High demand spurs chicken wire dearth
Supply lag hit as China factories idled operations in first wave, experts say
HALIFAX— After the pandemic prompted the cancellation of most of his concerts for 2020, Dave Gunning decided to raise laying hens on his rural Nova Scotia property.
He immediately ran into a problem: Chicken wire was nowhere to be found.
The folk singer-songwriter looked for the product at farm stores in Pictou County, and then expanded his search to local hardware stores.
Gunning eventually ordered two rolls of steel fencing online from Home Depot. But days before it was set to arrive, his order was cancelled.
“My credit card was refunded with an email saying it was backordered,” he said in an interview from his home in Lyons Brook. His experience is part of an unusual months-long shortage of chicken wire stemming from supply issues and surging demand that suppliers say is slowly easing and should clear within the next month or two.
Industry experts say the scarcity started after factories in China — which has largely cornered the galvanized steel wire market — idled operations during the initial outbreak of COVID-19.
David Musarai, co-owner of Dupont Wire Ltd. in Toronto, said container shipments of wire from China stopped for almost three months because of lockdowns there.
Yet the shortage continued even once the global supply chain was back up and running due to unprecedented demand for poultry netting and other mesh wires.
Many farm and hardware stores sold out of chicken wire as stay-at-home orders and concerns about food security led to a surge in people looking to grow their own food.
“There was a run on chicken wire,” said Jest Sidloski, vicepresident of marketing at Peavey Industries LP, which has hundreds of stores across Canada under the banners Peavey Mart, TSC Stores, ACE Canada and MainStreet Hardware.
He said it was a strong year for all things homesteading, including live poultry chicks, chicken supplies, gardening materials and canning supplies.
While suppliers say the chicken wire backlog should be cleared over the next month or so, determined hobby farmers and gardeners have had to get creative in the meantime.
“We just had so much time at home that this was our chance to do it,” said Gunning, who managed to get hardware cloth from a local store. Hardware cloth tends to be more expensive, but is made from a stronger gauge metal that is either woven or welded into a square or rectangular grid.