Summary
Egg producers blame the bird flu outbreak for record-high prices, but critics argue dominant companies are exploiting supply shortages to boost profits.
With over 166 million birds culled and egg layers significantly reduced, prices surged from under $2 to nearly $5 per dozen.
Egg supply is down only 4% from last year, yet profits have surged. Cal-Maine Foods, supplying 20% of U.S. eggs, reported a $219 million profit in the last quarter, compared to just $1.2 million before the outbreak, a 18,150% increase.
Lawmakers and advocacy groups are calling for a government investigation into potential monopolistic practices.
Absolutely.
Got 6 chickens last year, the wife said we probably spent too much decking out their living space. I say probably, but they’re more pets for me to have, the 6 eggs a day is just a nice bonus.
Smash cut to this year: suddenly my “investment” is going to be paid off much sooner 😅
How much human food can you feed a chicken before they get sick?
They can eat lots of things! Certain seeds (cherry apple) can kill them. Just like us practice moderation.
What is a cherry apple? Asking for a friend, who is a chicken.
What amount is moderate though? I throw out more leftovers than I wish, it would be nice to have some chickens eat that. Can I replace 50% of its diet with leftovers?
I used this as a basic guide https://www.backyardchickenchatter.com/what-can-chickens-eat/
Nah, it’s the chickens holding the eggs hostage while they demand equal rights and better pay.
I mean, the article keeps mentioning “egg producers” which can only mean the chickens themselves. No human can actually produce the kind of eggs you want in your omelettes.
Narrator: “they are”
A DIY chicken coop is starting to look like a goldmine. It would pay for itself in a month or two. If you can repurpose some skids / pallets you can build one really cheap. Chicken feed doesn’t cost much.
Every person I’ve ever talked to who’s done this has said they regretted it.
Chickens are notoriously delicate.
Most people who think on doing this and succeed really love chickens and have a good way with understanding animals and the value of a life. It’s not for everyone
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I have experience with backyard chickens. Its a wonderful experience, chickens are surprisingly cool critters. And you will get the best eggs you’ve ever had. But you won’t be saving any money lol. Still worth it.
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It entirely depends on your infrastructure. I was house sitting a large estate once that basically had 0 upkeep costs for their chicken as they’d go and find most of their own food and there were no natural predators nearby. It was literally free eggs sort of deal.
People who have rice fields for example have 0 upkeep ducks that just go to the field and eat all of the critters there so not only you get free eggs and duck your rice maintenance is easier!
If you want to tell, look at the stock on the shelves.
If the shelves are full of eggs they’ve inflated the prices.
There should be a supply and demand problem for prices to raise organically.
I live in Alaska, and if nobody was talking about the eggs thing I wouldn’t have had more of a thought about it than “huh, eggs are a little expensive right now. Or are they? Have they always been this expensive?”
For reference, eggs here are $10-$11 a dozen. And for extra reference, a regular sized container of strawberries fluctuates between $5 and $12, and a carton of ice cream (e.g. Dreyer’s) is generally around $12 if it’s not on sale.
The thing is, around here people just… shift what they buy mostly. Strawberries are expensive? Time to buy apples. Ice cream is expensive? Wait to buy until it’s on sale, then buy 8. Bread is only $4.50 a loaf? HOLY SHIT, FILL HALF THE FREEZER.
I’m not trying to minimize the issue. There are lots of people who specifically need eggs (e.g. bakers), but for the most part, I feel like this is some weird hyper-fixation. This feels like toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic.
To egg distributors: sell more 6-packs. Outside of baking, I just don’t think normal people need that many eggs.
It comes down to upbringing. I rarely had eggs for breakfast growing up but my partner had eggs every morning. They strongly prefer 2-3 eggs every morning so we go through a dozen a week. I maintain 2 dozen in the fridge at all times to cover spikes for lunch/diner uses.
We also have no kids. Some people with 2 or 3 kids also grew up on eggs so that’s a dozen gone in a day or two. That’s several dozen a week.
Some people have been having one or three eggs every day for the past 60 years. For me, I just stopped eating eggs, for these people it’s harder. It’s dumb but what isn’t?
Of course not, Trump specifically banned that!
My big question is that if a whole flock is killed when bird flu is discovered, why are JUST egg prices going up? My local grocery store recently had a sale on chicken but the eggs are in short supply and cost nearly 10 times what they used to a few months ago? Shouldn’t chicken meat be expensive too? Or do I not know anything about poultry farming and bird flu?
My understanding is that there are different breeds of chickens used for eggs and meat.
This came up earlier in the outbreak for two reasons:
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Egg-laying chickens apparently take longer to age to the point where they produce eggs than meat chickens do before they are killed, so it takes longer to replace the producing stock of chickens.
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Meat chickens are apparently more resistant to the present strain than egg chickens, and are not impacted as badly.
That did make me hope that one could try to produce a hybrid egg chicken that could maybe also be more resistant.
kagis
Ah, this mentions both factors. Thought I’d need to dig up an article for each.
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/egg-prices-shortage-chicken-question-everything/
“It takes 20 weeks to get a chicken to egg-laying age,” Hall explained. “The main problem is that it’s going to take so long to get that replacement flock.”
So when a farm has to destroy egg-laying chickens because of the spread of bird flu, it takes at least five months to get new hens to that egg-laying age again.
It’s a formula for trouble. Fewer egg-laying chickens means fewer eggs in the grocery store. Less supply with more demand means higher prices.
But it’s not the case for chicken meat. Why? First off, eggs and the chicken meat you buy at the store come from two different kinds of chickens.
Two types of chickens
The chicken breasts, wings and thighs that fill the refrigerators and freezers at Hall’s farm come from a “meat” chicken. It’s also known as a “broiler”, and it’s bred differently than a hen.
“A meat chicken is much wider, grows quicker,” Hall said.
A broiler is bred for rapid growth. It goes from a little chick to processing in less than two months, so they are very quickly replaced. Because of their short lifespan, there is also less time to be infected with bird flu. Therefore, supply for broiler chickens hasn’t been an issue.
Egg-laying chickens, or hens, are far more susceptible to bird flu. According to the USDA, of the 160 million birds that have been killed during the outbreak, 77% of them are egg-laying hens. The hens simply live longer, so they have more exposure.
At Nallie Pastures, egg prices have held at $8 a dozen. Hens there have all remained healthy and business is healthy too.
EDIT: Hmm. I take back the bit about meat chickens being more genetically-vulnerable. It sounds from this article like it’s just that the need to keep them alive longer to reach egg production makes them more vulnerable, and other articles I dig up say the same thing. I probably just misunderstood some earlier article that said that egg chickens were more vulnerable to mean that they were more genetically-vulnerable.
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Why can’t I find half dozen eggs? I don’t each many eggs so a dozen would have a significant number wasted. They used to be self half dozen quantities?
They last so much longer than the best before date.
Yes but not nearly long enough. I like occasional 2 egg omelette but not more than once a week.
You can’t eat 12 eggs in 4 weeks?
I might only want one omelet in a month but I’d force myself to have a 2nd I order to use up the eggs.
Eggs are really hard to steal. Not impossible, just difficult.
yes
They were told they are supposed to do it. Anyone who complains should be shown MAGAs support for it all the way through.
They most probably are. Whenever there is high uncertainty in prices, producers will maximise profit by selling everything at the upper limit and use something like “safety buffer” or “restocking at a more expensive rate” bla as a bullshit excuse. Has been happening in Turkey for the last five years basically across every daily household product range and hospitality sector.
There is absolutely no real proof of this.
But the answer is yes.
Fuck do you think?
