By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

NEW MIAMI, Ohio — Youngsters delivering daily newspapers are nearly a thing of the past. Also becoming extinct are daily home deliveries of milk or bread. But before thinking there are no more door-to-door egg salesmen – guess again.

Doug Baumann, of Hamilton, Ohio, in Butler County has continued this egg-selling business since taking over for his mother 10 years ago.

“Mom delivered eggs for 60 years before she died in 1999,” Baumann said. “Mom and Dad bought 90 acres (on Jacksonburg Road) in 1940. Mom had chickens when she was a little girl, so in 1950 my parents decided to build a poultry house. It measured 45 feet by 90 feet.”

The egg business was so good that by the mid-1950s they erected a second chicken house of similar size. Then, “the business boom of the early 1960s led them to build a bigger chicken house, this time it was 45 feet by 120 feet,” Baumann said. “By that time we had more than 10,000 laying hens.”

And, many door-to-door customers. Their chicken and egg business flourished but by 1978, chickens gave way to beef cattle and attention to crops on this 800-acre farm. The family of three couldn’t keep up with all three ventures.

Eventually the chickens disappeared, but not the eggs. Though the chickens are no longer on the premises, Baumann buys the eggs wholesale (he only deals in white eggs) and delivers them to his customer base.

“It’s been 30 years since we’ve had chickens on this farm,” he said.
He had intentions of stopping the egg deliveries once his mother died, but customers persuaded him to keep the business alive.
“I was ready to quit the business long before Mom died,” Baumann said. “Two-thirds of the customers begged me to continue with the business. Because of the loyal customers, I’m still around. And now I’ve been on my own for nearly 10 years.”

Things have worked out well for Baumann, who still has 175 door-to-door customers. “Along with a few mom-and-pop grocery stores and a few restaurants,” he added.

“Today, I still purchase eggs each Wednesday and start making deliveries that same day. We began ordering eggs long before we quit having eggs here at the farm. There’s an upside to this. When we had our own chickens, we either had too many eggs or not enough. Now, I order just what I need.”

A tough business? “When the price of gas rose to $4 a gallon, it was really difficult,” Baumann said. “Like any other small business, you get weeded out by the bigger guys, because they can get feed cheaper and sell the eggs cheaper. Also, these large grocery chains are always having egg sales to entice people in their stores.”

Baumann, his wife, Sarah, and their daughter, Beverly, are grateful for the egg business and the 17 beef cattle that provide them with freezer meat, but back-to-back droughts and corn-flattening winds from Hurricane Ike have taken their toll on the family income. “Those winds leveled 85 percent of the corn crop,” he said.

“I know of no others doing this,” he said of door-to-door eggs. “I know of people still delivering milk and bread, and even ice cream, but not eggs.”