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Eggs US – Price – Chart

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Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#601

Post by autoexec »

soerxpso wrote: post #584
dan-robertson wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that egg producer greed/generosity matches well with the times when there is an egg supply shortage/surfeit?

Because to certain people, when a company lowers prices to compete because of an increase in supply, it's the competitive free market doing its things (not generosity), but when they increase prices because of a decrease in supply, it's greed.

It's always greed. Companies will charge as much as they possibly can while maximizing their profits. It doesn't matter if the price of something goes up or down this week, in either case the change only happens because the company thinks they'll make more money by offering the product at that new price.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#602

Post by wiredfool »

declan_roberts wrote: post #408
wiredfool wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That $800 first egg... 10 years back, we were getting eggs at something like 25c/egg in feed costs. But we had a bunch of birds that only laid every 2 or 3 days, so they were no where near as efficient as a first year dedicated layer. OTOH, they all had names, we had most of the egg colors, and the bantam eggs were so cute. And the one hen that basically only laid double yolkers.

We're able to keep the feed costs down simply because as a family of 7 with young kids we have a lot of food waste that the birds will happily gobble up. Also their bedding makes fantastic compost for next year's veggies. It's a nice system.

Leftover spaghetti and red sauce is hilarious when chickens get a hold of it.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#603

Post by everforward »

programmertote wrote: post #283
bryanlarsen wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having dealt with my share of pig shit, chicken sheet and cow shit, I can assure you that chicken shit is the worst.

Can you share a bit more? I grew up in a city and never knew the details of the farms (and interested). Thank you.

Not an industrial farmer, but we had chickens, horses and goats growing up.

Chickens suck because they poop on everything, and it dries into a glue-like substance caked onto things. The straw ends up caked in poop, the walls get caked in poop, the floor gets caked in poop, the chickens poop on each other. Getting it off requires a paint scraper, and getting way closer to it than you want. It's also liquid-y. It's a lot like bird poop on your car, but bigger because the bird is bigger.

The horses were less bad. Their poop was fairly "clean" as far as things go. They stayed pretty structurally intact (it's basically a ball of half digested fiber, kind of like a hairball) so it wasn't a big deal to get them with a pitchfork, and they were almost exclusively on the ground. It's not a job I wanted to do, but it wasn't awful. The heat in the non air conditioned barn was honestly worse than the work.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#604

Post by catlikesshrimp »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #599

Lots of people suggesting to build chicken coop. i have one, sure it's not much work. 2 minutes every day to grab the egg and bring the food and water, but then every 3 year you got to take the hatchet, grab each chicken, cut right on the neck and then hang it with it's feet while it's bleeding out and flapping its wings. then there are the few occasion where you miss with the hatchet and it cuts half its neck, its h…

The axe blow is the fastest method when you have to kill several chickens.

Alternatively, use a very sharp kitchen axe against a wooden plank. Place the chicken's neck between the axe and the plank and hammer the axe. This is the slow approach

Alternatively, use a long sharp blade to sever the neck the same way you would slice a cucumber, with a fast sliding cut.

EDIT: Cannibalism is more frequent when there is some malnutrition. Of course, sometimes you have to sacrifice the worst offenders.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#605

Post by joe8756438 »

declan_roberts wrote: post #381
joe8756438 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have a simple system for keep my birds safe from land predators. so the birds get a point for each level of protection they receive. each group needs two points to be safe. i mainly raise geese, which are tough, not going to be bothered by a hawk. geese (turkeys similar) start with one point. an electric fence is one point, a fully enclosed coop is one point, night light (.5?), guard animal (.5?). chickens are alwa…

I know people here who specifically add a "guard goose" to their hen flock for protection. They swear it helps against predators. We have a very reinforced coop and an automatic coop door so we've never had any issues.

yeah, they deter aerial predators, but you can’t have too much room for them to roam away from the geese. in my experience you need to have the geese and chickens together within about 200sq feet.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#606

Post by joe8756438 »

declan_roberts wrote: post #393
joe8756438 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. i have a flock and the feed alone puts a doz at $3. the labor is somewhat enjoyable and the chickens are incredible child-leftover disposal machines. but when you factor infrastructure and labor youll probably never recoup your “investment” in eggs. for anyone dealing with land predators, get electric poultry net. it’s magic.

Is that true even right now in the winter? My hens are basically pensioners at this point. I'm planning on refreshing the flock this spring.

im in md, and my hens have been laying all winter, no artificial light. they are a hybrid cross i bought from a local egg producing farm. i think they are called sex linked reds (not sure).

it’s crazy how many eggs they lay.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#607

Post by joe8756438 »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #306
joe8756438 wrote: post #226

I’ve got a flock, not counting infrastructure my costs are tied directly to feed. I source local non-gmo and herbicide free grains. My cost is about $3/doz. It’s unusual to be so close to a farm that produces the variety of grain at that level of quality. A local farm that produces on a large scale and sources grain from the same farm charges $8/doz. Seems totally fair, if not a little too cheap.

Are you counting your labor and coops as free?

yeah that’s my point.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#608

Post by autoexec »

renewiltord wrote: post #592
autoexec wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg has no ethics and is just mad that apple's lack of ethics isn't working in his favor. A businessman with ethics has very little chance of dethroning an entrenched cartel within a corrupt industry. The hypothetical ethical business looking to outcompete their rivals may be the only one willing to set fair prices, but they also won't be able/willing to do what their competitors do. They won't exploit slaves/…

Oh I see. And how much would t-shirts made by this non-slave ethical corporation be?

I've never owned a t-shirt that wasn't made by an unethical clothing industry which uses child slaves and abuses workers in sweatshops to produce hundreds of tons of clothing filled with plastics and poison every single year most of which will be burned or left to rot in a desert on the other side of the world from the retail shop that overpriced it when they sold it to me.

I have no idea what the fair market price of a t-shirt would be in a world where no one had to compete with the practices of the current industry. I do know that it'd be worth every penny. The price being paid now in environmental harm, inequality, and human suffering is way too high.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#609

Post by mrguyorama »

phil21 wrote: post #286
jghn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a city and buy most of my fresh produce, meat, and dairy from local farms.

Which is not scalable for the entire big city. My parents are organic market gardeners, and there is simply no way that model could scale up enough to feed that many people cheaply. Food budgets would have to go back to the 1940's or earlier - where they were a significant fraction of take home pay. Now they are almost a rounding error comparatively. I don't necessarily think that would be a bad thing. A lot of the a…

>Food budgets would have to go back to the 1940's or earlier - where they were a significant fraction of take home pay. Now they are almost a rounding error comparatively.

You are demonstrating your privilege. I am pretty frugal and my INDIVIDUAL food cost is like $100 a week, or 10% of my take home pay, and while I make peanuts compared to most in tech, I make more than the average adult.

USDA stats say the average numbers are closer to $500 a month and 11% of gross salary, and also:

>households in the lowest income quintile spent an average of $5,278 on food (representing 32.6 percent of after-tax income).

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#610

Post by pessimizer »

tptacek wrote: post #598
autoexec wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a coincidence. Companies know that if they suddenly raised the cost of their products 100% consumers would protest. At a certain point people will notice that they're being cheated and change their shopping habits accordingly. Companies use opportunities like bird flu outbreaks to rip off consumers while deflecting blame. When the nation's largest supplier of eggs didn't have a single bird infected they stil…

The entire egg industry is a conspiracy, like when that one guy at ADM price-fixed the lysine industry, except keyed to outbreaks of HPAI. I see.

Why wouldn't you pick the time when the public would be convinced a price rise is justifiable in order to raise prices (on a fairly inelastic good?) That isn't what you need a conspiracy for; the biggest would just press release that they were doing it, and the rest would follow. You might need a conspiracy to keep smaller producers from defecting from the price the biggest are setting, but the defectors wouldn't actually have the capacity to replace the price fixers, so they'd just be setting money on fire by not following.

I think it's pretty clear that they do explicitly discuss fixing prices with each other, but there's no actual need to do that.

https://farmaction.us/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Farm-Action...

edit: also, check out frozen potatoes https://jacobin.com/2025/01/french-fry-price-fixing-antitrus...

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