Egg sales- let's talk: flock size

Hi y'all, we're in year two of egg sales and it's going miraculously well. Perhaps too well.

Some background: we're located in a small town (5000 people) sandwiched between more highly populated areas. We have lots of frontage on a state highway. When we moved in, we hated the traffic and lack of privacy but now we love it! It's feeding our egg sales. Our chickens are pastured and people can see that as they drive by before they pass the house (where we sell eggs).

We currently have 18 layers and 2 roosters, plus 3 ducks. On a good day, we collect 22 eggs. The problem is we're selling about 6 dozen a week. We had a big backlog from winter when we weren't selling (eggs are in a fridge in front of our house and we don't sell in winter).

So my question is this what are your sales like compared to your flock size?

I tend to trade my eggs for items I need.
Think food for food. So far I can trade all the eggs I can produce.

alex Keenan wrote:I tend to trade my eggs for items I need.
Think food for food. So far I can trade all the eggs I can produce.

same idea I had barter them for stuff you need

My laying flock is about the same size as yours. I can sell every egg my chickens lay and I just sell them to coworkers for $3/dz. My duck eggs are not so easy to sell, just one coworker gets a dozen a week and another gets 1/2. We use our duck eggs for our personal use because it's so much easier to sell chicken eggs...

Miranda Converse wrote:My laying flock is about the same size as yours. I can sell every egg my chickens lay and I just sell them to coworkers for $3/dz. My duck eggs are not so easy to sell, just one coworker gets a dozen a week and another gets 1/2. We use our duck eggs for our personal use because it's so much easier to sell chicken eggs...

Yup, we mostly eat duck eggs due to lack of interest in them from customers. We had one sort of regular duck egg customer but she seems to have dropped off.

We have an honor system self serve stand set up in our front yard for egg sales. It works great. Lots of people still knock on the door to ask questions/ask to see the chickens. It's one of my greatest pleasures to explain to people how we raise our chickens. And it always makes people ask (about having them on pasture and rotating them) why doesn't everyone do it that way? Then once I explain it, they're hooked. Our customers are buying from us because they believe the eggs are better- healthier and better tasting.

I buy eggs and my greatest frustration is that people leave their sign up on days when they don't have any eggs. One guy told me that he produces only two dozen per day but sometimes 20 people stop in. 18 cars stop and then leave again without any eggs. This greatly increases the environmental footprint of those two dozen eggs.

I am accustomed to paying $6 a dozen for eggs in Canada. I would much prefer duck eggs, but I don't have access to those. One of the people who gets free firewood from me, bring eggs almost every time.