Are you working in some kind of club/warehouse store?
Almost all stores around here have a limit of 1-2 dozen per customer.
Even Costco limits egg purchases.
$8.69 for a dozen last week at my supermarket. (No limit on how many you were allowed to buy.)
No - we have a larger footprint than a typical grocery store and we tend to compete with Walmart and Costco, but we’re open to the public. Most of our customers are families although we do have businesses and food banks that shop here.
We’re not limiting how many people can purchase, but after the first box per transaction the price goes up. For the 60cts right now it’s about $27 for the first and $42 for subsequent ones.
On my way to Food Lion today, I passed an Amish farm advertising chickens for sale (Saturday only!!) So out of curiosity, I looked here at what it would cost to get “free” eggs from your own chickens.
Summary:
%%%
Now let’s try to answer the big question: Are backyard chickens really worth it?
Let’s look at the breakdown:
- Chicken coop: $500
- Egg-laying hens (purchase): $60
- Food: $20/month.
- Chicken-related “extras”: $10/month (This includes things like wood chips, repairs to the coop and water bottles).
So, to start up, you’re looking at $590, with ongoing costs of roughly $25/month. Of course, this doesn’t include vet bills, which would likely come up at some point.
%%%
I suppose you could just toss some chickens into your back yard, fling some feed at them and there ya go. Maybe. I know that wouldn’t work where I am - critters would get the chickens in the night, if not the first night, then pretty soon after. And I notice no mention of scooping chicken poop - surely that has to be done?
Startup costs aside, even at today’s prices, I don’t spend $25/mo on eggs. There are 2 of us in the household and I don’t bake a lot, so I expect I’m an under-average user. Still, I expect it’ll take a while to reach break-even. Will that be after the bird-flu epidemic is past?
I live in an area where a lot of people have backyard chickens and just get enough eggs for their own consumption, maybe a few dozen to spare in the warmer months. I trade my bread for a dozen eggs from a few of these families.
A few have bigger backyard operations and might sell a few dozen a month. I was paying $3-4 a dozen for these when eggs were $0.99 in the store 15-20 years ago and I’m paying $4-5 a dozen now when eggs are $10 in the store.
None of them are doing it either to make money or to save money on store bought eggs. They are doing it because they love the lifestyle.
I have an answer from the Jokes thread:
Mark Twain at a dinner at the Author’s Club, said:
Speaking of fresh eggs, I am reminded of the town of Squash. In my early lecturing days I went to Squash to lecture in Temperance Hall, arriving in the afternoon. The town seemed poorly billed. I thought I’d find out if they knew anything at all about what was in store for them.
‘Good afternoon, friend,’ I said to the general storekeeper. ‘Any entertainment here tonight to help a stranger while away the evening?’
The general storekeeper, who was sorting mackerel, straightened up, wiped his briny hands on his apron and said, ‘I expect there’s going to be a lecture, I been selling eggs all day.’
Two weeks to the day later – same brand of eggs is now $10.99 for 18 large brown. A tripling in price, although one is tempted to think that the $3.59/18 price was a very deep loss leader.
Luckily, the same store is carrying $4.79 for a dozen Land O Lakes brown eggs. Sold!
(Cripes, when is this gonna end?)
In two weeks.
I just saw on the news tonight that we can expect a 40% increase in the price of eggs this year.
Today at Safeway, I bought a dozen large white AA Lucerne brand (i.e., Safeway’s house brand) eggs for $9.49. Four weeks ago at the same Safeway, I bought a dozen brown Pete & Gerry eggs (this is a “premium” brand) for $7.49. So close to a dollar an egg for the store brand.
“The cost of a dozen large eggs hit almost $5 in January – a record high in the US and more than two and a half times the average price three years ago before the avian flu outbreak. This signifies a 157% inflation rate for eggs”
“A separate analysis also found that avian flu alone cannot explain consumer prices, which rose by 61% over the past six months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The direct costs related to losing hen flocks account for a 12-24% increase in retail prices, according to a study by the University of Arkansas looking at the impact of the outbreak in 2022-23.”
Captain Obvious took one look at this article and scoffed.
They may be expensive, but we wouldn’t know. Our last two trips to Costco were eggless. Maybe some day they’ll have them again.
I’m not entirely honest. We were able to buy them at a local store: $10 for 18 larges.
Update: eggs here shot up almost double in price from $6-$8 / doz to $10-$12 / doz.
We are going to look for local farms because our favrite brand hasn’t been in stock the last three trips.
Egg prices here are in the normal range (under $5/dozen). But I’m in Canada and we have regulations about such things.
For the last month or so, my Monday visits to Costco had no eggs. This week, I went on Monday, no eggs, then needed to return on Tuesday and they had both brown and white eggs. The brown eggs were actually a little cheaper at $4.79/doz though sold in 24 packs so something like $9.59 a case.
I’d go up to White Rock to buy eggs, only time expenditure and crossing the border isn’t worth the price difference. Yet.
ETA: I do think the avian flu will decrease in the next few months, and the price of eggs will return to just a bit above normal and the availability will be better.
I snipped this part of your post to make a general point: Around here (New Orleans area), over the past few months, brown eggs seem to be more reasonably-priced than white eggs. Not to say the brown eggs have been cheap … just less jacked-up than the white eggs.
So why are people conditioned to pay more for white eggs? Is it frankly and simply racism?
I’ve typically seen it the other way: The brown eggs are more expensive. The real question is why does anyone think the color of the shell indicates quality?