What are Roosters for

Actually...some people caponize the roos. Done at the right age they look like hens but grow bigger
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
I think he's referring to the gang/gun violence Chicago is well known for.
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Yep. Think sexual assault and fighting. Hens with ripped out feathers on their backs and roosters chasing and fighting each other all day... literally a fight to the death
 
Baked Potato said:
Weird! Also as a frequent Chicago visitor, but knowing next to nothing about livestock, don't know that that means.
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Baked Potato said:
I see. Weird call-out though. I think Chicago doesn't really even crack the top 10 when it comes to violent crime rate among US cities.

And I always like visiting, at least as someone who cares about pretty-looking buildings
Click to expand...


Not weird at all. On point and hilarious actually.

Perhaps you know less about Chicago than livestock. Here’s a resource created to educate people like you: https://heyjackass.com/

Consider doing a walking tour of the entire city next time you visit and report back.
 
BPM said:
Not weird at all. On point and hilarious actually.

Perhaps you know less about Chicago than livestock. Here’s a resource created to educate people like you: https://heyjackass.com/

Consider doing a walking tour of the entire city next time you visit and report back.
Click to expand...
Holy crap!! Every 3h 42min statistic is nauseating.
 
BPM said:
Not weird at all. On point and hilarious actually.

Perhaps you know less about Chicago than livestock. Here’s a resource created to educate people like you: https://heyjackass.com/

Consider doing a walking tour of the entire city next time you visit and report back.
Click to expand...
Chicago is a huge city. Third largest in the US. Hence the large raw numbers. But typically not even in the top 10 in crime rate.
 
Baked Potato said:
Chicago is a huge city. Third largest in the US. Hence the large raw numbers. But typically not even in the top 10 in crime rate.
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Not only is Chicago a large city, it is a dangerous one.

Link below is the list of the cities with the highest murder rate per capita in the US. Chicago is #10.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/cities-with-most-murders

That’s quite an accomplishment given its large population.

Indeed, of the largest U.S. cities (https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities) Chicago has the highest murder rate. It is the US’s most violent and dangerous large city.

Hence the earlier reference.
 
BPM said:
It is the US’s most violent and dangerous large city.
Click to expand...
But that's absolutely not true, even by the links you provided! Unless you're assuming that we're expected to always manipulate the variables so much so that it automatically falls on the top of anything (e.g. "In 2022, Chicago had the highest murder rate among the few US cities with over 1 million people", etc). But pardon me for not being impressed that the 3rd largest city was 10th in murder rate last year.

Looking at crime rate, whether violent crime overall or just murder rate, year-to-year Chicago usually does not fall in even the top 10 of US cities overall. And for many violent crime stats, not even in the top 20.

Which is why I'm curious about the obsession. Is it an Obama thing?
 
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Baked Potato said:
But that's absolutely not true, even by the links you provided!
You have to manipulate the variables so much to put it on the top of anything. Looking at crime rate, whether violent crime or murders, Chicago usually does not fall in even the top 10 of US cities.
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Got it.
 
EdFred said:
Saw an article that stated that even taking into account the bird flu losses and inflation didn't add up to a tripling in price.
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So how about a citation? Link or it didn't happen.
 
EdFred said:
Saw an article that stated that even taking into account the bird flu losses and inflation didn't add up to a tripling in price.
Click to expand...

Several things going on and I'm probably going to say more here than I should -

Eggs are not traded on any commodity exchange like the CBOE or CBOT. There is no futures market. The market is quoted by a 3rd party market reporting service called Urner Barry. The industry also uses a service called Egg Clearinghouse that is an exchange for market participants to trade eggs on a daily spot market. UB relies on these daily trades and other sales data to generate quotations for approximately 100 classifications of eggs. White, brown, liquid products, regional quotations, packaged, loose, cage-free, california specification, etc.

For many reasons this quotation is historically rather volatile. Demand for eggs has normal seasonal fluctuations that are somewhat predictable - our highest demand period is traditionally the "baking" season from early October through Christmas. Easter used to be a much bigger deal than it is today, but still impactful. The summer when kids aren't in school, and parents aren't making as much home breakfast - sucks. Travel and buffet season helps, but it isn't uncommon to have 30% differences in demand pull between Q4 and Q2 in any given year. However, it is also true that whatever the demand is at any given time it is very inelastic and not very price sensitive. If people want eggs it generally doesn't matter if it they are $1.00 or $4.00 they will buy them.

B978067E-93E9-4F73-B7EF-600776DCB161.jpeg

This is the UB quotation for the last 10 years for white, conventional, large size eggs in a carton ready for retail. The farm price would generally be $0.30 - $0.40 lower than this quotation if done on a long term deal, but on ECI eggs could trade in a range of more than +/- $0.60 against this quote. Depends upon the day and current conditions. It varies based upon feed costs, but I'd put the average farmer break even in this period at $1.20 on this chart. Significantly higher with cost increases over the last few years.

Another dynamic is that the egg industry is very vertically integrated. Our company buys the day old baby chicks and deliver to the retail store. We handle the entire process, and, while we all fight like hell over business opportunities, those customer relationships tend to be very "sticky". They expect that when they order something we will have it. A perishable product, with an expiration date, with strict food safety protocols, in their branded packaging, and we have nearly zero capacity to increase production on a time scale shorter than about 6 - 9 months. All the retailers have their own specifications and rules. It isn't very fungible and the translog is difficult. I can't go out into the coop and ask the hens to work a few extra hours. We generally order day old baby chicks two years in advance. When we get those chicks delivered it takes five months for them to come into production, by which time we've invested $5/hen in that process. She will be in production for nearly two years and you can't economically stop the production. There are a few things we can do with feed and some scheduling adjustments, but it is all very slow. When Big Box store orders 30 loads of eggs and I can only produce 28 I have to go buy those eggs(on that daily spot market) and will pay almost anything I can for them - because not supplying the customer isn't an option. Conversely when when they only order 26 and I have 28....well I have to sell them or smell them as we say. It is quite a balancing act. It is also very common for producers to have long term fixed contracts or formula contracts which also narrows the number of eggs that get traded on that spot market. Some of these contracts have a pricing relationship to the UB quotation, but many don't.

Now, none of this has any direct relationship to what you pay in the store. That is entirely up to the retailer. The UB quote(farm price) has fallen by over half in the last few weeks as shown in the chart above.

Here is another one for you to consider. About 35% of all eggs produced end up as in liquid products for further processing. Think cake mixes, protein powders, quick serve restaurants, ice cream, mayonnaise, etc. 30 years ago all eggs were first for the shell egg markets when the shell egg side had surpluses the breakers would run full steam and put inventory into frozen and dried products. A restaurant that needed lots of eggs would buy a 30 lb frozen pail of whole egg that had a six month shelf life and would defrost it when needed. That helped smooth the supply/demand situation. That has changed with new rules on food safety, new technologies for egg processing, and changes in demand for food service products. It is now common for the restaurant to buy a refrigerated 30 lb bag in box of ultra-pasteurized products that has an 80 day refrigerated shelf life. Cheaper, faster, safer, and with functional improvements. Here's the catch - those products can only be produced with top quality fresh eggs. We now have entire "in-line" breaking facilities that don't ever service the shell egg world. In fact, food safety laws preclude it. So the "safety" valve for slack demand in the shell egg side doesn't function very well anymore.

Now let's throw in this trend towards cage-free production trends. California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and a few more have all passed laws requiring all eggs produced and sold in their states to be from cage free production with dates from 2022 through 2026. About 90mm consumers worth. Additionally many more individual company commitments to make the transition are having a great impact as well. When I started in the business we were building conventional bird spaces for $7.50. The last cage-free building contracts I just signed are going to run north of $60/bird space. A 1,000,000 bird farm is small in our business. If you're a family farm entity that has 2mm birds of conventional that you've had for 25 years and want to make the change to cage-free and you want to upgrade your processing plant with the latest technology - you're going to have to spend $130mm - $150mm. To the best of my knowledge there hasn't been significant new conventional bird space built in the US in 7 - 9 years and that infrastructure is all aging quickly. You think that is an easy decision in a pandemic, with crazy market volatility, pandemics and labor crisis, increasing interest rates, and oh yeah...bird flu?

Edit: I also forgot there is the challenge at the USSC over the California law which could have knock on effects to the other states which is driving more uncertainty.


Our industry has lost 43,000,000 layers to HPAI in the 2022 outbreak, wild bird detections have continues, and migration season is about to get fully underway. Once the virus is detected in any flock on a premises you have to depopulate the entire farm, dispose of all the lost hens on site by one of several means, and clean and disinfect the entire site. This takes months if you are a good operator. Then you have to go through the repopulation cycle, which depending upon your circumstances takes months to well over a year. Remember, from the time the rooster does his job, I don't have meaningful egg production for six months, and it takes 3 - 4 of those grow cycles to fill a normal production rotation. That all assumes I have the capital to do that after being out of business during the outbreak. There is federal indemnity for the depreciated cost of the bird, and some help for the disposal and C&D, but it doesn't cover it all. And nothing for business interruption. Oh, I also forgot that after the HPAI outbreak in 2015 and we all rushed to repopulate in response to high prices, 2016 and 2017 were the worst egg markets in a generation. We had many months where the UB price wasn't sufficient to cover the cost of feed let alone labor, facilities, utilities, bird costs, etc. A serious "test of capital" as they say, and it wasn't fun. It also helps you to understand why egg farmers want to take the good prices if they come around. If you don't...well...you won't pass the next test which is surely coming.


So, Ed, it's complicated, but I can assure you that America's egg farmers are doing everything reasonable and prudent to protect the flock and get us back to normal full (over?)production as quickly as possible. Like any good commodity business we're generally really good at fixing high prices(see the chart above). Edit:my roll my own law degree tells me to clarify that by "fixing", I intend to say that we naturally respond to high pricing by doing everything we can to produce as many eggs as possible which tends to lower the price by changing the supply/demand balance all else being equal.

I went to college to be a computer engineer, but ended up following my father into this business. Most days I'm very thankful for that decision and the blessings that have been bestowed upon me. Some hours I'd like to quit, but those thoughts fade quickly as my passion for it is simply too high. We just got our two facilities that got HPAI(also the ones that got hit by tornados in Dec 2021) nearly back to full production, and at our newest farm location we're underway on building 4mm new cage-free bird spaces with a state of the art bio-security installation. Hopefully it works. I recently sat for some interviews with the WSJ on on farm bio-security and what our company is trying to do about it.

I hope you eat and enjoy eggs, and I will try to explain all this to Senator Warren and Representative Porter. Maybe, but I kind of doubt that they actually want this information.

Eggman
 
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James_Dean said:
Several things going on and I'm probably going to say more here than I should -

Eggs are not traded on any commodity exchange like the CBOE or CBOT. There is no futures market. The market is quoted by a 3rd party market reporting service called Urner Barry. The industry also uses a service called Egg Clearinghouse that is an exchange for market participants to trade eggs on a daily spot market. UB relies on these daily trades and other sales data to generate quotations for approximately 100 classifications of eggs. White, brown, liquid products, regional quotations, packaged, loose, cage-free, california specification, etc.

For many reasons this quotation is historically rather volatile. Demand for eggs has normal seasonal fluctuations that are somewhat predictable - our highest demand period is traditionally the "baking" season from early October through Christmas. Easter used to be a much bigger deal than it is today, but still impactful. The summer when kids aren't in school, and parents aren't making as much home breakfast - sucks. Travel and buffet season helps, but it isn't uncommon to have 30% differences in demand pull between Q4 and Q2 in any given year. However, it is also true that whatever the demand is at any given time it is very inelastic and not very price sensitive. If people want eggs it generally doesn't matter if it they are $1.00 or $4.00 they will buy them.

View attachment 115091

This is the UB quotation for the last 10 years for white, conventional, large size eggs in a carton ready for retail. The farm price would generally be $0.30 - $0.40 lower than this quotation if done on a long term deal, but on ECI eggs could trade in a range of more than +/- $0.60 against this quote. Depends upon the day and current conditions. It varies based upon feed costs, but I'd put the average farmer break even in this period at $1.20 on this chart. Significantly higher with cost increases over the last few years.

Another dynamic is that the egg industry is very vertically integrated. Our company buys the day old baby chicks and deliver to the retail store. We handle the entire process, and, while we all fight like hell over business opportunities, those customer relationships tend to be very "sticky". They expect that when they order something we will have it. A perishable product, with an expiration date, with strict food safety protocols, in their branded packaging, and we have nearly zero capacity to increase production on a time scale shorter than about 6 - 9 months. All the retailers have their own specifications and rules. It isn't very fungible and the translog is difficult. I can't go out into the coop and ask the hens to work a few extra hours. We generally order day old baby chicks two years in advance. When we get those chicks delivered it takes five months for them to come into production, by which time we've invested $5/hen in that process. She will be in production for nearly two years and you can't economically stop the production. There are a few things we can do with feed and some scheduling adjustments, but it is all very slow. When Big Box store orders 30 loads of eggs and I can only produce 28 I have to go buy those eggs(on that daily spot market) and will pay almost anything I can for them - because not supplying the customer isn't an option. Conversely when when they only order 26 and I have 28....well I have to sell them or smell them as we say. It is quite a balancing act. It is also very common for producers to have long term fixed contracts or formula contracts which also narrows the number of eggs that get traded on that spot market. Some of these contracts have a pricing relationship to the UB quotation, but many don't.

Now, none of this has any direct relationship to what you pay in the store. That is entirely up to the retailer. The UB quote(farm price) has fallen by over half in the last few weeks as shown in the chart above.

Here is another one for you to consider. About 35% of all eggs produced end up as in liquid products for further processing. Think cake mixes, protein powders, quick serve restaurants, ice cream, mayonnaise, etc. 30 years ago all eggs were first for the shell egg markets when the shell egg side had surpluses the breakers would run full steam and put inventory into frozen and dried products. A restaurant that needed lots of eggs would buy a 30 lb frozen pail of whole egg that had a six month shelf life and would defrost it when needed. That helped smooth the supply/demand situation. That has changed with new rules on food safety, new technologies for egg processing, and changes in demand for food service products. It is now common for the restaurant to buy a refrigerated 30 lb bag in box of ultra-pasteurized products that has an 80 day refrigerated shelf life. Cheaper, faster, safer, and with functional improvements. Here's the catch - those products can only be produced with top quality fresh eggs. We now have entire "in-line" breaking facilities that don't ever service the shell egg world. In fact, food safety laws preclude it. So the "safety" valve for slack demand in the shell egg side doesn't function very well anymore.

Now let's throw in this trend towards cage-free production trends. California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and a few more have all passed laws requiring all eggs produced and sold in their states to be from cage free production with dates from 2022 through 2026. About 90mm consumers worth. Additionally many more individual company commitments to make the transition are having a great impact as well. When I started in the business we were building conventional bird spaces for $7.50. The last cage-free building contracts I just signed are going to run north of $60/bird space. A 1,000,000 bird farm is small in our business. If you're a family farm entity that has 2mm birds of conventional that you've had for 25 years and want to make the change to cage-free and you want to upgrade your processing plant with the latest technology - you're going to have to spend $130mm - $150mm. To the best of my knowledge there hasn't been significant new conventional bird space built in the US in 7 - 9 years and that infrastructure is all aging quickly. You think that is an easy decision in a pandemic, with crazy market volatility, pandemics and labor crisis, increasing interest rates, and oh yeah...bird flu?

Edit: I also forgot there is the challenge at the USSC over the California law which could have knock on effects to the other states which is driving more uncertainty.


Our industry has lost 43,000,000 layers to HPAI in the 2022 outbreak, wild bird detections have continues, and migration season is about to get fully underway. Once the virus is detected in any flock on a premises you have to depopulate the entire farm, dispose of all the lost hens on site by one of several means, and clean and disinfect the entire site. This takes months if you are a good operator. Then you have to go through the repopulation cycle, which depending upon your circumstances takes months to well over a year. Remember, from the time the rooster does his job, I don't have meaningful egg production for six months, and it takes 3 - 4 of those grow cycles to fill a normal production rotation. That all assumes I have the capital to do that after being out of business during the outbreak. There is federal indemnity for the depreciated cost of the bird, and some help for the disposal and C&D, but it doesn't cover it all. And nothing for business interruption. Oh, I also forgot that after the HPAI outbreak in 2015 and we all rushed to repopulate in response to high prices, 2016 and 2017 were the worst egg markets in a generation. We had many months where the UB price wasn't sufficient to cover the cost of feed let alone labor, facilities, utilities, bird costs, etc. A serious "test of capital" as they say, and it wasn't fun. It also helps you to understand why egg farmers want to take the good prices if they come around. If you don't...well...you won't pass the next test which is surely coming.


So, Ed, it's complicated, but I can assure you that America's egg farmers are doing everything reasonable and prudent to protect the flock and get us back to normal full (over?)production as quickly as possible. Like any good commodity business we're generally really good at fixing high prices(see the chart above). Edit:my roll my own law degree tells me to clarify that by "fixing", I intend to say that we naturally respond to high pricing by doing everything we can to produce as many eggs as possible which tends to lower the price by changing the supply/demand balance all else being equal.

I went to college to be a computer engineer, but ended up following my father into this business. Most days I'm very thankful for that decision and the blessings that have been bestowed upon me. Some hours I'd like to quit, but those thoughts fade quickly as my passion for it is simply too high. We just got our two facilities that got HPAI(also the ones that got hit by tornados in Dec 2021) nearly back to full production, and at our newest farm location we're underway on building 4mm new cage-free bird spaces with a state of the art bio-security installation. Hopefully it works. I recently sat for some interviews with the WSJ on on farm bio-security and what our company is trying to do about it.

I hope you eat and enjoy eggs, and I will try to explain all this to Senator Warren and Representative Porter. Maybe, but I kind of doubt that they actually want this information.

Eggman
Click to expand...
As a finance guy, I love reading the tidbits with your industry insights. We have reason, every now and then, to run over the OK/AR border into Arkansas where there is no shortage of chicken farming. The smell will get your attention if you weren't aware of the farms, lol. The economics are just astounding when you talk about national egg product demand, and then roll it down to what it typically costs a small commercial producer.
 
James, thanks for the rundown. That's a much better explanation. Also not surprising which states are causing issues.
 
That’s a lot of info, on eggs. Now the doc just came out recommending 2 eggs a day, yes, it will change before long.

I haven’t had chickens in years, liked them, Rhode Island Reds, big brown eggs. It’s a great time for the backyard flock.

My procedure was to reduce the roosters to near zero, didn’t think it was a problem. Did you see that guy killed by a rooster? It happened months ago, story just came out, ‘spurred’ him in the wrong spot.
 
Only in Ireland :eek:

https://www.foxnews.com/world/irish-rooster-violent-past-kills-man-attack-back-leg-court

rooster_istock.jpg
 
luvflyin said:
Our tenants want to raise chickens. Guess the cost of eggs is getting to them. We told them ok but no Roosters. They said ok. But then I got to thinking, without a Rooster to get the chickens knocked up and lay eggs, whats the point. Then my wife explains to me, the just lay eggs anyway. So my question is, in the grand evolutionary, keep the species going scheme of things, WTF are Roosters for?
Click to expand...

From a small coop perspective, a rooster's primary benefit is to protect the hens and eggs from small threats like snakes or mice.

(Other than the obvious benefit of fertilizing eggs)
 
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No rooster = a very nice eggs benny. Rooster in the hen house = a possible beak in your eggs in a hat.
 
Eggman, given the downward trend in wholesale price and the natural lag in retail price to follow trend as existing inventories are replaced, could not the timing of that nice letter you received be perceived/propagandized as causation of the reduced price consumers will be soon seeing, when in reality it was already coming down the pipeline? It just strikes me as an extremely well timed action if one was trying to establish a talking point, egg price is seen and felt in almost every household in America, they will notice the decrease without understanding the cause and inertia in the industry?
 
Flatiowa said:
Eggman, given the downward trend in wholesale price and the natural lag in retail price to follow trend as existing inventories are replaced, could not the timing of that nice letter you received be perceived/propagandized as causation of the reduced price consumers will be soon seeing, when in reality it was already coming down the pipeline? It just strikes me as an extremely well timed action if one was trying to establish a talking point, egg price is seen and felt in almost every household in America, they will notice the decrease without understanding the cause and inertia in the industry?
Click to expand...
Prices around here have already nosedived.
 
Lindberg , that is my point, they already were trending in that direction, it was inevitable, but can now be insinuated that instead of the market correction that was naturally occurring, it was a result of their action (which it was not). Perfectly timed for maximum effect.
 
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I’m probably way wrong, Im just suspicious of politician’s motives
 
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About 4 or so years ago I was in the Walmart, I remember a dozen large eggs marked at 38 cents. That was the going price, not clearance or anything. Of course as a consumer I liked it, hard to get them to market at that price it seems.

Like $13 a barrel oil, we like it, but just a temporary bottom.
 
sourdough44 said:
About 4 or so years ago I was in the Walmart, I remember a dozen large eggs marked at 38 cents. That was the going price, not clearance or anything. Of course as a consumer I liked it, hard to get them to market at that price it seems.

Like $13 a barrel oil, we like it, but just a temporary bottom.
Click to expand...

Current cost of feed/dozen is around $0.55/dozen.
 
James_Dean said:
We generally order day old baby chicks two years in advance. When we get those chicks delivered it takes five months for them to come into production, by which time we've invested $5/hen in that process.
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If you buy day old baby chicks, then why do you need roosters?
James_Dean said:
I don't live day to day in this part of the business, but in the commercial egg world we need 1 rooster for every 8 - 12 hens to "get the job done".
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It's my understanding that the eggs you buy at a grocery store are usually not fertilized.
 
Everskyward said:
If you buy day old baby chicks, then why do you need roosters?

It's my understanding that the eggs you buy at a grocery store are usually not fertilized.
Click to expand...

We used to own parent stock to produce our own hatching eggs to produce our own chicks. We exited that part of the business several years ago as there are others who can do it better and more efficiently, and it tended to be the tail wagging the dog from a supply and logistics standpoint.

The vast, vast, vast, majority of eggs at retail are not fertilized. 20 years ago it was more common as surplus hatching eggs from the broiler industry would flow over into the commercial egg space. That was stopped for food safety reasons by the FDA Egg Safety Rules of 2010.
 
Am I nuts to envision The Wolf of Wall Street adapted to the egg industry when I read James' posts?

There would have to be a scene where the Jonah Hill character in a shirt and tie runs through the production facility clutching important papers to deliver, with the obligatory feathers flying through the air.
 
catmandu said:
Am I nuts to envision The Wolf of Wall Street adapted to the egg industry when I read James' posts?

There would have to be a scene where the Jonah Hill character in a shirt and tie runs through the production facility clutching important papers to deliver, with the obligatory feathers flying through the air.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure James starts every day with the chant from Matthew McConaughey.

 
catmandu said:
Am I nuts to envision The Wolf of Wall Street adapted to the egg industry when I read James' posts?

There would have to be a scene where the Jonah Hill character in a shirt and tie runs through the production facility clutching important papers to deliver, with the obligatory feathers flying through the air.
Click to expand...
I disagree, wolf of wall street was a scammer taking advantage of people, and providing no real benefit to society, eggman seems from his posts to be an honest man helping to provide low cost food to peoples tables. Id bet that he would be able to just say enough with the hassle and stop producing eggs today and be able to live a life of leisure for the rest of his days, but continues working on providing food for the world. Not that a movie on the egg industry couldn’t potentially be interesting, but I think the comparison is inaccurate.
 
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