What is Driving the Price of Eggs Up?

From what I have heard a lot of folks have sold off their extra livestock because they can't afford to feed them expensive feed.

deb
in wi

The farmers may not be getting anymore for thier products, but it cost much more to get them to the grocery stores. It costs us more to get to the store to buy groceries and then pay more for them. The cost of fuel has risen so much that a lot of independent truckers have had to give up. Our little car used to cost us 10 to 12 dollars to fill and now it cost 25 to 30. If you had a truck and it took 100 plus gallons to fill who would have to pay. Your customers would if you were lucky enough to have them. Maybe some day prices will come back down. NOTTTT. Sam

try to find an egg farm. around here we can almost always find eggs for .20 to .30 cents a dozen but you have to take small ones ,cracked ones, dirty ones or sometimes ones that are too big to sell. and you have to get 20 dozen at a time

why would you feed a chicken a vegetarian diet??

or are you just not feeding any feed with animal by-products... that i can understand...

just curious...

janis

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If you get to thinkin' your a person of some influence, try ordering somebody elses dog around.

Most feed in my area is now vegetarian...which means no animal by-products. I think the reason is that some felt that they should not feed chicken to chicken, similar to feeding beef to beef, or human to human????

When the hens free range they are eating animal product, but not chicken. The older feeds use to include not only chicken by-products, but chicken feathers, etc.

i am currently stationed in iraq and about a month ago the DFAC quit serving fresh eggs, stating that they were on a "medical hold", i am sure they were coming from kuwait , which has been in the news for the bird flu, it may just be a supply and demand thing

It depends on the breed and bloodline.

The denizlis I'll be raising are known for laying about 70 eggs per year per hen. A lot of show chickens also lay that poorly.

Hatchery stock usually lays pretty well. That's because they've been bred for egg production. Hatcheries need reliable producers so they'll know they can fill orders.

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Now that is something that I hadn't thought of--eggs for vaccine purposes. Makes perfect sense--buy great quantities of eggs to use to make bird flu vaccine out of, hence the short supply and prices go up.

I had thought of the bird flu angle but not enough birds in the U.S. destroyed for any reason to drive the price up by more than 50%.

Great thoughts, thanks!

If and when I get birds I will allow them free range and grow much of what I feed them. They will get table scraps which are rare after I get done eating. However I bought an old grinder a few years ago and will grind citrus peel, etc. so that they might sample it if they wish.

I had chickens several years ago so I have feeders, waters, etc. I grew some fryers to size but it was too much hassle to go to my farm twice daily to open up the house and close it to keep hens.

Think I'll go price some layer feed. Again, thanks for all of the thoughts.

Hey.

Avian flu inspections add to the final cost.

RF

Only eggs from specially grown chickens in sterile conditions are used for vaccine production.

There are always inspections going on, I don't think HPAI H5N1 avian flu has increased them. The disease is 100% fatal in chickens, so its pretty hard to miss when it strikes a flock.

My local commercial chicken farm says the price of corn has gone up. Dunno if that is ethanol related, or gas related. If the corn is shipped to California from Iowa, well, I'd expect gas prices to affect the corn price regardless of what ethanol may be doing.

Windy,

May I ask how many eggs a week you go through?

It varies, usually from less than a dozen to perhaps two dozen a week. It's not really about how much I spend on eggs, it's about how much they went up--greater than a 50% increase which hasn't come back down. What will the price be at Easter time? $2.50?

If I had hens I'd supply my daughter's household, and several of my neighbors and co-workers.

I kinda, sorta remember when eggs tasted like eggs too. Bug flavored you know.

"Only eggs from specially grown chickens in sterile conditions are used for vaccine production."

Didn't know that, but it does make perfect sense.

Very true
I sold eggs by the dozen 15 years ago for $1.50 with YOUR carton - $2.00 my carton.


Most people don't understand the true costs of producing food and I have always been amazed at how cheap food is in this country.

IMHO it's certainly one of the reasons "factory farming" is here to stay.
People don't want to pay what things cost.

veme

You are exactly right. For what I have spent on my chicken's housing, equipment, feed, start up bird etc I could have bought more eggs than my family could eat at the store prices. Even though I sell my eggs for 2.50 a dozen...I barely break my feed costs, which does not include any recouping of housing costs, electricity, equipment etc..Eventually I may get to a point where I can say I am breaking even since I have started raising my own chickens for meat, and soon will sell chicks and fertilized eggs. But OTOH I know what my chickens eat, how they have been handled, where my food comes from and I will have a food source should there be a SHTF scenario so for those reasons, it's worth it to me but defintely not a money saver or maker.

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Christanie Farm...living life as it was intended

We get "Born-free" eggs in downtown Vancouver for $3.69 a doz, not free range, vegetarian feed, no antibiotics, higher Omega-3, the chickens get extra flax, etc, etc -- great marketing anyway.

We get the neighbor's chicken's eggs at our log cabin for $2.75 a doz -- great yolks, etc. they are free range and the best.

Where and what did you get for $0.71 a doz -- WHAT?

And guess what, I started reading this thread to Nancy, because we used to have a small flock, which we throughly enjoyed, then she said,

"Do you want some eggs and bacon for breakfast?"

"Sure"

So, thanks for the thread.

Btw our bacon is vegetarian-tofu and great.

Alex

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Thou art That

Around here, up until last year the stores put them on sale 2 dozen for $1 a lot.

I think they're over $1/doz regular price now. Not certain since I don't buy any. But sometimes I stop and look at the organic and "free range" eggs, and the regular cheap white eggs are over $1 IIRC, and the fancier eggs are up to $4/dozen (organic etc). The brown cage eggs are a couple dollars a dozen.

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One thing nobody has mentioned...which I'm sure is impacting the price of eggs....is that what used to be Buckeye Egg (one of the largest producers in the country) is being forced to shut down for repeated violations and other shenanigans. This has been going on for some years (they "change" owners but the original folks still actually controlled it, stuff like that). They were producing about 2.5 billion eggs a year (12 million chickens).

Here's a google search for "buckeye egg" that brings up a bunch of hits:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=%22buckeye+egg%22&sa=N&tab=nw

Mike

Snobby chickens are to blame for high priced eggs. Don't be "shell shocked".

Eggs are sometimes offered as a loss leader in this area for coloring at for Easter.

That's a drop in the bucket compared to the number of eggs produced in this country by commercial farms.

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If you think that they produce a drop in the bucket you might want to rethink. Until the close down started they produced something between 4-5% of all eggs produced in the United States..... That is certainly enough (if that production is removed) to impact egg prices.

Mike

P.S. The current name they are using is "Ohio Fresh Egg".