Egg CSA

Intro

Once chickens are laying, what are the time requirements to collect 20 dozen eggs daily? In a properly managed system, collection time should be one second per egg. This is an optimized design laying box either without or with a rolling system where the egg rolls out onto a collection platform. Thus, 20 dozen eggs take 5 minutes to collect in the optimal case, which if sold, result in $720/hour earnings - if 20 dozen that is $60 per day at $3/dozen eggs. For one week, the time for egg collection is 1 hour (7 days x5) + 25 minutes per week to replace the straw for clean egg laying.

How long did it take to produce these eggs? Let's assume that it's a compost fed chicken operation, and that each chicken eats 1/4 lb of feed per day, or 60 lb of feed per day. This is 500 lb of feed per day, such that a scrap food collection system must involve one truckload per week, secured in 2 hours of travel time per week.

For turning the compost, that is a 2 hour job per week, or 15 minutes per day using a 54 HP Tractor.

A total of 5 hours per week in a stable operation thus yields $420 per 7 day week at $3/dozen eggs. Costs involved are fuel (28 gallons) and hay bales ($25 per 2000 lb scrap bale), or $100 in costs. This comes out to $320 net revenue for the owner operator, or $64/HR.

Industry Standards

• $5.50/dozen for 1/2 year - [1]