The Real Cost of Backyard Eggs
NEWS | 01 April 2025
America is facing a chicken-and-egg problem, although in this case, it’s clear which came first. For months now, people have been disappointed by grocery stores that have run out of eggs or limited the number of cartons per person. In response, some have created a new shortage: Now it’s not just eggs that are hard to come by, but also the chicks that will someday lay those eggs. Farm stores and hatcheries are selling out of baby chicks for the spring—particularly production breeds that lay a large number of eggs. The threat of bird flu has already meant that more than 166 million egg-laying hens have been culled since the outbreak began, in 2022. As a result, the price of eggs is predicted to climb 41 percent higher this year; already, in January, it rose to a record high of $4.95 per dozen grade-A eggs. So some Americans are considering what seems like a simple solution: raising chickens themselves. Backyard-chicken forums have been buzzing about chick shortages at local farm stores and hatcheries. And on Saturday, Brooke Rollins, the new secretary of agriculture, said in a Fox & Friends interview that raising backyard chickens is an “awesome” solution to high egg prices. (She has chickens herself, she said.) Anyone who starts a flock because they’ve been dreaming about backyard chickens pecking in the yard will likely be happy with their choice. Those who do it to save money will probably regret it. Backyard hens are wonderful to keep, but they lay the most expensive eggs you’ll ever buy. I got my first flock of three chicks, in 2018, because I liked the idea of having eggs that came in multiple colors from hens that were treated well. I bought a sturdy cedar coop that would protect the hens from raccoons and other predators; it cost $1,200. The chicks themselves cost $73—admittedly because I was buying fancier breeds that had been sexed to make sure they were hens—plus another $36 for shipping. Then I spent $150 for chick food and a heating plate to warm the birds until they’d grown enough to move outside, and I bought them mealworm treats to make them friendly. I had to wait seven months to get my first egg. Starting to raise chickens can cost less than I spent, but even the cheapest backyard-chicken setup isn’t a negligible expense. Over the years when I had my flock, it grew from those first three chicks. Once the hens started laying regularly, I checked the nest boxes daily. When my flock had eight hens, I’d often get anywhere from three to six eggs a day. But this was sporadic. Eggs are naturally seasonal, and around November, the chickens slowed and then stopped laying until roughly March, when the days got longer again. Then, after a few months of springtime laying, some hens went broody—they were ready to hatch chicks—and preferred to sit on top of the flock’s laid eggs, puffed up like angry orbs. Other times, the hens hid their eggs under shrubs where I wouldn’t find them until days or weeks later—a clutch of as many as 15, hidden away. I bought a separate mini fridge just for eggs: to store enough that I, at least, had a regular supply when the hens went on vacation. But I also had enough irregular excess that I gave eggs away to friends and neighbors. Sometimes, people asked if they could pay me for the eggs. I said no, knowing that the price I’d have to charge to recover my expenses would be well over $1 an egg, maybe more. Better to gift the excess eggs (and get summer produce in exchange) than resent people I was dramatically undercharging. I thought of the chickens more like my dogs, who never even helped me save on the grocery bill. The fact that eggs from backyard chickens cost more than eggs from hens raised in barns by the hundreds of thousands should be obvious to anyone who’s heard the term economies of scale. Eighty-five percent of table eggs in this country come from hens kept in industrial houses that contain 50,000 to 350,000 hens each. Some of these individual farms can have up to 6 million hens. The Department of Agriculture refers to any farm with fewer than 10,000 hens as “smaller.” A backyard flock of three to 20 hens? Infinitesimal. Even so, however lightly the secretary of agriculture took the question about backyard chickens and small-scale farming in her Fox interview, part of the USDA’s strategy to combat the effects of bird flu involves “minimiz[ing] burdens on individual farmers and consumers who harvest homegrown eggs.” Back in the early 1900s, most eggs did come from smaller flocks raised by farm women who sold the excess to people in town. My great-grandma, a farmer in North Dakota, did this to pay for household expenses. The average price of a dozen eggs in the 1940s was roughly 42 cents. With inflation, that’s $7.50 today. Even at record-high prices, eggs are cheaper today because farmers have changed both the hens and the conditions they’re raised in. Hens have been bred to lay 300 eggs a year instead of 150. Artificial light manipulates them into laying year-round. People stopped raising hens as part of a diversified farm and started specializing. By the 1960s, the majority of eggs came from hens raised in cages inside massive windowless structures; cage-free eggs come from birds that are usually still kept inside such structures but allowed to move around. This system has created a seemingly endless supply of cheap eggs, but it’s still made of living creatures. Eggs are expensive because egg-laying hens killed after being exposed to bird flu can’t quickly be replaced; they must be raised to laying age. Backyard flocks have also been killed after avian-flu exposure; the one person in the United States who has died from bird flu was exposed to it by both wild birds and a backyard flock. Bringing chickens home doesn’t get rid of the risk that started this whole mess; it only provides more opportunities for the virus to spread. When my grandma was raising chickens, 44 percent of Americans still lived in rural areas, and 25 percent lived on farms. Today, most of us are far removed from farming and so used to getting eggs whenever we want that it’s easy to believe chickens must be egg-laying automatons—stick one in the yard, and wait for breakfast to roll in. But like cats and dogs, chickens have specific requirements for staying alive and thriving. Sometimes a hen gets picked on by the others and has to be coaxed back into the pecking order. Other times, hens get injuries that need treating. Every day, they require food, fresh water, and clean accommodations. As I wrote in my book, Under the Henfluence, when I told my grandma that I was starting a backyard flock of chickens with only three hens, she scoffed. That wasn’t nearly enough for a flock. “You need 25 at least,” she told me. On the farm where she’d grown up, her mother had kept a flock of a few hundred. And that did add up to real money. Those chickens paid for her schoolbooks and piano lessons, and they kept the family in eggs. She knew that I wasn’t intending to sell my chickens’ eggs, but the message was clear: To make money raising chickens, you need more of them. This is the kind of economic advice Americans should keep in mind.
Author: Samuel Ashworth. Tove Danovich. Hannah Seo. Shayla Love.
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