Egg Record Keeping

We’ve found selling eggs to be a small but steady income on the homestead. We have 18 hens and sometimes make $90/mo on eggs. Keeping track of how well the hens are laying each day allows you to see problems just as they occur. It’s easier to fix them if they are caught sooner.

When the hens first start laying, I like watching the progression from tiny pullet eggs through the sizes until they start laying eggs that bottom the scale out.

I’ve been tracking the laying since March 2011, 2½ years after we starting keeping hens. I needed information on whether to keep them the second year, or send them to freezer camp and start with a new flock. I found I needed to know how well each flock did, what combination of breeds did better, and just how many eggs we were getting and what it was costing us.

I created this chart. It shows me the progression through the sizes, tracks how many broken or too dirty to sell eggs there are, and gives me the totals for the month.

In the notes section I write down how many eggs are on hand at the start and finish of each month. This gives me an idea of how many we had to sell, how many sold, and how many we ate.

Egg weighing 4.5 oz.

Also in notes I keep track of the eggs that bottom out the scale, notes on the flock and how many hens there are, and anything else of interest.

Basket with 100% ROL

At the end of the month I figure out the Rate of Lay this way. I take the total number of hens (say 18) X days of the month (31) = 558. That would be 100% ROL for the month. I divide this into the actual # of eggs we got (say 402) for an actual ROL of 72%. That’s about average for dual purpose heritage birds. Our highest ROL was 88% with 17 birds in January 2014. The lowest was 22% in July 2015 with 13 birds. We do sometimes get a daily ROL of 100%, maybe 6 – 8 times in a year.

Next I compile the sales in this area and make sure the eggs sold is within range of eggs laid/on hand. I track egg sales in Quicken. All this gives me a good idea of how we are doing with egg production.

At the end of the year, I use it, and the itemized expenses, to figure out what it cost us for a dozen eggs. If the flock has done well, it’s around $4/doz and we sell for $5/dozen, plus we get all the eggs we want to eat.

I record each month on the chart above. In the notes for the year, I record how many of each breed there were and total number of hens. If we lose some, that is noted also.

The months of September and October are split because if we have an old flock that’s laying particularly well, they will get a short reprieve from Freezer Camp until October when the new flock has started to lay.

This system has served me well for many years now. On a homestead, it’s always a good thing to know where the money goes and where it comes in.

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