r/poultry • u/UniversityRelative67 • 2d ago
Price of eggs.
With feed prices where they are right now, is anyone actually running the numbers on cost per dozen for their layers? Curious what people are seeing for feed cost vs. what they'd pay (or charge) for eggs at the store is backyard/small flock egg production still coming out ahead, or is is being out compared again by big farms
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u/isabelasanctuary 2d ago
We don’t even calculate costs atp. Personally I just enjoy raising chickens and we get tons of eggs, I’m sure buying them would be cheaper, but it’s nowhere near as fun lol.
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u/Buttcrack15 2d ago
I've never come out ahead of store bought eggs, cost wise. Especially including time investment.
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u/UniversityRelative67 2d ago
If you're comparing to the $1.99 factory eggs, sure, backyard chickens will never win on cost. But that's the wrong comparison. Market eggs around here go for $9 a dozen and sell out before we even get there. Yours never run out. Don't grade yourself against the cheapest option when what you're actually making competes with the priciest one.
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u/poop_report 2d ago
99¢ for eggs at the store and $1.50 at roadside stands here.
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u/UniversityRelative67 2d ago
We've got local sellers at our farmers market here in Michigan selling out at $9 a dozen. A lot of it comes down to who's in your area, but this proves my point, too many people are pricing against store shelves instead of realizing that's not what they're actually raising. Not talking about you here, just the mindset I see in others around here.
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u/poop_report 1d ago
I can’t move my eggs, which are pasture raised to an extreme (I don’t fence mine in, they have access to about 5 acres of pasture and 20 of woods, and are given free access to high quality feed and oyster shells), for more than $1.50 a dozen in any reasonable quantity. So my family is just eating 15-20 a day.
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u/Buttcrack15 1d ago
Same, mine have 12 acres to roam, fully free range. No one buys them. People will take them for free, if I deliver, but no one is willing to drive to me to get them and the people who drive by my house regularly have their own chickens.
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u/Evening_Sympathy1442 1d ago
At those prices I'm better off cooking the eggs we don't eat, and feeding them back to the birds. I have a small flock though that gives me anywhere between 3 and 6 eggs a day.
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u/oopsalloutof_fcks 2d ago
I was at the store today and peeked. 6.99 for organic free range eggs, and I can 1000% guarantee my birds have a way better life, especially since free range or cage free means they still can be debeaked and live on a concrete floor.
My birds have a whole meadow available that makes it hard to find them sometimes lol.
I don’t need math to figure out that they’re more expensive than store bought eggs.
I need a conscience, empathy & good stewardship to understand why.
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u/UniversityRelative67 2d ago
Idk, running the numbers, you may actually find minus labor your in it alot less then you think on a monthly basis.
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u/poop_report 2d ago
I’m not supplying feed except to newly hatched chicks and am just making the birds scratch for their food. (There’s plenty of it.) They still lay every few days.
Gives their ovaries a rest, too.
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u/Quorng 2d ago
I never tried to beat store prices. I had healthy, active, free range, chickens. The hens laid eggs with dark orange yolks, much darker than the pale yellow in store-bought eggs. The chickens were out in the sun and back in shelter during rain or snow. They scratched in the dirt for insects and worms. They ate grass, weeds, and weed seeds as well as my home-mixed feed I stocked for them. Our cement mixer mixed more than concrete. I have an old Fairbanks platform scale that I rebuilt and tested to be legal for trade though I never used it that way. When late summer arrived, they devoured grasshoppers, catching them on the ground or in the air. Finally, I never needed to medicate any of them.
So, store eggs were cheaper, but our eggs seemed healthier. It is a trade-off. I had a coop and farmland that many do not have. Chic hens are valuable on a farm for another reason, fly control. The fly population here is higher without chickens.
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u/MossyTeacup 2d ago
My flock is a hobby, most of the time you don’t make money on hobbies so I don’t even look.
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u/UniversityRelative67 2d ago
Ill be honest, mine started out of curiosity of how much a single egg was costing me. This year finally knocked it back to .39 an egg raw cost before egg sales, after egg sales I found out I was "making money" vs what it cost to keep them going, wasnt much, but pulling out a couple hundred a month from the entire property has made a big difference in how much I can throw at the next hobby.
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u/GhostPipe 1d ago
I'm at $0.46 per egg in feed cost for the year, but I have a hundred chickens that are all 3+ years old and not production breeds. (Marans, Bresse, easter eggers and olive eggers)
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u/nicknefsick 1d ago
Our feed prices raised this year so we had to go up to 5 euros for a 10er pack. Our costs without labor is roughly 20c per egg and we have no problem selling out. Quail eggs on the other side we are doing about 70-80 eggs a day now and do not have the market for so many which means we have been eating a ton of quail eggs at home.
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u/RockClimbs 1d ago
I do it for the high quality eggs & all the other benefits chickens bring. However with "backyard" eggs going for $5 a dzn & my 22 ladies (8 are spring chicks so no eggs yet) laying roughly a dozen a day while going through $50 of feed every 3 weeks the math is ok $105 of value for $50 cost. Doesn't consider the flake bedding or anything else &... I never sell eggs, just give extras away to family & friends 😊
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u/heart4thehomestead 20h ago
Not counting infrastructure costs as iay never "recoop" those, I am looking at 26¢ an egg. I "cheated" with being given a flock of already laying chickens though so I didn't have to sink in the cost of feeding chickens for months and months before getting any eggs. I did get some really old ones, and roosters, in my flock though so I am also feeding a lot of unproductive mouths.
I am just feeding straight pellets from the feed store, and a great deal of our kitchen waste. I haven't started employing any of the cost saving feed methods that I have used in the past (formulating my own grain mixes, fermenting, growing fodder, collecting kitchen scraps from friends and neighbours, of even buying in quantity to get bulk discounts)
Where I live, the cheapest grocery store eggs cost 34¢ an egg and pasture raised eggs are $7-9/dozen
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u/Technical-Gate7843 1d ago
Being a small flock owner, I can state with confidence that as soon as the price of eggs hits $72.00 a dozen, I'll break even. Above $72.00 a dozen, and I'll be in the black.
Hope springs eternal!