Stewart Creek Somethings

These are the financials for all of 2018. I want to preface theses numbers with a disclaimer. I have not even reviewed the numbers prior to writing this blog entry so as to not be influenced by its results. While inputting all the chicken egg financials I noticed one disturbing trend, I was definitely going to lose money this year. Now this was not a total surprise as we had about 40% of our chicks die and we had adults die. We started the year with 19 hens (10 freeloaders from the winter before) and we bought 18 chicks for a total of 37 chickens and ended the year with 21 for a loss of 16 chickens. It is very hard to get chickens to lay eggs when you have freeloaders, old chickens and only a few new birds. The predators came back also again this year and I have not had a lot of success killing them. I am thinking I need an upgrade to the Walther P-22. Something that can shoot subsonic rounds, mount a laser on and semiautomatic.

On average I had 21 laying hens giving me 4.8 eggs/day (decrease of 3.2 eggs/day) for a productivity rate of 24% (15% decrease). I am feeding on average 129# chicken feed/month (decrease 25#/month) for a grand total of 1550# for 2018 (300#decrease). My monthly feed bill is $33.61/month (increase $1.31/month). My feed costs are $2.81/doz (increase of $0.81/doz or 40% increase!) with my total cost of production at $3.17/doz (includes feed and bedding and 18 pullets). My chickens are consuming 0.88 lbs food/egg produced (increase 0.24 lbs/egg). It is costing me $0.21/egg (increase of 0.08/egg) in feed. I have collected 1759 eggs to date (decrease in 1153 eggs or 40%). My total feed costs are $369.76 (decrease of $55.88).

In summary my income was $438 and my total expenses were $463.76. In 2018 I lost money, $25.76.

This is abysmal, we already charge $4/dozen for our wondrous eggs. I am going to have to make some drastic changes this year to our chicken population. I will be ordering 24 pullets. When those pullets get to age 3 months and need to be turned out with the other chickens I will be culling every chicken that is not an easter egger. This will leave us with about 30 chickens (if the pullets don’t die). Unfortunately that means for three months I will have about 6 chickens laying eggs. So probably 2/day, which is not going to leave very many if any for sale. After I take this draconian action I will reevaluate the price next year and unfortunately may need to increase it to $5/dozen. I suspect that is going to be our upper price limit.

This for the BEST eggs you will ever eat. Ours are true free range that have access to running water year round, bugs, grass, animal poop and all the bugs they can eat. All that protein makes a huge difference to how the eggs taste and the variety of their diet makes for some amazing flavor. Buy them from us, first dozen is free!