Neighbor’s Homestead Eggs

I just bought two dozen fresh eggs (less than two days from laying) from a neighbor who lives just a few doors down the street from me!

So, my fresh homestead egg supply is getting closer and closer; it’s now a neighbor’s homestead to my table. Perhaps one day I’ll have my own flock of chickens.

Anyway, the couple sells the eggs the old-school way:

A handwritten sign in the yard
A note on top of a cooler asking $3/dozen
Inside the cooler, fresh eggs and a little jar for cash payment

I put six dollars in the jar to buy the last two dozen eggs available.

Prior Egg Supplier

Nearly three years ago, when egg prices were on an upward trajectory, I was buying my eggs from a couple who had a small farm-homestead. At that time, the couple increased the price from $2.50/dozen to $3.50/dozen.

Not long after early 2023, I began reducing my purchase of eggs, and then stopped buying them entirely after prices at grocery stores hit $4.00/dozen.

Current grocery retail prices in my area are averaging about $2/dozen. So, my neighbor’s price of $3/dozen is fair. After all, these are fresh, mostly free-range, organic eggs from basically a little homestead. I think the couple just sells the extra eggs that they don’t use immediately.

Egg Prices: Updated

In March of this year, I shared a chart showing wholesale egg prices on this blog as well as on Facebook. Even though I mentioned upfront that wholesale prices are typically less than retail prices,¹ some people didn’t grasp how to interpret the chart, thinking that wholesale prices should be the price they pay at the grocery store.

Anyway, I wrote that they could expect retail prices to fall to somewhere between $2 and $3 per dozen by late summer or early fall.

And, they did!

Wholesale Egg Prices

Wholesale egg prices dropped to $1.06 per dozen by mid-October, but recently spiked up to $1.86 per dozen by this week. Back in March, I wrote that one could expect wholesale egg prices to drop to about $1.30 per dozen by late summer or early fall. Essentially, that’s where the price is, and retail is setting their price at about $2.00 per dozen.

Trading Economics Chart

According to Trading Economics, here is the description of the data they track for the chart:

The egg prices refer to the national FOB average prices of white large eggs in wholesale markets, calculated based on the cost of 30-dozen cases of caged shell eggs.

Terminology Explanation

To better understand what this means, here are a few tips:

FOB: This means “free on board.” In this situation, based on my understanding, it is FOB Dock (also known as Origin). So, the seller of eggs owns and is liable for the eggs until they are loaded on board a truck’s trailer at the shipping location. Once loaded, the buyer assumes ownership and liability, including the cost of transportation from the seller’s dock to the buyer’s destination. I believe a buyer may pick up the product at source, in many cases. I’ve come to the conclusion by reading the USDA’s Egg Markets Overview — November 7, 2025.²There are more related USDA Egg reports available, too.
- “Wholesale prices for national trading of truck lot quantities of graded, loose, white Large shell eggs increased $0.26 to $1.86 per dozen with a firm to higher undertone.”
- “Weekly Loose Shell Egg, Large, White, National Index (f.o.b. dock, cents per dozen)”
Also, since egg futures contracts are not traded on a public exchange in the USA, there is no actual futures contract to reference regarding FOB. I believe the USDA is simply quoting a cash price, meaning there is no expectation for delivery of the eggs.³

Price Spike — Oct./Nov. 2025

The reason for the recent price spike is there is apparently another bout of avian flu.

US egg prices rose past $1.7 per dozen, rebounding from May 2023 lows of $1.06 seen October 10th after a new wave of highly pathogenic avian influenza has tightened supply just as seasonal demand rises.
Outbreaks that began in September have led to the culling of roughly 5.5 million egg-laying hens and about 1.2 million turkeys, removing laying capacity from an already fragile pipeline and raising the immediate ratio of demand to available shell eggs. Replacement pullets take months to mature into productive layers, so any reduction in flocks cannot be offset quickly.
At the same time some US wholesalers and distributors had run down inventories after earlier oversupply and lower spring prices, leaving less buffer to absorb fresh losses, while imports that helped damp price spikes earlier in the year remain relatively small and regionally concentrated. Near-term demand is also stepping up with Thanksgiving buying patterns and stronger retail purchases of eggs and egg products.
Trading Economics via USDA

This seems to be more of a commercial sanitation issue or limited to certain geographies. I say this since I’ve yet to talk with a local farmer or person raising chickens who has told me that their chickens have been troubled with the flu.

Retail Egg Prices

FRED Chart

Below is an interactive chart of average retail egg prices from FRED—Economic Data from the St. Louis Fed as of 24 October 2025. It includes the following:

Large white, Grade A chicken eggs, sold in a carton of a dozen. Includes organic, non-organic, cage free, free-range, and traditional.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

The chart will automatically update after the next data release, which is scheduled for next week, 13 November 2025.

Quite impressively, retail egg prices have remained roughly between $1 and $2 per dozen for decades until the US government massively debased our currency during Covid (the dollar lost lots of purchasing power). Anyway, as mentioned, I’m seeing prices at the grocery stores at about $2 per dozen (plus/minus $.25), which is exactly where I expected them to be at this time when I wrote about this topic back in March 2025.

Data don’t lie.

Pumpkins to Process

Lastly, here are the two medium size pumpkins, and a minuscule one, from my garden.

I plan to save some seeds for next year and roast the remaining portion for seeds to snack on and a base for Pumpkin Spice Latte, as I mentioned in a previous post.

Footnotes

1
For simplicity, think of wholesale as buying in bulk. One expects to get a discount on a per-unit basis when buying in bulk.
2
There are more related USDA Egg reports available, too.
3
Note: I emailed the USDA for clarification and will update this section with a definitive explanation of the terminology used.

Beautiful Homestead Eggs and Halloween Pumpkins to Process

Neighbor’s Homestead Eggs

Prior Egg Supplier