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This was inspired by the other thread on here about free range eggs.
I was going to ever so clever and point out the difference in price over the last 50 years and how prices have dropped in modern times due to farmers becoming more 'efficient' and cramming many more birds per acre .... but a strange thing happened

We kept "true" free range chicken back in the early fifties at a rate of about 200 hens to a 7 acre field, and I remember that we used to sell them to the egg packing station for 2/6d a dozen. This was at a time when the average labourers wage was about £10 a week, so our average labourer could afford to buy 80 dozen eggs if he bought nothing else.

I just looked up the minimum UK wage and found that it is £5.73 and hour or £229.20 for a 40 hour week.
T***o's free range eggs are £2.92 a dozen which means our average man can now buy just under 78.5 dozen eggs.

I realise that I'm not really comparing like with like, our eggs were sold wholesale and I'm comparing retail, but even so how amazing is that, the price of free range eggs is almost the same over a 55 year span.

Ahaa but.... you will find that (as I sort of said in the other discussion says) You were probably keeping hens in a state more akin to how organic hens are kept We haven't bought eggs for about 4 weeks, because they were selling at £1.82 for 6, we had previous limited ourselves to 6 a fortnight. (between 3 of us)

The price of organic eggs is extortionate and I am sure the farmers still don't get a good price from them (we get our hens on Wednesday ....yay... eggs! )

Ooh - Annpan - you gettin chooks? ( I know I've probably missed a thread somewhere)
Are you in a very rural area? I wanted some - but we are town centre ish - and I think they would attract unwanted attention - never mind the urban foxes!

Yup.... We have been looking (in a half-a*sed kind of a way) for about a year... in fact we moved here (very rural) so we had space for veg and chickens - we also have space for an orchard, a pond, a polytunnel and a big lawn

Mr Headstrong is getting some too, (he lives quite near here) if it wasn't for him finding them we'd probably go another year without any

Annpan wrote:You were probably keeping hens in a state more akin to how organic hens are kept

Oh yes ... as I said in my post, about 200 hens to a 7 acre field, but they did have to share that with a Jersey cow and various calves/bullocks of her's and a dozen or so sheep, but that was the way of doing things back then.

Annpan wrote: (we get our hens on Wednesday ....yay... eggs! )

Oooo... Ann, I'm jealous!

I'm still waiting for the last 2 veggie beds to be topped with ultra riddled soil.... I wasn't allowed to do it myself - but once that job has been jobbed, he can make a start on playing with wood, chook wire & cement - yay!
Although I might have scuppered his plan a touch... I'm off to buy our first rabbit in a minute - and he's safely tucked up in bed & knows nothing about it! Haha!

So, I guess the rabbit houses might have to be done first

Aha Julie... there's where my hammer and nail fixation comes into play Gee, if I was waiting for himself to get it done.... well.... I'd have to wait about 10 years, but it would be immaculate. He is a doer but a perfectionist... and yes I a still waiting for veg 12 beds to get built (mine were grossly inadequate apparently )

I recently bought myself a toolkit! Oh we have tools here - and there, and outside, and inside, and upstairs and downstairs, some in the drawers, some in the cupboards - but I can never find what I want and waiting for it to be done for me can take several years because I refuse to nag. So I've got my own toolkit, in a girly pink so I know they're mine and they don't get put anywhere else. I keep them at the allotment at the moment, because that's where the work needs doing, and boy have I used them! I've put up my pot sun and green man on the shed walls, I've made a small raised bed for my seedlings that I don't want to sow direct in the ground (filled with soil ultra-riddled by me ), I've cut chicken wire to fit over the top to keep the birds off, I've put some hooks on the inside of the shed door and frame so that I can shut the door while I'm in there and I've taken nails out of old bits of wood so that Katie can't hurt herself on them (she pointed them all out to me). I've never got so much done in such a short space of time and all that in between digging, raking, sowing, planting and emptying potties.

So jealous of the chickens Annpan They're going to be such fun.

made me smile reading the price of free range eggs. i have free range rare breed hens . they have been raised organically and are fed an exclusively organic diet . ( i am applying for soil association certification) and where i a based you are doing well to get fifty pence half a dozen . people dont get how expensive it is to keep hens on a true organic diet . locally we have a very large egg producer who sells them at a pound a doz not free range or organic or anything so everyone locally expects that a doz eggs cost a pound and organic or not that it . i have large numbers of wasted eggs as they dont sell . which breaks my heart as my little girls look so pleased with themselves

doing things right, doing the right things and being commercially viable only rarely overlap!

The price of goods are exactly the same, but prices are inflationary, The only variable is that now the minimum wage is less than your old labourers...

The same amount of silver that you would need to buy a decent hand made suit is no different now than it was 100 years ago

I get free range but not organic for about 100p At asda it has to be said,