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How Much Does It Cost To Produce A Dozen Eggs?

Melissa John

How Much Does It Cost To Produce A Dozen Eggs?

A recent thread on a homesteading group in Facebook got me thinking. The question asked by a homesteader was a common one: How much should she charge per dozen for eggs?

The thread garnered all sorts of answers but got me to thinking about the advice I once received from an Agronomist during a class.

He said, and I paraphrase here:

“You should charged based on how much it costs you to produce your product, not how much the other person at the Farmer’s Market charges.”

Basically, the idea is if you don’t at least cover the cost of production, plus a touch for profit, you won’t be able to produce whatever it is you’re producing for a long period of time. In this case, you won’t be able to raise chickens for as long as you might want to if you don’t cover your costs.

Another user on the thread pointed out that many chicken keepers aren’t concerned about the money: It’s a hobby they enjoy and get pleasure from. And that’s fair, and a perfectly valid reason to keeping chickens.

See Also: Solar Heat Lamp for Chicken Coop

The entire conversation, however, got me to thinking, how much does it cost to produce a dozen eggs?

Note: We’re going to do a really basic start up operation for this thought experiment. We’ll use whatever the cheapest feed available at a nearby place involving tractors and the means to supply them, but said retail establishment will go unnamed as I only give free advertising to organizations, companies and groups that I feel deserve it.

The methods described in this thought experiment will not be organic and may not be the method you prefer, but h the most common methods I’ve seen that doesn’t require a huge start up cost.

Well, first you have to get chickens. Most people i know buy chickens as chicks, and raise them to laying age. Let’s start with about three chicks.

So, we’ll have to start with a brooder for an enclosure.

If you’re a little bit handy, you can make a brooder all on your own with ease. If not, you’ll have to buy a brooder, a heat lamp, bulb and some wood chips (pine works fine). It’s probably a good idea to buy a waterer and a little feeder, but, to save some cash you can use a pair of shallow dishes.

Wood chips will be a surprising expense. A bag of wood chips from a big box store costs about $3. That bag will have about 1200 cubic inches. You’ll need at least 2 inches of wood chips in your brooder, and it will have to be changed out at least every 7 days (I prefer four inches of wood chips and changing it out more often, but we’re trying to save money here).

So that means you’ll use two bags of wood chips every 7 days, as the brooder we’re using is about 3 feet across, which means at 2 inches deep, we’ll need about 2000 cubic inches of wood chips.

Luckily, you’ll only have to keep them in the brooder for about six weeks. That means you’ll have to have about 12 bags of wood chips, for a cost of $36.

After we have all that, we can buy our chicks. I tell everyone to get their brooder set up before buying chicks. It makes life a lot easier for chicken keepers if their chickens have a home before they arrive from the store.

Again, we’re going to buy our chickens from the store that shall not be named. And at that store, sexed pullets cost about $3.50. We’re going to buy three chicks, which will cost us about $11, after taxes and whatnot.

That brings our list of materials and cost (costs are approximate and don’t include shipping) to:

We’re off to a great start!

Now, we’re going to save most of our feed costs for later, but, for the time being, let’s go ahead and calculate the cost of starter feed for our baby chicks. Again, we’re going to assume you’re buying medicated starter feed, because it’s the most widely available and most often the first type of food purchased by first time chicken keepers. It’s widely recommended that a bird eat starter feed for at least the first 8 weeks.

The starter feed purchased at the store involved with the supply of mechanized farm equipment cost about $$ for a 50 pound bag.

You’ll need 10 pounds per bird of feed per week, according to most popular feed manufacturers. In my personal experience, I usually wind up feeding them more. That means you’ll need about 80 pounds of feed per bird for the 8 week duration. Since we have three birds, that means we’ll be buying 240 pounds of starter feed for our little babies. That means you’ll be buying 4.8 bags of feed. The cost will be about $87.

So, new total:

Now, after 6 weeks, it’ll be time to move our baby girls into a coop. They’re probably already escaping the brooder by now, so it’s definitely time. Again, we’re not handy in this thought experiment, so we’ll have to buy a little coop.

My favorite coop company is the Urban Coop Company. Their starter coop, with a run extension, is probably the best coop you can buy for the money. It’s about $450, which is a surprisingly good price for the coop.

You’ll also need to purchase a feeder and a waterer.

That’ll cost about $80, if you add it to your Urban Coop package.

So, you’re looking at a cost of about $530 total.

Bringing up our new total to:

Now, the biggest cost, feed. After the first 8 weeks, you’ll switch your chickens over to grower/finisher feed. That cost will be about $16.50 per 50 pound bag. The darlings will continue to eat about 10 pounds of feed a week during this time. They’ll need to be on grower feed for at least 10 more weeks while we wait for them to start laying.

So, 30 pounds of feed for 10 weeks equals 300 pounds of feed. That’ll be only six bags, for a total cost of $99

So, new total:

Finally, it’s time to calculate feed costs. We could calculate the cost of feeding the chickens for the first dozen eggs, but this isn’t accurate.

Many chicken keepers put their hens into semi-retirement after the first three years of life. Chickens produce the most eggs during their first year of laying, decreasing about 20 percent or more every year (this isn’t a hard rule, as some hens lay very well almost their entire lives. Some, on the other hand, lay much less.)

This site puts the average number of eggs laid by a single chicken at 265 per year.

We’ll assume that we won’t be getting enough eggs to bother with after the first three years. Mainly because I’m running out of math steam and I don’t want to have to figure out how many eggs an ancient 8 year old hen might actually lay and how much she’d have to eat. So we’ll just cut our girls off at three and go from there.

So, after 18 weeks, we’ll assume our hens have started laying. We’ll have to switch them to layer feed, which runs about $13.50 per 50 pound bag. Now, once chickens reach adulthood, they only need about 1.5 pounds of food per week, per bird. That means our three chickens will eat 4.5 pounds of feed per week.

That means for the first year of life, they’ll only need 153 pounds of feed (34 weeks x 4.5 pounds of feed). For the rest of the three year life cycle we have planned, that equals out to 468 pounds of food, for a total of 621 pounds of layer pellets through our three chickens’ egg laying career. If you’d like to try organic layer chicken feed, this is hands down the best company: Non-GMO, all natural layer feed:

That will cost $168. Which is kind of a steal.

So, where does that leave our budget?

Well:

Now, I’m going to assume that you’re going to take care of your chickens, and I’m also going to assume that you’re going to sell your eggs. If you do this, it’s actually quite important to consider the cost of your labor. If you’re going to do an agricultural business you should at least consider the cost of labor.

I’m going to put a low number on the time you spend taking care of your chickens, and say it’ll average out to about a half hour a day (it’s going to be more).

So, 3 years, 365 days in a year, one hour a day, 547.5 hours of labor in caring for your chickens.

Just assuming your time is worth about minimum wage, which as of writing this, is set nationally (in the US) at $7.25 per hours.

That’s just under $4,000 in labor costs.

So, the grand total of cost of production is going to be $4,982 over three years.

During that three years, you’ll get about 265 eggs per year per chicken. Three chickens then, will produce 795 eggs a year. Over three years, that’s 2,385 eggs. For a cost of $4,982. That means each egg costs about $2.09 cents. So a dozen eggs cost about $24 to produce.

That’s a lot.

But, let’s assume that you don’t want to pay yourself. You don’t really count that 30 minutes a day (it’s going to be more), and don’t feel the need to pay yourself.

So, we’ll deduct the $4,000 in labor costs.

That means the new cost for our 2,385 eggs is $982 or about 41 cents per egg.

That means a dozen eggs costs about $4.92.

So, final tally:

So, the next time you see a farmer at the market selling eggs for more than $3 a dozen, know that she’s giving you a bargain.

What do you think? Check my math and let me know if you get different numbers. Comment below for your tips on saving money raising chickens.

See Also: Simple Steps to Building a Chicken Coop for FREE [Chicken Coop Plans]

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