Why I Won't Be Buying into the Egg Supply Management System.

Good Food Farm
Jun 11
2 min read

After a recent conversation with a friend and fellow farmer about the Egg Quota and Supply Management System, and wondering what it would take to get into it, I decided to do a mini deep dive. Here are some of my findings.

For those that don't know, all egg, chicken and dairy production in Canada is managed by a system, where by farmers, have to buy Quota in order to produce eggs, chickens or milk above each provinces' exemption limits. So, for Alberta, that means any farm/person can have up to 300 laying hens or 2000 broilers (meat chickens) before needing to purchase quota. In the case of dairy you can produce up to 50 litres per day but for personal use only. After that things get complicated.

For laying hens, quota costs in the ballpark of $750-800/hen(1) (PER HEN!!!) with the last round even averaging $1,171/hen! That is just for the privilege of owning 1 hen to sell the eggs to a grading station. So to have a modest flock of say 1000 hens, one would have to fork out $750,000-800,000. Never mind housing, feed, the hens themselves ect...

Let's talk some numbers. In 2025, a producer in Alberta received an average of $3.06/dozen of large eggs they produced(2). A hen is expected to lay 25.9-29.8 dozen eggs per year. So without having to pay for anything else it would take 8-10 years just to pay for the quota. But of course there is all the every day expenses and capital costs such as housing to be covered as well.

All I could find for cost of production was this data from the Egg Farmers of Canada(3). If I understand it right the cost of production in Alberta per dozen of large eggs was an average of $2.99 in 2025. Leaving only about $.07 profit per dozen eggs.

There is also a program to help bring new farmers into the program, it is called the New Entrant Program.(4) Through it you get quota for "free". It looks like a pretty intensive process. The last time it was run, (possibly in almost a decade by the looks of it), it was a nearly year long process by which 8 out of the original 31 applicants were selected at the end of 2024.(5) They have 3 years to get into production and then have to fill all production requirements for 10 years under a production permit (which involves leasing quota) until they are granted quota in the end.

Demand for our eggs is quite high (currently I am getting inquiries about joining our regular egg deliveries every few days), so I would love to expand our laying hen flock past the 300 hen exemption. But not at those costs!