Laying Hen & Egg Farm Economics: Flock Size, Laying Curves, Egg Grading Mix, Feed per Dozen, Flock Replacement & Margin per Bird

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Follow one fictional laying flock from housing to week 80: birds alive with a weekly mortality rate, birds lost, cumulative mortality, and how many pullets to house so enough hens are left at the end.
• Turn a fictional laying curve into eggs per day and per 5-week block, add them up over the laying period, express the result per hen housed and find the peak block.
• Grade a sample of eggs with fictional weight bands, count the large eggs, look up the grade mix for the flock's age and calculate how many eggs of the week can be sold as first quality.
• Convert a fictional daily feed intake into feed per egg and per dozen for three flock stages, price it per dozen and work out the feed tonnes the flock eats in a year.
• Spread the pullet purchase over the flock cycle, cost labour from hours per 1,000 birds, add boxes, bedding and energy, and express every cost per dozen saleable eggs.
• Calculate the average price per dozen for three channels from the grade mix, subtract production and channel costs to get the margin per dozen, add up the annual margin of the channel plan and pick the channel that earns most per dozen.
• Subtract the pullet and clean-out costs from the cumulative margin, spread the result over the weeks of the flock cycle and find the week of age at which replacing the flock gives the highest margin per cycle week.
• Close the year with a simple P&L, express the profit per bird, test what happens to the profit when the feed price moves by −10 % to +20 % and chart where the money goes.