Please Stop Complaining About the Price of Eggs

Recently (this morning), I was at the supermarket and standing in front of the egg case when a woman made a comment about the price of eggs. She reached for the cheapest ones and put them in her cart. I’d been hearing about the high price of eggs for a few weeks. So I gave her a little laugh of acknowledgment and reached in and bought a dozen of the pasture raised organic eggs. Yes, they were almost $10. But I thought to myself, what a good deal! I now know what goes into making each one of those eggs and I am so grateful.

When the pandemic lock-down started, I fulfilled a life-long dream and got chickens. Not fancy, decorative chickens but “layers.” For the first six months we kept them warm, safe and fed. We even saved one from dying from “sticky butt” disease by rubbing Neosporin on their butthole. (Well, one of my daughters did it. And I am grateful to her too.) It took six months of tender care before they started to lay brown eggs and we heard their first squawks of surprise when it happened.

Soon, my 12 chickens were laying two to three dozen eggs per week. I gave a lot of them away and everyone agreed the eggs were the best ever. They had rich yellowish orange yolks from eating bugs and grass and weeds in my garden, and kitchen scraps in the fall and winter. I was happy! Even though I was paying tons of money for the best organic chicken feed and “scratch.” These chickens became my family and I loved them. They were friendly and enjoyed being held and hanging out with everyone. I started to think “I got this.”

But then a few things happened. First, a new dog in the family learned how to get into the gate, which I hadn’t secured properly, and killed a chicken. Then she killed another chicken. I cried hysterically. I secured the gate. For that and mostly other reasons, the dog found a new home.

Second, in Spring I started letting the chickens out in the yard again and they went straight for my newly planted vegetables and started pecking away. That wouldn’t do at all! So I had to pay quite a bit of money to put a secure fence around a part of my yard, the orchard, where they could peck to their hearts content and leave my veg alone.

Third, a rabbit ate a hole in the deer fence that was also protecting the chickens and a few of them escaped and some of them didn’t come back.

Fourth, a fox figured out how to dig under the deer fence and ate a few more of them.

I now have 5 chickens left and they are almost exactly three years old. I am learning that chickens of that age begin the process of stopping laying, especially in the cold dark days of winter. I am lucky if I get 5 eggs a week now. So I’ve had to start buying eggs again.

You might say, “Oh, just get more chickens.” But it’s not that easy. New baby chickens are not always welcome into an older flock. Plus, I’m about to start traveling a lot again and I can’t always be here to let them out in the morning and put them to bed at night (in every weather — snow, ice, rain, cold and sometimes warmth). Having “backyard” chickens costs a lot of time and money! There is the feed they need, the straw to keep the coop clean and warm, nesting boxes, roosts, waterers that don’t freeze in the winter. I am sure if I did the math, my chicken’s eggs would come out around at least $50 per dozen. And then what do I do with them when they stop laying in another year? Can I really make soup out of them? I’m not sure I can. But chickens can live up to 7 years, so then they become simply pets. Or Fox food.

The reason eggs are so expensive right now is because people have expected cheap eggs, and so farmers have cut corners to keep them cheap, even as prices everywhere have risen for all very good reasons. (Yes, let’s start — I mean stop — complaining about inflation next.) When farmers and the food companies that often hold farmers hostage in the egg and chicken industry cut corners, chickens are more vulnerable to disease and bird flu, which is exactly what happened. In the past year, 58 million birds have either died or been culled due to bird flu. And it’s not just chickens. It’s turkeys. Geese and ducks. And other wild birds. It’s even spreading to animals and humans.

So please stop complaining about the price of eggs. Learn what it takes to bring the food to your table and choose wisely. Treat your food choices as if they were the most important, precious decisions of your life. When we expect food to be cheap we devalue everything in the whole process of getting that food to you: the farmers, the animals, the stores, and most importantly nature and you.

And if you want to get your own chickens, know this first: They poop…A LOT. It’s your job to protect them. And they are not cheap.