Last year we paid £1 for half a dozen. This year people are selling them between £1.30 and £1.50.
Wish my pay went up 30% - 50%.
Wish my pay went up 30% - 50%.
EGGS
- Thread starter Richmond B. Funkenhouser
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There's some bird flu / kill the chickens lunacy kicking off in the UK at the moment, although I get the idea that the government are getting the finger on that one. We'll see. Could mean egg shortages in the big cities coming up though, so silly prices perhaps.
In-line egg operations are characterized by an automated egg collection system that carries eggs directly from chicken houses to the egg processing plant (building). These farms produce, process, pack, and ship eggs at one location. Large commercial “in-line” farms containing 50,000 to 6 million laying hens produce over 85% of table eggs in the United States. The average number of chicken houses in a large, integrated egg production complex is 10 and a complex may consist of 15 or more houses. Each house contains 50,000 to 350,000 laying hens.
If the bird flu hits my little backyard flock, I’m out $6 times three.
Imagine the cost when the bird flu gets in a flock of five million birds?
Xxxx
In December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that a dozen large, grade-A eggs cost an average of $4.16, up from $3.60 in November and $3.37 in October. Compared to a year earlier, prices had climbed by 8.4 percent.
Prices continue climbing in January—even for retailers. According to the latest USDA data on the egg market, the wholesale price on the New York market for large cartoned shell eggs delivered to retailers rose $0.52 to $7.24 per dozen in the week ending on January 24. In the Midwest, it increased by $0.42 to $6.49 per dozen. In California, it declined $0.41 to $8.35.
Xxxx
One other concern in the USA is labor.
My father contracted histoplasmosis working cleaning out his mother’s and other chicken barns that produced a crate a day. He was 4-F in WW2 as a result.
Cleaning up after five million chickens and removing the dead ones is something done almost entirely by migrant workers.
Can you imagine all the chicken shat?.
To hope and keep my three girls from the bird flu, I house them every night in a shut up little barn and I’m not going to introduce new birds until this epidemic ends.
I can’t fathom how they dispose of five million dead birds all at once. Then they’d have to sterilize the barns they lived in.
But every two years the flocks go into chicken noodle soup and new birds take their place.
If the bird flu hits my little backyard flock, I’m out $6 times three.
Imagine the cost when the bird flu gets in a flock of five million birds?
Xxxx
In December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that a dozen large, grade-A eggs cost an average of $4.16, up from $3.60 in November and $3.37 in October. Compared to a year earlier, prices had climbed by 8.4 percent.
Prices continue climbing in January—even for retailers. According to the latest USDA data on the egg market, the wholesale price on the New York market for large cartoned shell eggs delivered to retailers rose $0.52 to $7.24 per dozen in the week ending on January 24. In the Midwest, it increased by $0.42 to $6.49 per dozen. In California, it declined $0.41 to $8.35.
Xxxx
One other concern in the USA is labor.
My father contracted histoplasmosis working cleaning out his mother’s and other chicken barns that produced a crate a day. He was 4-F in WW2 as a result.
Cleaning up after five million chickens and removing the dead ones is something done almost entirely by migrant workers.
Can you imagine all the chicken shat?.
To hope and keep my three girls from the bird flu, I house them every night in a shut up little barn and I’m not going to introduce new birds until this epidemic ends.
I can’t fathom how they dispose of five million dead birds all at once. Then they’d have to sterilize the barns they lived in.
But every two years the flocks go into chicken noodle soup and new birds take their place.
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Bird flu and farmers having to kill off thousands of birds at a time has been the driving force behind US egg prices.
We pay $5 a dozen, which is cheaper than store-bought. But, back when eggs were only $1.80 a dozen, I was paying $3 a dozen for home grown eggs.
Sadly, the whole bird flu thing is based on computer modelling - and we know how crap that is. Let nature run its course, I say, and the strong survive. It's not as if they can take the wild bird population into account, so they probably exclude that. Who knows? BS, I imagine.
Egg production is a stone cold agricultural science. Those five million bird size operations are egg factories. The chickens go in and lay eggs for two years and never touch the ground.
But the bird flu is sort of like the flu going around a grade school. One bird gets it and all the others soon will, all five million.
Xxxxx
In the event of an outbreak, the poultry industry has strict procedures in line with state and federal organizations to identify the problem and reduce the spread of the disease. When avian flu is detected, the following five-step response plan is carried out:
- Quarantine
First, the farmer ensures that the affected flock stays put in one area, along with any equipment that has been near the birds. - Eradicate
The affected flock is then quickly and humanely euthanized. - Monitor Region
At the same time, both wild and domestic birds in a broad surrounding “control” area are tested and monitored for avian influenza. - Disinfect The farm where the flock was housed is then thoroughly disinfected to ensure any traces of the virus is killed.
- Test Last, the entire poultry farm is carefully tested for 21 days to confirm it is free of bird flu before allowing a new flock of birds to arrive.
National Chicken Council | Questions And Answers On Avian Influenza
Avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu in poultry, is a serious concern for farmers, poultry producers, and consumers. The virus primarily affects
www.nationalchickencouncil.org
Xxxx
Time to let my girls out to scratch!.
I have old style Rhode Island Reds, because they are pretty and lay big brown eggs.
Rhode Island Red - Wikipedia
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Why are backyard eggs better?
The yolks on my girl’s eggs are so rich tasting and yellow my son prefers store bought eggs.
I’ve kept as many as a dozen and a half hens and at that level during the warmer seasons when they lay a lot it’s hard to find enough friends to give away a dozen eggs each day, and keeping the barn clean becomes a lot more work.
Who’d want to hire a lawyer who sold eggs on the side for $2 a dozen?.
There are back to nature type small farmsteads that do sell eggs.
The only downside of backyard eggs is the risk of salmonella.
Never eat raw or undercooked eggs, not even one.
www.foodsafety.gov
I’ve known that since before I was two.
It would be as risky as drinking milk straight from the cow, maybe moreso.
The yolks on my girl’s eggs are so rich tasting and yellow my son prefers store bought eggs.
I’ve kept as many as a dozen and a half hens and at that level during the warmer seasons when they lay a lot it’s hard to find enough friends to give away a dozen eggs each day, and keeping the barn clean becomes a lot more work.
Who’d want to hire a lawyer who sold eggs on the side for $2 a dozen?.
There are back to nature type small farmsteads that do sell eggs.
The only downside of backyard eggs is the risk of salmonella.
Never eat raw or undercooked eggs, not even one.
Salmonella and Eggs
Learn how to handle and prepare eggs to avoid food poisoning.
www.foodsafety.gov
I’ve known that since before I was two.
It would be as risky as drinking milk straight from the cow, maybe moreso.
Yes. I would pay $6 a dozen for some nice, fat, deep golden yolk eggs if it meant not buying the wimpy ones from the grocery store for almost the same price.
I can buy a dozen large sized organic eggs for $5, so they’d have to be less than that, and still organic, otherwise I’d have no incentive.
An organic chicken sits in a cage in a huge barn with millions of other chickens and eats food with no additives.
It’s sort of like an organic banana.
Non caged chickens aren’t backyard chickens, but those have to be allowed some freedom to peck and scratch outside.
A backyard chicken is as much a pet as my three girls. They scratch outside from morning till dark. They eat the best grade of chicken feed, have unlimited clean water, gravel and calcium shell. Their roosts and beds are clean. There is no profit motive, just the thrill of collecting eggs.
I never wash eggs. I can tell which one of my three girls laid the egg by sight, but I don’t grade eggs.
All commercial eggs are good or they’d not be cleaned, washed, graded and sold.
But a backyard egg inside looks like eggs from Mammy’s chickens.
When she died, I was too young to understand death or Judgement Day.
About a month afterwards, my father was gathering eggs and I slipped away and went down where Mammy and me buried the dead chickens.
My father was frantic until I answered him and he came down and asked me, what’s wrong?
I said I thought maybe Mammy might be down here with her girls.
My Daddy said Mammy is waiting for you, in heaven.
When a backyard chicken dies, it gets a funeral.
Yeah but my eggs from the store aren’t commercial. They roam a farm. I shop at a regional chain. There are only 7 stores and their whole gig is organic local stuff. You can still buy stuff that is grown far away, like pineapples but if it can be grown locally it is. So their eggs, produce, meat and dairy all comes from local small farms that align with their ethos. The free eggs my neighbor gave me from one of these DIY people were wretched, they probably feed them cheap feed. I’m sure there are better examples, even tastier than the ones I get from the store. But for now $5 and the assurance of non GMO grain being fed to organic chickens , I reckon I’m content. The yolks have nice deep color and they taste decent.An organic chicken sits in a cage in a huge barn with millions of other chickens and eats food with no additives.
It’s sort of like an organic banana.
Non caged chickens aren’t backyard chickens, but those have to be allowed some freedom to peck and scratch outside.
A backyard chicken is as much a pet as my three girls. They scratch outside from morning till dark. They eat the best grade of chicken feed, have unlimited clean water, gravel and calcium shell. Their roosts and beds are clean. There is no profit motive, just the thrill of collecting eggs.
I never wash eggs. I can tell which one of my three girls laid the egg by sight, but I don’t grade eggs.
All commercial eggs are good or they’d not be cleaned, washed, graded and sold.
But a backyard egg inside looks like eggs from Mammy’s chickens.
When she died, I was too young to understand death or Judgement Day.
About a month afterwards, my father was gathering eggs and I slipped away and went down where Mammy and me buried the dead chickens.
My father was frantic until I answered him and he came down and asked me, what’s wrong?
I said I thought maybe Mammy might be down here with her girls.
My Daddy said Mammy is waiting for you, in heaven.
When a backyard chicken dies, it gets a funeral.
My daughter lost her flock of 200 ducks to the bird flu. Only about 10% of her birds had symptoms, but the state required the whole flock be gassed. Since her birds were pasture raised there was no way to disinfect anything other than her three duck houses, so she had to wait nine months to get more birds and throw away 5 tons of premium duck food.
She has now limited herself to about 40 birds and has added dairy goats as well as pigs.
So, no more sales to restaurants, grocery stores or food delivery services, just a farm stand in good weather where she charges $12 a dozen.
BTW, duck eggs taste exactly like chicken eggs but have larger yolk to white ratio and better cholesterol profile. Also, people with chicken egg allergies can generally handle the different proteins in duck eggs.
She has now limited herself to about 40 birds and has added dairy goats as well as pigs.
So, no more sales to restaurants, grocery stores or food delivery services, just a farm stand in good weather where she charges $12 a dozen.
BTW, duck eggs taste exactly like chicken eggs but have larger yolk to white ratio and better cholesterol profile. Also, people with chicken egg allergies can generally handle the different proteins in duck eggs.
We grow our own.
The average price per dozen is $5+ here.
The average price per dozen is $5+ here.
I personally had a disappointing experience with eggs a few years ago . My mom gave me a dozen that her friend raised & they were not good . They had tough shells that broke the yoke every time I cracked them . They also tasted gamey . Not sure if they were laid by geriatric hens , but it kind of turned me against non- store bought eggs .
On the price question , pay what they charge . Don't ruin the event by haggling..............
On the price question , pay what they charge . Don't ruin the event by haggling..............
Backyard eggs are an acquired taste. The shells are hard, the yolks are firm and orange yellow, the flavor is strong. The chickens eat worms and bugs and lots of things other than commercial chicken feed.
Commercial eggs are a factory product engineered over seventy years to be light, fluffy, and mild tasting.
Eggs are how chickens get rid of their cholesterol.
What I’ve not seen since I was a kid is a flock of Guinea birds
en.m.wikipedia.org
Guineas were noisy and aggressive, roosted in trees, and were kept as watch animals and to eat tics in the yard. Their eggs are small and gamier than backyard chickens.
Sometimes my father would take me way down in Spout Spring Hollow in Cedar county, where the roads weren’t graveled and the folks lived in shotgun houses covered in tar paper. They seemed to always have a yard full of guineas and some peacocks, and very few chickens like we kept.
I asked my father why, and he said they didn’t have good fields to raise grain to feed them, and all kinds of animals would come in from the tall timber to eat the chickens.
They kept the peacocks to warn the guineas to take to the trees.
Raise your hand, if you’ve ever heard a peacock scream.
Guinea fowl - Wikipedia
Guineas were noisy and aggressive, roosted in trees, and were kept as watch animals and to eat tics in the yard. Their eggs are small and gamier than backyard chickens.
Sometimes my father would take me way down in Spout Spring Hollow in Cedar county, where the roads weren’t graveled and the folks lived in shotgun houses covered in tar paper. They seemed to always have a yard full of guineas and some peacocks, and very few chickens like we kept.
I asked my father why, and he said they didn’t have good fields to raise grain to feed them, and all kinds of animals would come in from the tall timber to eat the chickens.
They kept the peacocks to warn the guineas to take to the trees.
Raise your hand, if you’ve ever heard a peacock scream.
What I’ve not seen since I was a kid is a flock of Guinea birds
Guinea fowl - Wikipedia
Guineas were noisy and aggressive, roosted in trees, and were kept as watch animals and to eat tics in the yard. Their eggs are small and gamier than backyard chickens.
Sometimes my father would take me way down in Spout Spring Hollow in Cedar county, where the roads weren’t graveled and the folks lived in shotgun houses covered in tar paper. They seemed to always have a yard full of guineas and some peacocks, and very few chickens like we kept.
I asked my father why, and he said they didn’t have good fields to raise grain to feed them, and all kinds of animals would come in from the tall timber to eat the chickens.
They kept the peacocks to warn the guineas to take to the trees.
Raise your hand, if you’ve ever heard a peacock scream.
..... my neighbors that have both guinea hens and peacocks. Their farm is about 100 yds thru the woods and when sitting out in the summer the peacocks sound like children screaming in the woods. They have the guineas to control the insects, mainly the ticks and a few chickens for eggs
One memory stands out to me, after almost two thirds of a century.
Until the Stockton Dam was built and the gates closed in 1970 the wilds of Cedar County were miserably poor. It looked exactly like scenes from Deliverance or Winter’s Bone.
Until there were no foxes left to run, my father kept a pack of fox hounds.
I went with him in his brand new 1963 Ford pickup on a mission to look at a promising fox hound on the Sac River bottoms over by Needmore (actual name).
The more we drove the worse the road, and smaller the houses, until we came to a literal tar paper shack with guineas and peacocks and mean dogs and big NO TRESPASSING and BEWARE OF DOG signs all over. I was afraid to get out of the truck.
A fat woman came waddling out of the shack and came to our truck swatting away dogs and peacocks and allowed as how her old man was down on the river apiece, and the road turned into a trail in in the rocks and grass.
There at the Sac River, there was a “coon on a log” contest. There were men drinking whiskey in front of God and everybody right out of the bottle, and some young girls guzzling beer from bottles, and men gambling holding up dollars.
A coon would be taken out in a little boat and chained to a log, and then a coon dog would swim out, and try to drown the coon.
There were dogs all over the bank with bloody, shredded ears and faces.
Some young men came over to our new truck afraid we were game wardens, but my father announced who he was looking for and the man came over and he was really nice, and my father said he had to get home to milk and maybe he’d come another day to look at the dog, and we drove home.
On the way back Daddy said I don’t think we should tell Mama about the coon on a log contest.
I agreed, and said I can’t imagine how badly those poor dogs must feel, having to go fight that awful coon.
Until the Stockton Dam was built and the gates closed in 1970 the wilds of Cedar County were miserably poor. It looked exactly like scenes from Deliverance or Winter’s Bone.
Until there were no foxes left to run, my father kept a pack of fox hounds.
I went with him in his brand new 1963 Ford pickup on a mission to look at a promising fox hound on the Sac River bottoms over by Needmore (actual name).
The more we drove the worse the road, and smaller the houses, until we came to a literal tar paper shack with guineas and peacocks and mean dogs and big NO TRESPASSING and BEWARE OF DOG signs all over. I was afraid to get out of the truck.
A fat woman came waddling out of the shack and came to our truck swatting away dogs and peacocks and allowed as how her old man was down on the river apiece, and the road turned into a trail in in the rocks and grass.
There at the Sac River, there was a “coon on a log” contest. There were men drinking whiskey in front of God and everybody right out of the bottle, and some young girls guzzling beer from bottles, and men gambling holding up dollars.
A coon would be taken out in a little boat and chained to a log, and then a coon dog would swim out, and try to drown the coon.
There were dogs all over the bank with bloody, shredded ears and faces.
Some young men came over to our new truck afraid we were game wardens, but my father announced who he was looking for and the man came over and he was really nice, and my father said he had to get home to milk and maybe he’d come another day to look at the dog, and we drove home.
On the way back Daddy said I don’t think we should tell Mama about the coon on a log contest.
I agreed, and said I can’t imagine how badly those poor dogs must feel, having to go fight that awful coon.