Selling Hatching Eggs for Profit

Everything you need to know to make $100 per week (or more!) each spring selling colored hatching eggs from 10 hens and only one rooster!

Yes, You Really Can Make Money Selling Hatching Eggs!

Every spring there is a frenzied rush by backyard chicken keepers to buy beautiful, uniquely colored hatching eggs. Here are some tips on how to use your existing flock (plus a couple new girls) and one handsome fella to produce a secondary stream of seasonal income.

People Want Hatching Eggs

A large percentage of chicken keepers own incubators. Amazon and Tractor Supply sell them year-round. When the weather turns warm, hens will begin to go broody and then everyone is on the hunt for fertilized hatching eggs. The springtime demand is ever-present, not only because people enjoy chicks, but because they love providing the opportunity for children to watch the birth of new life.

Hatching Eggs Sell. And They Sell Well!

While it is possible to sell barnyard mix hatching eggs, that is not how you make $100 per week. People want unique, beautifully colored eggs from their flock. And they want to watch those chicks emerge from stunning shells so they know what shades to expect from each pullet. It is colored hatching eggs that will sell reliably for you season after season. And the richer toned or more unique, the better.

Set Yourself Up For Success with Colored Egg Layers

Your hatching egg sales depend on your flock. To sell eye-catching hatching eggs you must have reliable layers and a good rooster. As long as people own backyard chickens, there is going to be a steady demand for blue, green, pink, olive, chocolate, heavy bloom, and speckled eggs. Everyone seems to have room in their flock for one-of-a-kind, funky colored egg layers. It is because of this that olive eggers should be part of your breeding plan. Generation after generation of olive egger breeding and back-crossing produces a wildly varied color palette that commercial hatcheries will never be able to match.

Need More Help? Jump Directly to our PDF Breeding Guides to Walk You Through Every Step:

Focus on Breeding for Breathtaking Eggs

Buyers are picky. They have purchased feed store chicks in the past and grown tired of only getting brown eggs. They want blues so vibrant they hurt your eyes to gaze at them in daylight; greens so minty they mimic candy and olives so speckled, they hardly look as if a chicken could have laid them. They like their chocolates rich and dark or heavily dribbled with cocoa flecks. Your goal will be to choose your favorite – the egg colors you are passionate about – to breed.

The Hidden Benefit of breeding Easter & olive eggers

In the world of show bird breeding, they will tell you there are breeders and there are multipliers. But let’s face it, people want chickens and they are certainly trying to multiply their flocks! Breeding colored egg layers is a good way to give backyard chicken keepers what they crave without negatively impacting the standard for purebreds. Your crosses will be Easter Eggers or Olive Eggers, a “mutt” breed that is known for its hybrid vigor and ability to lay enormous numbers of eggs. Hybrid pullets you hatch and keep yourself will usually out-perform their mothers.

Start with the Hens You’ve Got

Chances are you’ve got an Americana or Easter Egger of some sort in your flock. Maybe a Welsummer, a Marans or an olive egger. These girls will help you get started.

Add New Hens Judiciously

Once you’ve selected the color eggs you’re going to breed, add new hens thoughtfully. The best practice is to purchase hatching eggs and hatch your own chicks so you can see the colors their mothers laid. Purchasing chicks where you can view the shells they hatched from is a close second. Buying from a commercial hatchery is the most expensive option because of shipping minimums but typically reliable. (A hatchery purchase is how I began with my Whiting True Blues.) The goal is to have 4 to 5 young hens regularly laying the color of egg you want to sell.

Invest in a Good Breeding Rooster

He will be the best $15 to $35 you spend. Look for a breeder producing beautiful eggs who has too many roos (most do). Ideally she should know what color egg he hatched from and have a good idea what genes he is carrying. You must be picky. You need to know the breed type you are going for so you can spot an undesirable mixed breed cockerel when he’s presented. Blue Egg Gene Breed Roosters with a pea comb have a 96% chance of carrying a blue egg gene, which is necessary for breeding blue egg layers. But a rose comb, which looks somewhat similar, belongs to predominately brown layers so check carefully. Marans, which are chocolate egg layers, should have feathered legs and a straight comb. Ask to see pictures of the eggs his mother or sister lays. A good breeder will be proud to show you!

A rooster that is 5 months or older is ready to mate hens, which will jump start your breeding program. But don’t turn down a phenomenal young cockerel simply because he’s only six weeks old. This is often where you’ll get the best price on the best genetics.

Hint: Stunning purebred roosters are nearly free during the late summer and fall months when breeders don’t want to feed extra boys all winter. Look for these opportunities in July through late August when kids are heading back to school, and again just before Thanksgiving travel begins. You’re likely to score a steal on a fantastic roo!

Begin Crossing Your Roo with the Hens

Once the rooster begins mating, it will take a week for the hens to be fully fertile. Check your eating eggs from each hen for the bullseye-looking germinal disc. Once you see this, her eggs are ready to sell as fertilized hatching eggs!

Consider Doing Your Own Test Hatch

If you’ve got an incubator, hatching a few chicks is a great way to test your flock’s fertility and hatch rate. Plus you’ll have chicks to photograph to show buyers what feather colors they can expect.

How to Maximize Breeding with the Fewest Number of Roos

The secret is to use one rooster that will allow you to breed purebreds and colored egg layers from the same pen. Here is how I produce 3 different hatching egg types from 1 rooster and 5 different hatching egg types from 2 roosters.

In the above scenario, you could give buyers a rainbow carton of blue, green, speckled Welsummer, olive and chocolate Marans hatching eggs. The offspring will lay the egg colors shown. I count speckled olive eggers different from standard smooth olive eggers, which gives 5 total egg colors in the carton.

Standard Brown Layer Roos Cannot Accomplish This

Egg Pictures are Everything

While you’re waiting for your girl’s eggs to be fertilized, collect a few for pictures. The eggs you photograph should be properly shaped, large in size and clean. They should also be a good representation of the eggs buyers are likely to receive. It is common to photograph eggs laid at the beginning of the season, when the hen’s “ink” is vibrant. A good practice is to provide fresh pictures as the season progresses alongside the first egg pictures. This honesty helps buyers set realistic expectations. It also helps them to understand their hatched chicks will go through the same yearly cycle but they’ll enjoy darker first eggs, too.

Make those Pictures Farmhousey Cute!

Take a moment to style your photos because it can pay off huge. Great pictures can make the difference between eggs that sit and eggs that have a waiting list of buyers eager to get their hands on them.

It Really is Okay to use Photoshop Fairly

Blue eggs are notoriously difficult to photograph. The pictures all come out looking green. I’ve discovered that placing them on a white background and photographing them outside in cool shade is the trick to capturing their blue tones.

I use Photoshop to add my logo, crop the pictures and if needed, adjust the light levels or color balance so the eggs look true to their real-life color.

Make Your Asking Prices Fair but Firm

If you have put the work into a flock that is producing pretty eggs and you can guarantee the chicks that hatch will lay the color you intend, you’re ready for market. Quality hatching eggs should never sell for less than $2 each. If you’re shooting for $100 in sales per week, eggs need to be priced at $2-$3 each or $24 to $36 per dozen. High end, $70-$120 per dozen pricing is reserved for the rarest shades or your most sought after breeding project.

How to make $100 per Week in the spring

Remember how I said you must have 4 to 5 fresh young laying hens per color? This is where they come in. You need to be collecting two dozen eggs from them per week (about 4 total eggs per day). When sold for $2 per egg, that 2 dozen will net you $48 each week. Because one young rooster can service ten hens, you should have another egg color coming from his efforts with 4 to 5 additional hens. Their eggs should net you another $48 or more each week; a total of $96. Asking $2.25 per egg results in $108 from that same 4 dozen. At $2.50 each ($30 per dozen) you clear $120 each week.

2023 Update: Colored Hatching egg dozens now sell for $36 minimum and $50 per dozen is standard for rainbow mixes. 3 dozen sold per week at $36 each = $108 per week. 4 dozen sold per week at $36 each = $144 per week. (10 hens will lay around 50 eggs, or right at 4 dozen per week.)

Spring 2024 Update: One dozen olive colored hatching eggs that will produce olive-laying offspring are anticipated to be $50-$60 each with the darkest shades nearing $85 per dozen. Dark chocolate Marans hatching eggs are $110-$200 per dozen from professional breeders. If you find someone offering stunningly dark eggs for less than $60 per dozen, it is almost always a hatching egg scam.

Minimum Price Per Hatching Egg

If you are providing two different colored laying offspring from your eggs, the absolute minimum price is $2 per egg. The convenience of being able to have two guaranteed different colored layers from one carton of hatching eggs is what sets the price point. (Keep in mind that a box of various colored egg layer chicks ordered from a hatchery with a minimum purchase of 15 chicks is going to run $80 or more. Your hatching eggs are a good local option at a very fair price.)

Why Spring?

The spring buying rush makes the sale of this many hatching eggs possible. Many of your early buyers will be fellow breeders whose own flock cannot keep the incubators full while chick demand is high. Backyard keepers will buy half to full dozens at a time to hatch at home. Pictures of some of your eggs and chicks will end up on social media, especially if you have invested in cute packaging and presentation. Word of mouth sales will increase from there. Because all of these are local sales, you do not need to be NPIP certified unless you want to ship your eggs but you DO need to be PT tested.

Packaging: The small investment that pays big

I once went to a farm to pick up a dozen hatching eggs priced at $30. I was a little repulsed when I was handed a quite dirty, fairly tattered old grocery store carton. The shoddy carton made me question my investment. (My gut-level intuition turned out to be correct. The eggs had been mishandled, left in a hot barn too long and only 5 of the 12 hatched.)

Imagine instead if a buyer is handed a new, clean carton that has been thoughtfully prepared for her order. The carton has a custom label or stamp, maybe tied with a bit of twine and looks like it has come from some sort of luxury farmer’s market. It feels like unwrapping a present to reveal the jewel-toned eggs inside! Who could resist snapping a pic and sharing such excitement on social media?

Neat packaging conveys the pride and quality you have invested in your breeding program. It assures the buyer they are making a sound purchase and can expect good outcomes from such lovingly handled eggs.

Here’s How to Package Your Eggs

Select the cartons you’re going to use. If desired, order a custom stamp for them – it really does make your cartons look adorable! I love this dark charcoal gray jumbo ink pad for stamping my cartons and this jumbo ink pad is the best value on Amazon if you want classic black. (Affiliate links.)

How Much Does Packaging Cost?

The most expensive cartons I use are the iMagic brand white half dozen cartons, at about 80¢ each. (Affiliate link.) I order colored pulp cartons online in bulk, paying 45-50¢ each. This is literally spending pennies to double or triple the perceived value of your hatching eggs. If you’re on the hunt for charming egg selling supplies, this article on cute egg selling supplies has links to where I have found the best deals!

$72 per Dozen Pricing Exists. And they sell.

Once a breeding project hits its third year, the time invested in carefully selecting only the best colored layers begins to pay off. Around the third generation is when you begin to get “impossible” shades that really turn heads. Selecting for the deepest blues begins to produce super blues. Chocolates can approach 8 on the Marans egg scale. Heavy blooms you selectively bred for begin to thickly frost the eggs, turning their hues pink, lavender or gray. Freckled eggs are suddenly laid in jaw-dropping shades of mustard and speckled sea foam or very dark olive.

It is around year three that your hatching eggs begin to fetch a premium. In exchange for $5 to $6 per egg ($60 to $72 per dozen), you can save the buyer 3 years or more of time, effort, trial and error. Top-dollar-paying clients will expect to receive the very best looking eggs, which will usually be laid during the spring. Pictures and packaging will need to be on-point for such premium eggs. But it can – and is – done every year.

2023 Update: This season I am seeing some well-packaged, deep chocolate hatching eggs selling for $80 to $120 per dozen. Speckled Olive Eggs continue to be $65-$80 per dozen and are selling almost as fast as they are listed for sale.

Bait and Switch: Do Not Do This

We’ve all seen a rainbow dozen hatching eggs for sale only to read the fine print and discover all the eggs have been fertilized by a Barred Rock rooster. You would be lucky to get a single green egg layer from the entire hatch. People buy colored eggs because they are hoping for colored egg layers. Don’t disappoint them! Make it clear what you are offering and what color eggs the offspring will lay.

Additional Thoughts and Tips:

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Born By June or they Won’t Lay Soon

Next year’s fresh laying hens need to be born by June. This gives them 6 to 7 months to develop so they are ready to lay when the spring buying rush begins the next January. Sellers know that early bird buyers want February chicks, which means hatching eggs must go into the incubator in January. Spring-born chicks who start laying in the fall have plenty of time for their eggs to reach a large, hatchable size by the following early spring. If instead you want the brightest colored new eggs to be laid early in the spring breeding season, opt for chicks hatched in May.

Feed for Good Growth – My Secret to Large Hatching Eggs

Nothing is more disappointing than a hen that lays a medium size egg too small for hatching. I have discovered that feeding chicks 24% Starter Crumbles for the first 2 months of life produces hens who will lay Extra Large or Jumbo eggs. Chicks who are fed 18% Chick Starter do not typically lay jumbo eggs and those fed 16% Layer Crumbles with the rest of the flock are at risk of laying small, pullet-sized eggs for life. When I add juvenile chicks in with my adult flock, I put everyone on 22% grower feed for a couple months and offer the laying hens extra oyster shell. (The flock also enjoys daily kitchen scraps, garden weeds and pasture ranging.) Because everyone loves the higher protein crumbles, less feed goes to waste. This has been my secret trick to getting large size eggs from medium-bodied breeds.

2023 Update: 24% chick starter is now very hard to find. I mix 20% chick crumbles with 30% protein Game Bird starter/feed in a 1:1 ratio. This makes a roughly 25% protein chick starter mix. I’ve been doing this since 2021 and enjoyed robust chicks who grow into hefty adults.

2024 Update: Nutrena Nature Wise brand offers a 22% Meat Bird Starter & Grower that can be used for egg laying chicks if you want an all-in-one bag option. Mile Four brand offers a 21% baby poultry starter feed as well. (Afflinks)

Remember, Dad Does Speckling Best

Speckling genes are most readily inherited from the rooster and passed on to his daughters. The ideal rooster will hatch from a speckled egg himself and be bred to hens with speckling present on their shells. If you follow this breeding tip of using a rooster from a speckled egg line who hatched from a heavily speckled egg himself, a higher percentage of his daughters should lay speckled eggs.

You Do Not Have to Be a One Stop Shop

After you have taken steps to maximize what each rooster can produce, you don’t need to overwhelm yourself by offering every color. Focus on doing one to three colors really well. It will be more enjoyable and bring in more income in the long run.

Befriend Nearby Breeders

There is great benefit in working with other breeders in your area. If your side of town has the most beautiful eggs, buyers will make the drive to get the rainbow selection of their dreams. You’ll benefit from the referrals of other breeders and they will profit from yours. The result will be happy buyers who return season after season and gladly tell their friends where they are getting such an assortment of eggs.

Beware of Summer Hatching Egg Issues

The sizzling heat of summer is hard on hens. Their discomfort is evident in the washed-out eggs they leave in the nest box. Eggs laid in the heat of summer tend to have lower overall hatch rates and produce an abundance of cockerels. I cannot explain the reason for this, I simply have observed it season after season. (Interestingly, the first eggs a pullet lays that are large enough to hatch often produce slightly more females.)

Sell Smart in the Summer

If you are aware of common summertime issues, you can taper off hatching egg sales or offer extra eggs for free to compensate for the lower summer hatch rates. Buyers are likely to be displeased when they are handed a carton of pastel eggs that looks nothing like the rich hues of the spring-laid eggs in your photos. Make sure your product pictures are updated, too.

Watch for Shifting Trends

It may sound strange but specific egg colors can become more popular based on interior design trends. Why? Because bowls of hand gathered eggs often sit on people’s kitchen counters. For example, when aqua blue was common in home decor, blue eggs were all the rage. As lighter white farmhouse tones came into style, mixes of ivory, cream and oatmeal colored eggs with heavy blooms became desirable. The current shift towards natural greens and earth tones has caused speckled olive eggers, sage eggers and chocolate laying Marans eggs to surge in popularity.

2023 Update: The darkest of the dark chocolate Marans eggs are the most sought after right now, with prices over $100 per dozen. This also means they are being targeted by scammers so do your research before purchasing hatching eggs on a whim from someone on Facebook.

2024 Trends: Heavy bloomed birds who lay “pink eggs” (heavy bloom over brown) and “purple eggs” (heavy bloom over maroonish Marans) seem to be on everyone’s wish-list. Speckles and blooms continue to be very popular. Since Marans help create both speckled olives and bloomy “purples”, their darkest hatching eggs continue to fetch astronomical prices.

Back to Those Shifting Trends…

Shifting yearly trends do not mean you need to switch up the color eggs your flock lays every year. Trends are helpful to watch so you know how to style your egg photographs for that season.

Every year around Easter you will notice a spike in demand for powder blue and pastel green hatching eggs, as well as eating eggs. Prepare Easter basket-like photos in advance to take advantage of these cycles.

Are you a visual person who could use more help understanding how 10 Hens + 1 Roo can turn your backyard flock into a profitable side-hustle? Click to visit my shop where I offer a 12 page PDF with easy-to-understand flowcharts and even more useful info to help you get started!

Quail Hatching Eggs Sell Well, Too!

Coturnix quail begin laying in spring, around February or March. Their short season means hatching eggs and quail chicks are also in demand. Quail eggs typically sell for 50¢ each with Jumbo and celadon (blue) eggs priced at 80¢ to $1 each. Breeding for unique colors, like the speckled mint tones below, can fetch $1-$2 per hatching egg. Rare Jumbo Celadon quail hatching eggs sell for shocking amounts if they can even be found.

2023 Update: Celadon hatching eggs are firmly $1 each, if not more. Jumbo Celadon hatching eggs cannot be had at any price.

Follow Federal Laws

The National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) is a national program that partners with federal and state departments of agriculture. NPIP provides flock testing and certification that your flock is disease free so your hatching eggs can be shipped across state lines. Please note that you cannot legally ship hatching eggs across state lines without NPIP certification. There are also individual state requirements for the importation of eggs from out of state. Luckily it is legal in most states to sell hatching eggs in your local area directly to buyers who intend to incubate them.

FREE BONUS: Printable Hatching Eggs Breed List

This handy breed list page has twelve lines for you to list what buyers can expect from each egg. Simply number the eggs and write the corresponding info on the same number line of the breed list sheet. This is especially useful when selling Rainbow hatching egg mixes or Easter and Olive eggers. It reminds clients what each chick should look like at hatch or what color egg she is expected to lay. Buyers will appreciate your considerate attention to detail.

A Word About Shipping Eggs

Shipping eggs is very expensive, both because of the express postage and the amount of protective packaging that must be purchased to prepare your eggs for rough handling. Because people are unlikely to pay high prices for common breed hatching eggs, shipping should only be an option for your rare breeds and show quality birds. Note that people expect you to include 4-6 extra eggs to cover those damaged – or shaken to death – during shipping. You’ll also need to pay for yearly NPIP certification and ensure your eggs ship with the proper documentation.

My advice would be to start by selling your hatching eggs locally to determine if you should invest in the certification and expense required to be a hatching egg shipper. You may find local egg sales to be so profitable that you never have the need to expand.

In Closing

I hope this information helps you create a profitable hatching egg side-hustle! Every day I craft carton stamps for new hobby farms that spring up all over the United States. The demand is always present for good quality hatching eggs, with interest spiking any time the economy turns downward or Avian Influenza outbreaks cause grocery store egg shortages. As increasing numbers of people desire to keep backyard chickens and quail, selling hatching eggs will become a very reliable stream of hobby income.

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