, s.l. wyandotte setting eggs brought 50 cents a doz. for 3 doz. BUT, button quail eggs went for 50 cents each. Go figure!

What I have seen, at least here in the U.S., is free-range defined as birds that can move about freely, eating green, bugs, etc. NOT that they can't be fed commercial feed!! That isn't right. And pastured means they are kept confined in pens that are moved about a pasture. Organic is something entirely different and for that, there is a LEGAL definition. Organic would require passing inspection of the property, pasture, practices, etc.

Egg prices here in NW Arkansas....I sell a dozen eggs for $1.50 to $2.00. The cheaper price to those who are co-workers or friends and return my egg cartons to me. The more expensive at a local farmers' market. The health food type grocery stores here are selling small farm raised brown eggs for $2.69/dozen on up to about $4.50 for vegetarian raised. None of them that I have found in these commercial stores are claiming to be free-range. Mine are. It cuts my feed bill tremendously but my hens still get commercial feed free choice. I have calculated my egg cost (FEED ONLY) at 25˘ per dozen plus another 25˘ for a carton so a total of 50˘. $1.50 is easy to get. $2.00 not so bad either.

Susie

here in western Canada, typical roadside is $2.50/doz for farm fresh eggs. In store, organic free range can be as high as $4.50 at Thrifties (local supermarket chain). Omega vegetarian layer feeds can be as high as $12-$13 per 50 lbs but traditional layer pellets are around $7.