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Comment by chriskanan

17 hours ago

Same thing happened with eggs in the USA with bird flu used as an excuse.

Which reversed in about 6 months and now eggs are are their lowest prices in nearly a decade.

  • The average hatching egg costs a few dollars. Can go as high as nearly $20 if it's something remarkably rare and useful in terms of breed/quality.

    An egg takes 21 days to hatch.

    Then it's 18-24 weeks to start laying their own eggs. That's ~$5-15 in feed over the period, maybe 40-50 pounds. There's utilities, labor, land, etc., but your incremental cost to add a hen if you have the space is minimal. My numbers won't reflect a lot of operators, as scale matters.

    Out of a typical 1.5-3 year lifespan that had a startup cost of a few dollars per, paying back its return by about month 6-7, that's not too bad. It's only worth doing financially in this economy at ludicrous, arguably inherently inhumane scales, but that's what it is on paper.

    Not quite the same path to course-correction as a silicon shortage.