2019 Egg Production By the Numbers

Last week we summarized cumulative rainfall totals for 2019 that fell at our little farm three miles north of Jennings, Louisiana.  We also do the same thing with egg production.  For seven years we've written down the numbers of eggs we pick up each day.  First, it was Russ' job and then Benjamin's to gather eggs and record daily production. Now, we're experiencing the empty nest syndrome (pardon the pun), since it is just Tricia and me at the house, we gather eggs and record egg production daily.

So let's take a quick look at monthly and yearly egg production compiled since 2013:

Although we haven't counted the number of chickens in a few years, Tricia and I estimate that we have around 90 laying hens.  The number of hens we have vary over the years and that is one of the variables regarding the number of eggs we pick up.  We haven't added any new pullets to the flock in several years, resulting in the age of our flock becoming older and that results in fewer eggs.  We've lost a few hens to predators and old age, too.

As far as trends go, you can see that, once again, April is the best month for egg production on our farm.  The weather is nice - not too cool and not too hot.  Comfortable, non-stressed chickens lay more eggs.  There is also fresh, green vegetation growing in April and that yields more eggs as nutrition in better.  December is, once again, the poorest month for egg production.  Shorter days and a lack of fresh green vegetation diminishes the eggs we collect.  To alleviate this, we could leave lights on in the hen house and get more eggs, but we've decided against that.

In 2019 we picked up 8,446 eggs or 703.83 dozens.  Since we've been raising hens, we have gathered 64,422 eggs or 5,368.50 dozens.  That's a lot of eggs!  What do we do with all of them?  Well, we eat a bunch of them, we sell a bunch of them, and we give a bunch of them away.  They are delicious and nutritious.

Here is a summary of 2019 Egg Production by month:

The last thing is kind of interesting.  We have 90 hens.  They lay almost 94 eggs per bird per year.  We collect, on average, almost two dozen eggs per day.  The hens lay 0.26 eggs per day or put another way, the hens lay an egg every 3.89 days.  All these egg production numbers were skewed low this year as we did not count all the eggs that were broken by the egg eating chicken.  January 2020 egg production numbers are already markedly higher since we put her in the freezer.

2019 Meat Birds - By the Numbers

I promised I would post this tonight after work and so here goes:  Here is the scoreboard of the 10th Annual Cornish Cross Meat Bird Extravaganza!

Tricia is a great statistician, keeping accurate records year by year so that we can determine what's working and what is not.  Some things are within your control, and some are not.  Let's look first at the bird's ages.  Here is 2019 birds:

And here are 2018 birds:

The birds were one day younger this year than in 2018.  From a cost standpoint, the quicker you butcher them, the less you have to feed them.  Feed, as we look at next, is your biggest cost component.  We buy feed by the 50 lb sack.  If you do this on a large scale, you can cut feed costs by buying in bulk.  We are small-scale.  If you feed them organic feed only, you really drive up costs.  We are not organic, but we use non-medicated feed.  We may try organic feed next year.  Every year we look at it, but the cost drives us away.  We do stay away from medicated feeds, though.

Here is a tally of ordered birds for 2019:

And here are the numbers for 2018:

Big difference is the mortality rate.  We ordered 10 less birds this year and ended up butchering almost the same number of birds due to a lower mortality rate.  We only lost 4 this year compared with 12 last year.  This can be hard to analyze.  Sometimes the birds are weak from shipping.  That is outside of your control.  Sometimes, though, we lose birds we shouldn't due to poor placement of heat lamps, causing the birds to pile up and smother weaker ones.  That is human error and controllable.  In fact, 2 of the 4 birds we lost this year could have been saved with better management.

Here's a detail of 2019 Costs:

And here is 2018 Costs:

The birds were cheaper this year by $0.42 per chick.  Feed was a little more expensive in 2019, but the birds ate a lot more!  17 pounds of feed per bird consumed in 2019 versus 14.7 pounds of feed per bird in 2018.

Here are the totals in comparison year over year:

We harvested about 200 pounds of chicken that we will eat on for the next year.  Our average pound per bird was a little lower than last year, but not significantly.

The biggest metric is cost per bird.  Our all-in cost (minus our labor) was $9.43 per bird in 2019 versus $9.72 per bird in 2018.  So here is where the rubber meets the road.  At our local Piggly Wiggly, whole cut up chickens sell for $2.29 per pound.  In raising our birds, our cost of $9.43 per bird divided by our average weight of 4.11 pounds per bird gives a cost per pound of $2.29.  Exactly the same!!

However, in purchasing your cut up chicken from Piggly Wiggly, you just have to drive to the store.  You don't have to feed them everyday for 8 weeks, push the chicken tractor everyday for 8 weeks, or spend an entire Saturday butchering them.  Labor costs, if added to the price per pound, even valued at minimum wage, would make it uneconomical from a pure financial standpoint.

If your goal of raising your own birds is to save money, well, that is a losing proposition.  However, there are other considerations.  We know exactly what went into their feed and bodies.  No hormones, no medications, no antibiotics.  They were treated humanely and raised on grass and sunshine and wind.  We handled them and butchered them in a clean setting.  I think our birds look better and taste better than store-bought birds, but I am biased, I know.

There is also a lot to be said about taking part in growing your food and knowing where your food comes from.  Although we'll soon be empty-nesters and the number of birds we'll eat per year will decrease somewhat, we'll still continue to do this as we have for the last 10 years.  Tune in next year as we'll once again resume operations on the Sonnier Chicken Ranch.  Yeehaw!!