egg tally: how much do our eggs cost?

Recently Jeff and I decided, with a fresh bag of chicken feed, to keep track of how many eggs we got from one bag of feed. Basically, we were curious: how much did it cost us to be producing our own eggs? We knew we were saving money by raising chickens and getting eggs in our own backyard, rather than buying local eggs like we were before, but we wanted to know how much. So we started an egg tally on our refrigerator and every day, whenever we brought in eggs (we gather them a few times a day), we would mark it down.

Leftover bits of feed, mixed with home-rendered lard. (More on that below.)
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Some things of note:

We purchase high quality chicken feed: Scratch and Peck. It costs a bit more than conventional feeds, but it is absolutely worth it to our family. It’s important for us what we feed our chickens and what ends up in their eggs that we’re eating! I’ve written before about some of the reasons why we love Scratch and Peck Feeds so much. Our chickens like to eat the larger bits in the feed and sometimes there is powder left at the end.
On the Scratch and Peck website, it says:

“The “powder” left behind is all the little bits of grain that gets crushed, limestone (calcium), and other nutrients like Camelina meal, vitamins and minerals. Because our feed is as unprocessed as possible we do not add unnecessary binders or heat-treat the feed to get the ingredients to stick together. This powder is all natural and great for your chickens. Help them finish it off by adding to a treat like oatmeal or rice or just add a bit of moisture to it so they can eat it.”

We don’t want any of that nutritious stuff to go to waste! We’ve heard of people mixing it with yogurt or water. We happened to have a bunch of extra home-rendered lard on hand and one day decided to mix it with that and see if they liked it. After mixing, I put it in the fridge to harden it up a bit and then brought it out their yard. The chickens went absolutely nuts over it and ate every tiny bit! So we’ve been doing that ever since. We get organic, pasture-raised pork fat to make our lard, from Deck Family Farm. It’s an incredible source (and one of the few food sources) of Vitamin D and adds more good nutrition for them.

(I should also add that it’s wintertime when egg production goes down considerably, but we decided to put a light bulb on a timer in our chicken coop that turns on for a few hours each day. I know there are different opinions about doing that, but it has really felt like the right decision for our family. We were either going to be purchasing eggs trucked in from somewhere else that were of lesser quality- since local eggs were hard to come by- or supplement our gals with a bit of extra light each day and continue to enjoy eggs from our own backyard. Having an abundance of eggs through the winter has been a huge blessing for our family.)

Jeff holding Sassy (who escaped from her yard) and carrying her back to the flock.

Here’s the results:

It costs exactly $27.50 for a 40 lb. bag of Scratch and Peck Feed from Diess Feed Store. One bag lasts us almost exactly two weeks, with 14 chickens. We also supplement their diet with free ranging, garden weeds, and kitchen scraps which probably cuts down on food cost. During an (almost) two week period (from January 17 till the 29th, so 13 days), we got 114 eggs.

That equals 24 cents per egg! That meant we paid $2.88 per one dozen eggs. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a pretty darn good deal! We know high quality eggs at the farmer’s market selling for $7 and $8 per dozen (and they weren’t using Scratch and Peck, which is the best feed we’ve found) and if I remember correctly, I think we were buying eggs from a local farm for $5 a dozen. Jeff and I were pretty happy with our results. When the season warms up and we get more eggs each day, we’ll be getting even more eggs for our money. I think it would be fun to keep track again, during the warmer season, to see our results then!

Comments

Helena says

January 23, 2016 at 3:26 AM

Hi Taryn, you guys did really well there!
I totted up how much it cost me, but including the cost of the hens, or cost of raising them ( which was so much!) over a year of eggs, and I was shocked that it cost me $12.20 or $12.40 (nz) I forget. Per dozen!
I was so shocked as I too feed the good feed, but I don’t give extra light in the winter- probably should look into that. At the time I was trying to trade, or sometimes people just wanted to buy eggs. I charged $5 per dozen (nz).
Also the problem I had was with non payment- forgetting, or deliberate forgetting, or just deciding they should be free, (odd but true!).
In the end I got sick of it. I was paying so much for everyone else to have lovely high quality hassel free food, while I was working really hard and collecting feed etc.
But I also found when I would gift eggs to people they would quickly expect more, and the expectation would become an obligation.
Anyhow, you guys are very level headed, and seem to have a good network of friends to trade with. Take care, human nature is funny, or at least I’m not quite used to the nz culture yet!!!!
Now we are back to loving our hens just for us. I used to think that was selfish, but not now.x

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