Growing pains are tough, y'all, and sometimes they come with goodbyes.
Doug and I have made the difficult decision to say goodbye to our chicken egg sales, and we didn't want to do that without explaining our rationale. Southern Songbird Farm started seven years ago with a rooster, two hens, and a small garden. Three chickens became more chickens. Ducks were added. Eggs were accumulating quickly! After foisting eggs and veggies on all our friends and neighbors, our wonderful friend. Lindsay Salce of Willow Ridge Angus, came to us with a proposition. "Why don't you join the Winchester Clark County Farmers Market with me? You can sell your extra eggs and veggies." I looked at Doug and said, "Well, we have to pick a name for our farm. We have to have something to put our sign!" Southern Songbird Farm was born, and the rest, as they say, is history. Looking back on the original chicken trio of Cassius, Lizzie, and Nellie, we'd never have guessed it would have blossomed into the business and life that it has become today!
The eggs sales climbed quickly with local stores wanting to carry them along with our chicken. To meet this need, we had to start purchasing 250 new, organically-raised, commercial laying breed pullets every year. To sustain their production, we feed those 250 layers roughly 80 pounds of feed a day. Non-GMO feed can only be purchased from a couple of mills in Kentucky making it expensive as well as requiring it be delivered in bulk to keep our costs down. Thirteen to twenty dozen eggs a day require a lot of cartons to package. We buy our cartons custom printed in bulk from a producer in Florida. It was wearing us out to have to print stickers with all the required labeling and hand-stick them to regular cartons. Buying metal and lumber to build and then replace our large mobile coops damaged in storms adds to the cost as well. But, perhaps the biggest cost of all in raising a commercial flock of hens is the labor.
If rotated frequently through the pasture, a laying hen flock is a boon. They scratch up manure piles from the cattle, eat harmful insects, provide soil disturbance by scratching, and deposit rich nitrogen in the form of chicken poop. However, if left too long in one spot, they can be destructive-digging holes in the pasture for dust bathing, scratching the grass down to the roots, etc. Weather and hay production this year has made it incredibly difficult to keep these hens rotating in the 3-5 day window we need. We considered letting them just free-range, but we don't want them to be bombarded with predators outside the safety of their movable electric netting.
The most laborious aspect to selling eggs on a commercial level, however, is the processing of the eggs themselves. As a licensed wholesaler of eggs in Kentucky, we are required to abide by the egg production standards set by the state. That means each egg has to washed in a commercial egg wash at a certain temperature, dried, and examined under a light (candling) to check for cracks and blood spots. This is a ton of work in the evenings after a long, hot day of farming. Recently, we were absolutely blessed to have my parents move just down the road. They graciously took over all the egg packaging duties. If you've purchased eggs from us in the last year or so, know that they were lovingly washed and boxed by Ben and Jane Bransom! Now these two egg-handling saints have done it for free, but if we paid two people minimum wage for 8 hours per week per person, that would be over $6000 per year.
Despite all this, we have continued to produce what we feel are excellent quality eggs. We have received so many wonderful compliments on our eggs especially from the customers of Happy Meadow in Berea and Beech Springs Farm Market here in Winchester. As the egg sales have grown, so have other aspects of our farming. The other thing we are heavily complimented on is our hay. Doug prides himself on his hay production, and that customer base has grown leaps and bounds especially in the horse owner arena. This year, we are also producing pork for the first time. With all this growth, we soon realized something had to give. Two people simply can't do it all.
With this in mind, we have been working with KCARD to see where our business needs to expand or contract to promote growth. KENTUCKY CENTER FOR AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT (KCARD) is a non-profit organization that helps agricultural and rural businesses with support services, business development, technical assistance, and marketing. As they went over the analysis of our business, it was evident how much money we lose on egg production. The results were shocking, but unfortunately, not surprising. Doug and I knew we had a difficult decision to make.
The decision to discontinue our egg production and sales was difficult for numerous reasons. A dozen eggs was literally the first product we sold on our farm. We know so many of you, our loyal customers, came to know us by taking a chance and purchasing a carton of those brown beauties. Lastly, we've been honored to be the wholesale egg provider for stores that have been so supportive of us as not just as a business, but also as fellow humans just doing our best.
We hope you will also continue to support us as this decision allows us to branch out and grow. We are looking forward to introducing pork to our line up later this year and to expand our meat chicken production. Thank you for trusting us to feed your family. We will continue our promise to provide quality products for hopefully many years to come.
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