Keeping hens and ducks chat.

Pyxis wrote: »

Out of interest, are you allowed to sell your spare eggs, or are there loads of regulations meaning you have to give them away?

Great question Pyxis thank you x

Basically you don't need to register with the Egg Marketing Inspectorate to sell eggs to your neighbours, friends or relatives as long as the eggs are not graded for weight or their quality and as long as you have less than 350 hens.

Registration is required to sell at local markets if more than 50 birds are kept and egg boxes must be correctly labelled.

If you sell to shops egg producers must be registered with the Egg Marketing regardless of the number of hens you keep. These eggs must go through the grading process.

Registration with Defra is required if you keep more than 50 of any type of bird.

I have gone in to quite a bit of detail on the question because we have a number of new hen keepers on this thread plus some others thinking of getting hens at a later date. I think it is always useful to know what is and what isn't allowed.

We always sell ours to friends and neighbours and have regular orders for them. It is part of our lifestyle for being as semi self sufficient as possible. If we sell all the eggs except for the ones we need for ourselves the income for these eggs pays for our hens and ducks keep. So our eggs end up being completely free for us and in return for our eggs we put in the time for cleaning both hotels out, getting them out in the morning, getting them back in at night (hens get themselves to bed the ducks don't not to mention won't), poop picking, changing water bowls, fresh bedding and taking them to the vets if poorly etc.. But, those fresh eggs we get from them everyday are worth every bit of time and effort we put in to keeping them. If I crack an egg and the yolk is bright yellow/orange I am happy. They are much tastier than shop purchased eggs that have sickly very pale yellow looking yolks.

Edwink