Downsizing the Flock?

I don't know how many laying hens I have anymore. That may be the first indication that I have too many. I have been debating thinning my flock just to give myself a little break. It is a lot of work to muck out chicken coops and clean all these eggs.

But on the flip side, I finally have enough hens to meet the demand of my customers and have eggs for my family.

On the other hand, I'm not making any money on eggs. Even at $3.50 a dozen and making the hens find their own food half the time, it just doesn't justify the cost of feed and my labor. Figure I get 5-6 dozen eggs a week to sell. That's only about $20. They eat about 1 bag of feed a week. That's $12. And they need a bale of shavings everyweek or so. That's $5. So I am doing all this work for $3? I spend at least an hour a week just cleaning eggs!

I won't even go into the details of keeping the coops clean with all the rain we've had!

I could raise my price to $4, but that still would only bring me about $5 a week. My egg customers may just have to get themselves some backyard chickens.