Cost per egg calculator
Work out what each egg actually costs you to produce, and whether the price you charge covers it. Feed is usually the largest single cost in a small flock, so it drives most of the answer.
Your numbers
Your results
per egg
- Feed cost per egg
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- Other cost per egg
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- Total cost per egg
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- Cost per dozen
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- Feed as share of total cost
- Feed cost per week
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- Total cost per week
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- Feed cost per year
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- Eggs per week
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- Revenue per week
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- Margin per week
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- Margin per dozen
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Read this alongside your own records. The calculator does simple arithmetic on the numbers you type. It does not include labour, housing or depreciation unless you add them under other costs, and it cannot know your local feed prices or what your birds actually eat.
Where the starting figures come from
The feed-intake and laying-rate defaults are examples, not targets. They are not measurements of your flock, and they are meant to be replaced by your own records.
- Feed intake, 120 g per bird per day. UK guidance for an average adult hen is 100–120 g a day, so 120 g is the top of that band (British Hen Welfare Trust, Feeding your hens). A modern brown-egg hybrid holds a steady 100–105 g once mature, at a body weight of 1,700–1,800 g (Poultry Hub Australia, Nutrient requirements of egg laying chickens). Across small and backyard flocks the range is wider: 100–150 g (Alabama Cooperative Extension System, Feeding the Laying Hen, 2022). 120 g is within the UK and backyard ranges but above the cited 100–105 g hybrid range. Use measured intake for your breed and flock.
- Laying rate, 4.2 eggs per bird per week. That is about 218 eggs a year, near the centre of the published figures rather than the top of them. A small backyard flock should average 200–240 eggs per hen per year (UF/IFAS Extension, Raising Backyard Chickens for Eggs, publication AN239), and UK hens average 200–300 (RSPCA, Egg laying hens in UK farming). The FAO puts a typical bird at 208 eggs over twelve months, a weekly rate of four (Egg production, in Egg marketing: A guide for the production and sale of eggs). If your hens are retired commercial birds, as a great many UK flocks are, expect three or four eggs a week rather than more (British Hen Welfare Trust, How many eggs a day does a hen lay).
Every source gives a range, and none of them know your birds, your feed or your climate. This one matters more than the rest: on 35p of feed a bird a week, 4.2 eggs gives 8.3p per egg where 5 eggs gives 7.0p. Be careful about raising it without records to back it up.
Next questions: how many birds does it take for the flock to pay its way? See the break-even flock size calculator. Planning a new flock from chicks? The feed cost by age calculator totals the feed bill to any age.
Get the Feed Cost Playbook
See what to change first if your cost per egg is too high. The guide walks through feed waste, laying rate, bulk buying and margin with the arithmetic shown, and ends with a printable weekly record sheet.
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Live UK feed and egg prices, kept up to date every month from the DEFRA datasets, are on the Fynbrex Egg & Feed Index.
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