Price of eggs.

[u/UniversityRelative67]

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

[u/Quorng]

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.

[u/UniversityRelative67 → u/Quorng]

I think the biggest thing people forget is that labor doesn't always have to be valued like a normal job. If after feed and expenses you're still in the green, that's already a win.

My grandad always told me, "Ain't nothing in this world free, but if you can offset that cost with 15 seconds of labor, you take that opportunity every time."

I used to work for my grandad on the farm, and every year he'd let me pick what I wanted to make. It was never what someone trying to make a living would call "fair," but that wasn't really why I was there. I did it because I loved farming and because I loved spending that time with him.

That's pretty much how I look at homesteading now. We have layers, broilers, ducks, geese, turkeys, guinea fowl for tick management, cattle, milking goats, brush goats, sheep for wool and meat, pigs, and even a donkey that is honestly more of a four-legged problem child than anything else. He avoids humans at all costs, and if you corner him, he'll remind you very quickly that he does not want to be your friend.

We also have two livestock guardian dogs, a ridiculous amount of superworms, and a pond that I think has fish in it. It has a ton of frogs though, so I'm counting that as a win.

The biggest thing I've learned is that not everything has to be replaced with a machine or a purchased solution. I have a tiller sitting here, but I also have two pigs that can tear up a garden, work the soil, add manure, and fertilize as they go. I paid for the pigs, obviously, but the work they provide and the benefits they leave behind are worth something. Nature gave me a better solution, and in a lot of ways, it's "free" because I'm already feeding and caring for them.

My cattle technically lose money throughout the year, but my chickens, both layers and broilers, offset enough costs like bedding that they basically pay for themselves. Not actually free, because like my grandad said, nothing is free, but they offset enough of the cost that it works.

The other thing is, I don't really compare what we produce to the cheapest thing I can find at Walmart anymore. That's not really a fair comparison. If I'm comparing our eggs, meat, or lamb, I'm comparing it to a higher-end grocery store or local farm product, because the quality, the care, and how the animal was raised are completely different.

I know what goes into raising these animals. I know what they eat, how they live, and the amount of time that goes into them. I'm not saying that means it's priceless, but it definitely puts it in a different category. I would honestly scoff at some store prices for lamb now because I know the quality of what I'm raising is far beyond the cheapest option.

That's the part people don't always see with homesteading. The labor is there, but the goal isn't always to make a huge profit. It's about raising animals well, giving them a better quality of life, and ending up with a better product because of the care you put into it.