Selling quail eggs and birds — what to clarify beforehand
The routes of sale, the questions for the veterinary office and the local regulatory office, an honest costing with your own figures, packaging and records.
Selling quail eggs and quail from your own keeping is possible in principle, and many small keepers do it. What has to be clarified beforehand, though, is what goes with it in your case — labelling, registration of the flock, hygiene requirements and the tax side are regulated differently by state and district, and what holds for the neighbouring district need not hold for you. You get that information from the veterinary office and the food safety authority of your district, from the local regulatory office of your municipality and, as soon as money flows regularly, from a tax adviser.
Who to ask and what to ask
Call before the first egg goes over the counter; a call costs nothing but a little time. Write down beforehand what you are planning — number of birds, intended quantity, who you want to supply — because that is what you will be asked first.
| Authority | What you ask about |
|---|---|
| Veterinary office | Whether the flock has to be notified or registered, from what number, and what applies to handing on live birds |
| Food safety authority | What applies to supplying eggs to consumers, what changes when supplying trade or restaurants, what labelling is required |
| Local regulatory office of the municipality | What has to be observed for a sale from the farm, at the roadside or at a market |
| Tax adviser | From what point income has to be declared and what you have to record for it |
For every piece of information, note the date, the authority and the name. That is not a formality: if a year later someone else on the phone gives you different information, you know what you relied on.
The routes and what each involves
From the farm. The shortest route: the customers come to you, there is no transport and no stall fee. What has to be clarified is whether and how a sale at your own address is notified, what applies to a vending machine or a self-service point, and what has to be observed for a sign at the roadside. In practical terms there is also the question of where you store the eggs cool and clean in the meantime and who opens up when you are not there.
Friends and colleagues. The usual way in, and the one with the fewest hurdles. Even so, food passes from your hand into someone else's here too. Ask from what point that counts as a sale in the authority's view and what changes as a result. If you start cleanly here, you will not have to change anything later.
Weekly market. Considerably more requirements: pitch and fees with the market administration, requirements for the stall itself, for chilling and hand hygiene, plus the question of labelling at the stall. Count half a day of stall time, the journey there and back and setting up into your costing — the market is the route that eats the most working time.
Restaurants and farm shops. Here you are no longer selling to consumers but to a business that processes further. Experience says this is the stage with the most requirements, and that is exactly what you ask the food safety authority about before you promise a chef anything. In return the quantities are plannable and the offtake regular, which is worth a lot for the costing.
Live birds. When handing on hatching eggs, chicks and laying quail, further requirements may come into play, often from animal disease law. Ask the veterinary office what has to be documented when handing them on, what the buyer has to be given and what applies to transport.
What an egg costs you
The most common mistake small keepers make is to measure the price against the feed sack. Feed is the most visible item, but rarely half the cost. Work with your own figures — invented averages from the internet help nobody, and prices differ strongly by region anyway.
| Item | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|
| Feed | Sack price divided by contents, times consumption per bird per day |
| Bedding, grit, lime | Receipts for one quarter, divided by three |
| Electricity | Light, heat plate, incubator, chilling — at a pinch a sub-meter |
| Water | usually small, but not zero |
| Bought-in birds or incubation | Cost per bird, spread over the laying months |
| Losses | Birds that do not make it to the end of the laying period |
| Packaging | Boxes, labels, bags |
| Replacement and repair | Drinkers, netting, lamps over the year |
| Working time | Minutes per day, honestly measured, not estimated |
The calculation is simpler than the table makes it look. Take a period in which nothing major changed — a quarter is enough — and put in your own amounts:
- A — all the quarter's expenditure from the table, added up
- B — the quarter's working time in hours, valued at a rate you yourself
consider appropriate for your time
- C — the eggs you actually sold in that quarter
- Cost price per egg = (A + B) divided by C
C is what matters: not the eggs laid but the eggs sold. Breakage, own consumption and what you give away belong on the cost side, not on the sales side. If you sell in boxes of ten or twenty, multiply the result accordingly and you have the lower limit for a box.
Two things stand out almost every time. The share of working time is higher than expected as soon as you put it in at all; anyone who puts it in at zero is subsidising their customers. And the figure fluctuates strongly with laying performance — in winter it can multiply, because the costs remain and the eggs do not come. So calculate over a whole year, not over the best month.
What you ask in the end follows from that cost price and from what is usual in your area. For that, do not ask the internet but look at what other small keepers and farm shops in the vicinity do. And do not sell below your cost price in order to get rid of stock faster — that pushes the price down for everyone and turns a hobby into a loss-making business.
Packaging and transport
The shell is thinner than it looks. What has proved itself:
- Firm boxes with recesses instead of loose bags. Eggs that lie against each
other rarely arrive intact.
- Store cool and dry, without jumps in temperature. An egg that comes from the
cold into the warm mists over, and damp shells are a problem.
- Do not wash. The shell has a natural protective layer, and washing takes it
away. Heavily soiled eggs are better sorted out than cleaned. If eggs are dirty regularly, that is down to the bedding and the laying nests, not to the cleaning.
- In the car flat and shaded, not on the back seat in the sun. In heat, a cool
box without direct contact with the ice pack.
What belongs on the pack and what does not is again a question for the food safety authority — statements on keeping time, origin and labelling are among the points on which keepers most often go wrong.
Records
Keep a simple record, regardless of whether anyone requires it. It costs a few minutes a day and later answers the authority's questions, the tax adviser's, and your own — whether the whole thing pays.
Customers who come back
Price decides regular customers less often than reliability does. If you promise to deliver the same quantity every week and keep to that in December too, you keep the custom. If you are generous in summer and cancel in winter, you lose it to the next supplier.
Two things follow from that: never promise more than your worst month yields, and say early when things get tight. A word a week beforehand is forgiven, an empty box on collection day is not. Even size, clean shells and always the same packaging do the rest — what looks reliable is remembered as reliable.
If you are recording flock, laying days and sales anyway, keep it right where you manage your birds, rather than in a second notebook.