Practically overnight I went from being the Honey Lady to the EGG LADY! Now while I don’t expect this to continue forever, I am right now quite popular, or I should say our chickens are. I never imagined the talk of the town, the meme feeds and top trending hashtag to be the SHOCKING price of eggs. Without them there are no cinnamon rolls, no over-easy mornings, no hollandaise! Sourdough might as well not be made, if not for eggs it has no purpose.
Now, I realize everyone has been fully vetted to the cause of this great tragedy, bird flu, high gas prices and high feed costs. Especially when it comes to mass produced CAFO eggs. Truth is, a lot of people aren’t buying it. They aren’t buying the eggs either.
We’ll start with the bird flu. It is very real and is responsible for the loss of nearly 53 MILLION birds in 2022. In Iowa alone, five million chickens were killed in just two egg producing facilities. Here’s the thing about large facility killings, if bird flu is found all the chickens in that facility are killed, and it isn’t exactly humane. A farm in Nebraska killed 1.8 million chickens just in November after finding the flu. Most of these birds are killed by choking off their air supply and heating the facility to such high temperatures they die. Other methods include firefighting foam and carbon dioxide. When tens of thousands of birds are all crammed into a small space, one sick bird will sicken the rest.
Gas prices are the second explanation that obviously is going to affect the cost of everything being shipped any distance. I feel like a broken record when I state a local food economy is the only food economy that makes sense.
Finally, there’s the cost of feed. It has skyrocketed due to floods, droughts and the war in Ukraine (which also affected the availability of fertilizer). It has hit our little farm hard too, especially during the winter months when there are no plants for our chickens to munch on and the ground is too frozen most of the time for them to get to bugs and worms. Our costs are much higher than those of commercial eggers, as we aren’t able to purchase seed in bulk.
We’ve lost money on our birds this winter. That’s just how it is sometimes, especially when you love your birds and your customers. The commercial egg industry, however, is doing just fine. In fact, the largest egg producer in the United States saw a 65% profit increase year over year. Back to loving our chickens….
I can’t speak for all local chicken owners, but many operate in the same ways we do. All our hens stay with us for the entirety of their lives. Even if they stop laying or are injured. We currently have a Plymouth Rock with a bad leg. Not sure what happened to her, but she hobbles around on one foot and sleeps on the coop floor because she can’t roost. She still gets to live out her life and we make sure to put the feed close to the coop so she doesn’t have to hobble to far to eat. We also have too many roosters, a common problem when you hatch your own eggs and buy un-sexed chicks. I currently have three too many roosters and I would love to sell them, but until I do they get to stay and eat even though they obviously don’t produce eggs. Another reason our feed cost to egg income ratio is off right now is because it’s winter and the hens don’t lay as often. Chickens lay best with twelve or more hours of daylight. We have a light on our large coop that is on for three hours after dark so they will still get plenty of sleep and we do get a few more eggs that way, but not as many as we will in a couple of months. The smaller coop houses five older hens, no light. The Silkie coop also has no light, but those little ladies are rock star layers. No light needed. Because our feed costs keep rising we had to increase our price per dozen by $1. We’re still less than most (all right now) grocery store eggs. Our customers are struggling through the difficulty of inflation just like we are, being able to provide them with great eggs at a fair price is just the right thing to do.
We would love to have more hens, but until we get another coop and yard set up we’re at full capacity for our chickens to have a safe, comfortable yards to spend their days in and clean roomy coops to sleep in. Bird flu is extremely uncommon for chickens in this situation.
Besides having a growing interest from people to buy our eggs, many are planning to get chickens themselves. Do it!! It’s fun, rewarding, and just observing your chickens (much like bees) will teach you so much about life. There are enough little farms and backyards in this country to safely house enough chickens that there is no need to buy eggs from a huge commercial farm a few hundred miles away. I’ll get a chicken 101 blog up soon for all of you thinking about becoming chicken farmers. Even just two or three hens will provide you and maybe even a friend or family member with plenty of amazing super local eggs. If that’s not your cup of tea (or local laws ban chickens ugh), buy local! Again, nothing makes more sense.
Audrey L Elder
Fourteen Acre Wood
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