Things to consider when selling eggs.

[Kickingbird]

Well this is the first year I've ever tried to sell hatching eggs in almost 20 years of raising birds. I figured selling a few dozen eggs would help with feed cost. Here are a few things I have run into having run 4 hatching egg auctions, I hope these will help you.

The first thing you have to remember is that you are dealing with a very time sensitive package.

- Have all of your packing materials lined up and ready to go.

-Make sure you have time to go to the post office! I know this sounds like a no brainer but I didn't realize how many times I put off the post office one day because "something came up". This can't be done with eggs because they are getting older every day and you don't want them in the care of the postal service over the weekend

- Always put a date you need payment by-->This don't always work. I had a set of eggs that the auction ended on a friday. In the auction I stated I needed payment by Sunday and the eggs would be shipped on Tuesday (I even put the dates). The eggs were paid for on the FOLLOWING THURSDAY! The original dozen eggs was too old to ship (in my opinion). This could have put me in a huge bind if I had other orders. As it happens the dozen for auction for the next week didn't sell but if they had I would have had to contact the person and let them know they were getting older eggs (by no fault of my own) or no eggs at all.

- Always, Always, Always put a picture on the auction. I have purchased quite a few eggs on-line and have NEVER bought eggs without seeing a picture of the stock.

These are just a few things I ran into, I hope they help when you are planning your selling

KB

[rarebantams]

I too have just started selling eggs for the first time, and there is another factor to consider, you will never make all your customers happy. Selling eggs is a risky buisness, and buyers should know that, but don't always. No matter how carefully you pack, and how fresh and fertile they are, you can't help what happens to them after the post office gets them. Who knows, sometimes I get boxes that look like they have been used as a football in a football game! I sent a very carefully packaged batch of fresh eggs out, after doing it for quite awhile, and got a nasty e-mail about a week later about how the box was smashed and the eggs broken, granted, this person should have blamed the post office for this and not me, she obviously didn't know that. And my otherwise perfect auction feedback was tarnished. So just know that when you start selling eggs, of course, you should explain these things to the buyer, but don't expect them to always listen, and don't expect to make all the people happy, all of the time!