Cooks Community Garden

I crunched some numbers about the Egg Co-Op to see where we are at in our first year of the program.  So far we have been going for 113 days and have laid 553 eggs.  This works out to roughly 5 eggs a day.

553 eggs weighs 62 lbs!

• Cost of feed per day: $1.11
• Cost of feed per bag: $17.69
• A bag of fee lasts: 14.125 days
• Number of bags for the year: 26 bags
• Cost of feed per year: $459

Egg Production Vs. Temperature

Since we know egg laying behavior is affected by stress, one of the things that stresses birds is the heat of the summer.  So we graphed the average temperatures for each month in 2011 and then we plotted the egg production per month.

Cooks Community Garden welcomes you to join us in a new program we starting . The Egg Co-Op is an opportunity for people to take part in raising chickens and in return, get fresh eggs. You do not have to know anything about chickens to join. The group will share in the work and share in the benefit fresh eggs. If you are interested in joining the Egg Co-Op or have questions, contact us through our web page under the “Contact… Us” tab. The deadline to join the Co-Op is January 25th.

Our website: cookscommunitygarden.org click on the “contact us” tab

More Info:

Hey!

I talked about the egg Co-Op idea I had and wanted to open it up to the group. The egg Co-Op is where a group of people share the work of taking care of chickens and get the benefit of eggs. If you know nothing about chickens, and many don’t, I can teach you everything you need to know.

In general people will come out 1-2 times a week, check on the chickens, move the “chicken tractor” (its on wheels) a few feet, top off the water and feed and collect eggs. I wouldn’t anticipate this taking more than 15 minutes. Every now an then we will have to do a cleaning, but we will share that too. You can simply tack this on to your time already at the garden.

The plan is that whatever eggs are there on your day, you get to keep. The number of eggs will depend on how many chickens and laying habits of the chickens. There will be cost associated with this (feed, buying chicks, etc.) I am guessing about $20 plus work.

It is worth noting that having hens for eggs is more expensive than buying a dozen at Walmart. A dozen of our eggs might break down to $2.50-$3 a dozen. The trade off is you know your eggs are safe, organic, and are more nutritious.

Studies have show chickens raised in this setting:

* 1/3 less cholesterol
* 1/4 less saturated fat
* 2/3 more vitamin A
* 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
* 3 times more vitamin E
* 7 times more beta carotene

If you are interested or might be interested, but have questions feel free to contact me. Again, don’t let inexperience with chickens etc get in the way if you are interested, I can show you the ropes and it is a lot of fun. Kids love coming to see them and hens are quite friendly.

Feel free to contact me with questions, comments, etc.

Ryan