Avian Influenza

Which shortage came first: the chicks or the eggs?Spooked by a huge spike in egg prices, some consumers are taking steps to secure their own future supply. Demand for chicks that will grow into egg-laying chickens — which jumped at the onset of the global pandemic in 2020 — is rapid again as the 2023 selling season starts, leaving hatcheries scrambling to keep up.“Everybody wants the heavy layers,” said Ginger Stevenson, director of marketing at Murray McMurray Hatchery in Iowa. Her company has been running short on some breeds of especially prolific egg producers, partly as families try to hedge their bets against skyrocketing prices and constrained egg availability.“When we sell out, it’s not like: Well, we can make another chicken,” she said.McMurray’s experience is not unique. Hatcheries from around the country are reporting that demand is surprisingly robust this year. Many attribute the spike to high grocery prices, and particularly to rapid inflation for eggs, which in December cost 59.9 percent more than a year earlier.“We’re already sold out on a lot of breeds — most breeds — until the summer,” said Meghan Howard, who runs sales and marketing for Meyer Hatchery in northeast Ohio. “It’s those egg prices. People are really concerned about food security.”Google search interest in “raising chickens” has jumped markedly from a year ago. The shift is part of a broader phenomenon: A small but rapidly growing slice of the American population has become interested in growing and raising food at home, a trend that was nascent before the pandemic and that has been invigorated by the shortages it spurred.“As there are more and more shortages, it’s driving more people to want to raise their own food,” Ms. Stevenson observed on a January afternoon, as 242 callers to the hatchery sat on hold, presumably waiting to stock up on their own chicks and chick-adjacent accessories.The Cackle Hatchery received eggs from local farms in Missouri. Hatcheries could theoretically hatch more chicks to meet the surge in demand, but is difficult in today’s economy.Neeta Satam for The New York TimesRaising chickens for eggs takes time and upfront investment. Brown-egg-layer chicks at McMurray’s cost roughly $4 a piece, and coops can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to construct.Mandy Croft, a 39-year-old from Macon, Ga., serves as administrator on a Facebook group for new chicken farmers and is such an enthusiastic hobbyist that family members call her the “poultry princess.” Even she warned that raising chickens may not save dabblers money, but she said her group was seeing huge traffic nonetheless.“We get hundreds of requests a day for new members, and that’s due to the rising egg cost,” she said.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More