The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: bloomer on February 21, 2011, 08:53:58 am
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how much do people reasonably charge for 6 home grown eggs
just starting to get to the point where the chooks are producing more than we consume by a substantial margin and looking to sell some on to help with the food bill.
checked supermarkets etc and they seem to be about £1.70 for free range eggs in medium/large.
was wondering what others charge round the country so i can get a feel for a reasonable pricing point...
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My local farmer sells 6 eggs for £1.75 and they are always sold out quickly. We're in Ayrshire, Scotland
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I charge £1 for 6 here in Devon.
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I charged £1 for 6 last year - but it's too cheap, it's just convenient change-wise.
But we only sell 1 or 2 or maybe 3 half dozens each week.
I think a price increase is definietly in order but I am trying to decide between £1.20 and £1.50
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i'll be interested to here more replys
based on my food bill i am thinking £1.50 for 6 eggs but wanted to see what other charged
its wet and miserable here at the minute so work was cancelled so i'm thinking about chickens again, oops.
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£1.50 per half dozen and can't keep up supply.
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part of my dilema about starting selling is not keeping up with demand as i don't want to expand my flock just now. currently we only have about 2doz spare a week so am only planning on starting with friends and family but still dont want to lose money on them.
production is going up by the week though so will have more soon :-)
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we recently put ours up to £1.20 and it hasn't put people off.
I do find you get lots of 5p pieces though......the lady in the school office must love Monday morning when my daughter goes in with her dinner money in 5p and 20p pieces ;D
:wave:
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we charge £1 for half a dozen, white cloud bit of blue sky but a very cold wind here in moray this morning :wave:
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I've just done some projected figures on egg production, based on 250 eggs per hen per year and 25p per egg (£1.50/ per half dozen). Let's just say it washes its face but it won't make me a fortune. If you cost in my time, I'd be working for less than nothing. At £1 a half dozen, I break even IF feed prices stay the same and I exclude my time.
I think we need to be careful to properly value what we produce and not undersell - one, it undervalues what we do and two, it makes life harder for small producers who are trying to make a living.
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I've put mine up to £1 for half a dozen this year, but I lose all my customers over the winter cos of no eggs and it takes a while to build up again. We're in the middle of nowhere and so no actual passing traffic, other than those locals who use it as a short cut ::)....and all the farm traffic from either side.
Very misty, wet and mild here - BUT Hubby noticed the first crocus in flower this morning ;D and the Daffs are very nearly, almost out :D :D
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I just put my prices up to £ 1.20 :chook:and £ 1.60 :&> due to the hike in feed costs
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We have just put ours up from £1.20 for 6 to £1.40, for hen eggs and still £1 for 6 bantam eggs - that will go up to £1.20 once they are a bit bigger - have some just coming into lay with tiny eggs. We are in south Scotland with some passing trade and some regulars who come quite a way (for mixed colour eggs and because they can see the hens free ranging all over the place). I try to keep at about the same price level as other free range farm-gate egg sellers locally. I wish I had put the hen eggs up to £1.50 as I'm sure people have forgotten how much they were last year ;D
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£1.30 for 6 mixed 55g to 68g in weight. £1.60 for 6 large over 70g and 80p for small pullet and Bantam eggs. We also do mixed colours which means we're diffeernt round here, which I'm sure menas more eggs sold. I try to make sure that teach box has a least one white or blue egg as well as various shades of brown.
It's cheaper than Free-Range in shops but we still get a few people not paying the correct amount.
We've someone who leaves £1 for 6 large on Monday lunchtimes. Younger son on look-out now while playing on x-box in front room. Got to make use of him during half-term!!
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ok thats another good point
do people find honesty boxes work
not for where i am now but if i move it would be an option possibly!!!
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we charge 75p 1/2 dozen we have 24 laying chickens selling the eggs covers food/bedding for 42 chickens and selling eggs/chicks from breeders pays for extras ie building more pens
sam :chook:
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hi we charge £1 for 6 for hens
what do people charge for turkey eggs
Mx
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I don't have any to sell (yet!) but am paying £1 for half a dozen locally in Fife and there is a supply to a local shop that retails at £1.09 so they wouldn't be able to charge more and nor would I ::)
At that is it viable when you have to consider purchase and setup costs as well as the time off chickens might have, any illnesses/losses etc?
Or am I better growing more veg and paying the £1. I won't buy off supermarkets as they're over £1.70, but then I won't buy bagged lettuce leaves etc either cos I'd rather grow my own ;)
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unless someones producing very large scale or has chickens that live on fresh air I don't see how £1 for 6 is possible...
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We charge 1.80 per half dozen, and find that we have no problems selling to work colleagues in Edinburgh and some neighbours directly. Especially town folk love the dark yellow eggs and that they are only yesterday's eggs. Most people here selling at the road-end/farmgate sell for a lot less, but with poultry feed at record heights it's just about breaking even for us. I would not trust a honesty box at the road end, for us it is just too far to chase after non-payers...
Only problem we have is that when OH is on a few days holiday we immediately end up with an egg mountain, have about 20odd laying hens, so about 18 to 20 eggs per day....
Just making ice cream/custards/cakes for freezing to turn (egg) mountain into molehill....
Ellied - nobody makes a profit if charging only a pound for 6 eggs, and I would check out where these eggs are coming from, possibly caged hens? If you are by yourself having a small coup with a trio of nice looking birds would keep you in eggs and a few to sell/barter, but it will not make you a profit. Having said that, I could probably buy most of my food cheaper in the supermarket, but not at the quality I produce myself! There's nothing better than an egg for breakfast that was still warm when collected!
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I've just done some projected figures on egg production, based on 250 eggs per hen per year and 25p per egg (£1.50/ per half dozen). Let's just say it washes its face but it won't make me a fortune. If you cost in my time, I'd be working for less than nothing. At £1 a half dozen, I break even IF feed prices stay the same and I exclude my time.
I think we need to be careful to properly value what we produce and not undersell - one, it undervalues what we do and two, it makes life harder for small producers who are trying to make a living.
Very true, thats the trouble, if there is someone in your area practically giving them away its not really a good thing, its actually better for all the small producers to charge a price that reflects the work gone into it as well as feed prices etc. I'm fed up of supermarkets doing none of the work but getting all the profit.
The future has to be proper free range eggs supplied to the local person, people who are buying free range eggs from Tesco's don't know the half of it. Anyone whos taking sales from supermarkets is doing a great job and keep it up.
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we charge £1 for 6 and some places near here charge even less :o We are selling several dozen a week now.
Honesty boxes - we are on a road that gets used as a rat run (prison and local food growers nearby) and we get a lot of passing trade - However, we found that people still knocked on the door to give us the money adn let us know they were taking eggs/plums/tomatoes etc so now I rarely leave the box out and we get door knockers instead.
When we first started selling at the gate we did get warned by a neighbour that some of the local kids had 'history' of chucking eggs at cars when eggs were sold by previous owners of our house, so far that didn't happent to us!
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all I am asking is that feed and birdie extras (bedding, grit, worming) are paid for by the contributions I get for eggs. At £ 1 per half dozen I pay on top. Maybe the farms who sell at that price grow their own feed? :&>
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£1:50 for 6 here in Derbyshire, that's hens or quail eggs.
we've just started with bantam eggs, but so far had them ourselves. I gave 3 to a regular 6-a-week customer for his three young kids.... in the hope he might have some as "extra" now and again, at a reduced rate!!
I sell them at work, occassionally at the door (we have a sign on the gate) and to friends and family. It is no way self supportin during the winter, and we have had more young beaks to feed since last summer, but it all helps and one day.... :)
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We charge £1.30 a half-dozen and have had no quibbles. We just about break even which is not really good enough but people aren't used to paying what food is really worth. I have a suspicion this may change in the fairly near future.
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when I start selling my eggs they will be comparable with supermarket prices if not more. I'm not selling them on the cheap and will gladly justify the price with my customers as well as educate them on the so called 'free range eggs' from supermarkets.
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In the UK at the moment we have a serious egg glut, due in part to the changes in cages (Turning over to enhanced cages).
I read that farmers are getting 33p a dozen for them.
I charge £2.50 a dozen for eating.
£20 a dozen for hatching.
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A lady came for eggs last week - someone on the bus had told her about them. As she was leaving, she suddenly pointed and exclaimed " is that the chickens?". I said it was and she was so made up, it really made me smile.
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The ones at the local shop are supplied and labelled as Free Range by Broxburn Browns - they also supply caged eggs under the same brand (without the FR label obviously ;) ) The shop charge £1.09 for the FR ones and under £1 for the others tho I didn't look closely at them.. I bought 6 today so know they're still the same price. This is not a supermarket just a village store so I am guessing they have to add a markup from what they actually paid but if the supplier is selling both kinds they probably supply on a large scale and can afford to keep prices lower than a back garden producer ???
I'd still rather have my own so I know what hen laid it on what day but I don't know what I'm doing so am bound to make some mistakes at first, and I don't have spare cash to afford yet another expensive hobby for very long if I can't sell on excess at some kind of profitable rate to cover the running costs and just get my own egg use for free around the edges :) And if locals are paying that for FR labelled Scottish produced eggs then I don't know what they'll pay me, hence my interest in this thread..
Sorry, just a novice on the egg side - my brother had chucks when he was a teenager and I fed them and helped find eggs etc but I wasn't old enough to know much. I also had 2 ducks but didn't like duck eggs, and sadly the fox got the girls so that was it for my poultry experience, over before the age of 11 ::)
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Ellie - your biggest expense would be the henhouse/coop and any fencing/run. If you can pick up anything secondhand give it a good wash with VirconX or similar, the treat with Creosote, inside and outside too, or paint outside. That way you get rid of any nasty bugs that may live in the house, including red mite (that's what the CReosote is for). Better to look for Onduline roof, rather than felt.
We use a homemade run for small numbers of hens, and a small house on wheels (old kiddie buggy), so one person can move it daily. Run is made of blue water pipe nailed onto wooden base square, so looks like a half circle, then attached chickenwire to cover. Very easy to make and light to move about.
As for getting hens, I was astonished when I saw that bog standard hybrid hens now go for about 15 pounds at PoL! We now breed our own replacements. But even with three hens you would get between 15 and 20 eggs per week in spring/summer and probably through their first winter too... so unless you have a number of regular customers you will need to develop lots of eggy recipes....
We sell between 8 and 13 boxes per week @ 1.80 per half dozen, and that covers our costs, including feeding the young replacement stock. I don't think we will ever recoup the costs of the electric netting and the initial costs of the henhouses/garden sheds we use. But I haven't bought an egg in over 4 years from a shop!
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you cant beat your own fresh egg, they are out of this world, and the fun the hens give you it is worth it :wave:
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When we first started selling eggs I did a quick mental calculation to see what it would take to make some proportion of our income out of eggs. Very quickly realised that it's a complete non starter really. We sell our surplus to friends or people at work which pretty much pays for the feed but that's as far as it goes. If you factor in the cost of the birds, housing, transport etc it just doesn't add up. Upping the scale of it will just increase the up front costs and get you into the position where you have to sell a large number of eggs every day or you're in trouble. Fortunately there are other ways to make money out of chickens.
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One way to make a box of eggs more appealling or valuable if you have local cheap competition is to use breeds that lay different coloured eggs - blue from Legbars or araucanas, dark brown from Marans, welsummers or barnevelders, white from leghorns, etc.
That way, if you have room, inclination and cockerels, you can also sell hatching eggs when it suits you. Depending on breed and locality, these can go for £1 - £2 per egg (or less, or more!)
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I don't think a cockerel would go down well with my elderly neighbours ;)
I need to consult them on using the orchard for chucks as it's quite close to their house as it is, but I intend to bribe them with promises of eggs :) and have a plan B site the other end of my house if they don't like the idea..
I am also tracking down a used coop and some used wire.. The wire can always become a brassica cage if the rest doesn't work out ;) and a coop doesn't need fed at least ;) If the ongoing costs are covered I'd be happy with that, just without a formal day job anything new here has to pay its way enough to break even as well as keep me occupied, entertained and fed ;D
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to reduce your feed costs ask a local farmer if they would sell any wheat or barley to you. This will come at about half of what you pay for mixed corn in the shops. Cheapest around here for pellets and mash is Blacks in Collessie, sure you know them already. :&>
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to reduce your feed costs ask a local farmer if they would sell any wheat or barley to you. This will come at about half of what you pay for mixed corn in the shops. Cheapest around here for pellets and mash is Blacks in Collessie, sure you know them already. :&>
just out of interest what price are the layers pellets from Collessie, and is that Collessie Feeds? Does anyone know anywhere in NE Fife to buy chick crumbs with ACS??
:wave:
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yes, they alre also called Black's feeds. I think I paid £ 7.85 last time. Haven't been for a while but a visit is due soon... :&>
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you cant beat your own fresh egg
Yes, you can - use balloon whisk or the Kenwood ;D
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;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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just out of interest what price are the layers pellets from Collessie, and is that Collessie Feeds? Does anyone know anywhere in NE Fife to buy chick crumbs with ACS??
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Not NE Fife, but East of Scotland Farmers at Couper Angus do Farmgate Chick Crumbs with ACS 20kg for £6.98. Layer pellets about £7, GM free
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I'm in the new forest, i charge £1.50 for 6 £2.75 for a dozen. mixed sizes. i did charge less but my customers told me they were worth more. i have a sign at the gate and an honesty box in the yard down a 90mtr drive from an A road. No problems so far with money. i was thinking of putting out a few jars of honey and chutney, are there any legal problems with that?
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Re honey, I don't think there are an problems in selling it, just make sure that your label conforms to all the required standards. It is all explained in the Thorne's catalogue, I ordered mine from there as our printer did not like the labels I had designed myself and I just wasted too much time on getting it right... Just not sure I would risk someone walking off with a 4 pound 50 jar of honey and forgot to pay....
Not sure about chutneys though.
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HI,
I have recently been asked for some from people from work and have priced them at 150 per half dozen for bantam eggs. I wont be able to retire on this but it helps me get rid of the surplus. If you are wanting to actually make money on them my suggestion would be to find the "lifestyle" market and charge what the market will stand. I supply new customers with an information email about my hens and how the real free range life of rare breed birds like mine differ from commercial free range birds.
I find that once people understand the difference they are happy to support my birds treat fund because they want to eat real free range eggs laid by happy hens. I also add an a photo of my hens enjoying life in the email which people seem to relate to. This would only work for regulars or people you know of course not for the honesty box approach.
I have also found that an odd feather in the box and some info on which hens laid their eggs also has a value to some people who like to idea of The Good Life but couldnt be bothered living it. Many people like the idea of paying genourously for produce at a farmers market especially if it looks more natural than the supermarket goods. So spuds in a bit of compost, carrots with their greenery on and apples with a leaf attached to the stalk seems fresher and closer to nature.
Buffy
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to reduce your feed costs ask a local farmer if they would sell any wheat or barley to you. This will come at about half of what you pay for mixed corn in the shops. Cheapest around here for pellets and mash is Blacks in Collessie, sure you know them already. :&>
Indeed I do - they supply a great own brand sack of cat biscuits and their own low molassed oat chaff with herbs plus my straw and any blocks or other bits I want, delivered if required tho I like to pop in for a blether with Ronnie occasionally.
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I'm in ceredigion, west wales, and we charge 80p for 6 chicken eggs, the lady up the road charges £1 for 6, but hers are bigger eggs. I only have 4 birds and she has 3, and there is at least 4 other in village with chickens, but we all have enough customers than eggs.
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I charge £1.40 for half a dozen of our lovely hens' eggs. I reckon that's cheap considering the size of some of them and the generally high quality.
I struggle to get this factor across to my wife who takes them in and sells them to her colleagues at the school she teaches at. She seems determined to virtually give them away.
I, too, had a look at what the supermarkets were charging and our price is competitive with their 'bog standard' free range eggs which are, I'm sure, inferior to ours.
We need to remember that we're supplying a premium product, not a bargain basement make-do.
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I so agree with ambriel. At least our free range hens actually, well, free range ;D Don't undersell your premium product.
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Agree Ambriel, I don't understand why some people are more or less giving them away, it may be more of a hobby but still you should sell them at a price thats in line with the going retail price, and possibly more expensive because as Rosemary says they are proper free range eggs. Saw someone charging a pound per 6 down the road yesterday, again thats not doing me any favours at all, alright for them as they have some free range chickens in an outbuilding on their country house which is probably worth a million pounds and I doubt it matters whether they even break even.
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it seams you are missing the point with all this selling your rival is selling at less than you so he will sell out before you do you get the odd sale when he has none and moan about it if all were charging the same it is no longer a free market but a cartell and this country hates cartells unless your name is tesco asda morrison etc etc
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THey are not really rival sellers, but I just don't think those people help because the general public then think that everyone should charge those prices for their eggs when in reality they are just doing it to get rid of surplus eggs. THe point is they are not charging enough. I'm not saying everyone should charge the same, just that people should price them competitively with the equivalent eggs you would buy in a shop.
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Hi I sell mine for £1.00 per half dozen mixed sizes, and duck eggs for £1.50 though I dont get much call for these. We sell to passing trade on a small lane and I dont leave an honesty box as I like to be able to talk to people. I know that some will think that is too cheap but we will hopefully be selling surplus fruit, veg and herbs this year so I look upon the eggs as the maggot on the end of the line! A bigger concern than ours in the next village has just packed up he was selling for £2.75 a box.
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How big is a box?
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oh sorry i should have said half a dozen!
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thats why he is packing up TO DEAR
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We charge £1.20 for half doz....in birmingham :wave: