The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baby chickens in short supply
Apparently when times are tough, people want chickens.
For chicken hatcheries, the weeks leading up to Easter are always the busiest. Spring is in the air for people shaking off long winters spent watching Netflix under a blanket who had hoped to emerge into a world of budding flowers, green grass and baby animals.
While spring might be calling people to congregate outside, health authorities are saying the opposite. Many schools and businesses are closed, and states and cities are implementing “shelter in place” orders to keep cases of the new coronavirus from skyrocketing.
The combination of an enormous rise in unemployment, anxious free time for those not struggling with illness and financial instability has created a number of strange moments in economics. Here’s another: Baby chickens are next to impossible to find.
Apparently when times are tough, people want chickens. Chick sales go up during stock market downturns and in presidential election years.
Murray McMurray Hatchery, of Webster City, Iowa, ships day-old poultry through the Postal Service and is almost completely sold out of chicks for the next four weeks.
“People are panic-buying chickens like they did toilet paper,” said Tom Watkins, vice president of the company.
Down at Tractor Supply Co., a national chain of farm stores, long lines snake out the door into the parking lot before the store opens on the morning of a chick delivery. Many feed stores report that they are selling out of chicks almost as fast as they get new orders in.
Some buyers are simply replenishing their flocks, having put in orders weeks or months ago. But many people who have bought chicks in the past week are firsttimers.
Amy Annelle, 48, a musician in Austin, Texas, hadn’t planned on getting chickens until the South by Southwest festival and an upcoming tour were canceled. Suddenly she found herself with plenty of time at home to raise birds, just as eggs and chicken began to run low at her local grocer.
According to the Agriculture Department, wholesale egg prices rose more than 50% last week in some parts of the country because of demand; eggs have been running low, if not sold out altogether, in many stores. The egg supply is normal, of course; demand just grew significantly.
Annelle bought four hens and a rooster a week ago.
“I thought I’d get some chicks before everyone panics at once and buys them,” she said. “We also wanted a fun project to keep us busy,” she added, referring to her and her partner.
Although Annelle cited food security as one of the reasons she wanted to have chickens, she realized that it would be at least five months before her hens are old enough to lay eggs.
She doesn’t know how long the quarantines and business closures will last but said, “It just seems like having a steady food source is a good idea right now.”
The chicks have also been comforting in another way.
“It’s just very hopeful watching them grow,” Annelle said.
Dominique Greenwell in Spokane, Washington, bought four chicks March 23 from a nearby breeder (the feed stores were sold out) after a few days of internet research on how to care for the birds.
The hair salon where she works had closed the week before, which has given her a lot of time to obsess over her new charges.
“I go in there every 15 minutes to make sure the temperature is OK or to hold them,” Greenwell, 26, said.
She’s an animal lover with a miniature pig, a bearded dragon, two dogs and a cat.
“You can’t control the world around you, but you can control the love you give to your animals,” she said.
Compared with usual chick sales in March, sales at Hackett Farm Supply in Clinton Corners, New York, have nearly doubled.
“People are willing to take breeds that aren’t their first choice just to get a flock started now,” said Stephanie Spann, the store manager.
New owners aren’t always prepared to make great lives for chickens. What seems like a great idea when everyone’s at home with plenty of free time won’t be so appealing if or when life returns to normal.
People making last-minute decisions to raise chickens may not know what they’re getting into, which results in cruelty. In one online chicken forum, a woman asked for help after her new chicks started dying. She didn’t know they needed a heat source. (Chicks can’t regulate their temperature until their feathers grow in, which is why they have to be in a brooder with heat or with a mother hen to snuggle up with.)
Even with the closing of libraries, there are many e-books available on raising backyard chickens, as well as popular forums like BackYardChickens, so newbies can get answers to their questions.
“People should get a coop or outside area prepared for them because the eight weeks they’re inside goes real quick,” Spann said. “Just be ready. Have the supplies you need before bringing the chicks home.”
“I didn’t know I was jumping on a bandwagon,” Erin
Scheessele, 42, of Corvallis, Oregon, said of her decision to start a flock of chickens. Her two sons, Simon, 9, and Peter, 11, had been out of school since March 11.
“They’ve been asking for chickens for a while,” Scheessele said.
She’d been reluctant to commit to chickens as a pet that she knew could live for 10 years. (Chickens lay fewer eggs after two years and go through “henopause” around 5 or 6 years of age, but can live much longer. Owners should be prepared to kill the birds or keep them as a long-term freeloading pet.)
But between school closures in Corvallis and the beginning of chick season, the timing was perfect.
“That’s why it came together,” she said. “We needed something to do.”