The honest answer is: sometimes. Whether your homegrown eggs beat the grocery store on price depends on three things you control (flock size, feed efficiency, and free-ranging) and one thing you don't (current egg prices at the store). Here's how to actually work it out instead of guessing.
The real cost of a homegrown dozen
A laying hen eats about a quarter-pound of feed a day and lays roughly 0.8 eggs a day on average. At a feed price of $22 for a 50 lb bag, that works out to a feed cost of a few dollars per dozen once you factor in a realistic waste allowance. Run your own numbers with our feed cost calculator, it does this math live and shows you the exact figure for your flock size and local feed price.
What flock size actually changes
Here's something that surprises people: at the same feed price and feeding style, cost per dozen barely moves with flock size, because feed cost and egg output scale together. What does change is your fixed startup cost per bird, a coop built for six hens costs about the same whether you keep four or six, so a fuller flock spreads that cost thinner.
| Flock size | Monthly feed cost | Eggs per month (approx.) | Cost per dozen |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 hens | $10.59 | ~72 | $1.77 |
| 6 hens | $21.19 | ~144 | $1.77 |
| 10 hens | $35.31 | ~240 | $1.77 |
| 15 hens | $52.97 | ~360 | $1.77 |
| 20 hens | $70.62 | ~480 | $1.77 |
Where homegrown eggs win
Free-ranging flocks that supplement their diet with bugs, greens, and kitchen scraps buy noticeably less feed, often 15% less, which drops the cost per dozen directly. Larger flocks also tend to be more efficient overall, since fixed costs like bedding and coop maintenance spread across more hens even if feed cost per bird stays flat.
Where the store wins
Small flocks (two or three hens) carry the same per-bird feed cost as a bigger flock but produce fewer eggs to spread startup costs across. High feed waste, feed spilled or kicked out of the feeder, quietly inflates your real cost without you noticing. And if you're strictly comparing to the cheapest supermarket eggs, homegrown often loses on pure price, though rarely on quality.
What the store can't sell you
Freshness is the obvious one, a homegrown egg can be a day old instead of weeks old by the time it reaches a shelf. You also know exactly what your hens were fed, get breed variety in shell color and yolk richness, and for a lot of keepers, there's a satisfaction in it that doesn't show up on a spreadsheet. Plenty of people happily pay a small premium for that, and that's a fair trade, as long as you're making it knowingly rather than by accident.
How to actually decide
Plug your real numbers into the calculator: your flock size, your feed price, whether you free-range, and the season. It'll show you your homegrown cost per dozen next to whatever you're currently paying at the store, plus the exact math behind that number. No guessing required.