Ashley Shepard raises an assortment of animals on her small backyard farm in Greenfield. The farm includes a large selection of chickens, which are used for their egg production. Recent increases in egg prices have made raising chickens a priority in the Shepard household. Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023.
HANCOCK COUNTY – As egg prices soar at grocery stores, consumers are searching for alternative sources like Ashley Shepard’s chicken flock.
“A lot of the business I’ve gotten here lately has been because my eggs are almost equivalent if not cheaper than they’re finding in the stores,” the rural Hancock County resident said.
An avian influenza outbreak and rising feed costs have led to U.S. egg prices more than doubling over the past year, and Hancock County is no exception. The spike is stressing the budgets of consumers and food producers that rely heavily on eggs.
The national average price for a dozen eggs hit $3.59 in November, up from $1.72 a year earlier, according to the latest government data.
This week, egg prices at grocery stores in Greenfield ranged from around $3.66 to $7.54 a dozen.
Shepard is licensed to sell eggs, which she does through Mom & Pop’s in Maxwell. While the mini-mart is her only retail customer, she also donates eggs and sells them to family and friends.
Last year, Shepard sold eggs off her front porch for between $2.50 and $3 a dozen. Currently, she sells off the porch for $4 a dozen while Mom & Pop’s sells them for $5.
“Obviously Mom & Pop’s has to make something off of them, but at $5 they’re still pretty competitively priced,” Shepard said.
After starting to raise chickens shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, her mixed flock has grown to about 100 and also includes ducks and turkeys.
Shepard grew up on a farm and always wanted to have livestock. She recalled with a laugh how she thought chickens would be the most affordable to get started.
“You’d think, but by the time you buy the eggs, or you buy the baby chicks and raise them up and you buy the coop and you get all the stuff, you’re looking at an easy thousand dollars before you get your first egg, starting from scratch,” she said. “So I mean, it’s an investment. … But once you get going, it’s self-sustaining.”
So far Shepard’s flock has not been affected by the lingering outbreak of avian influenza, or bird flu. She said she had been following it long before it started making headlines, when it was affecting ducks and turkeys ahead of spreading to chickens.
Shepard said she took precautions to prevent the disease from spreading to her flock like ceasing from exchanging and rescuing birds while also trying to keep wild birds from sharing a space her birds are eating in.
“We didn’t have any problems with it, but we did try to prevent it the best we could,” she said.
Rising feed prices are another strain on the egg industry. In the few years Shepard has been raising chickens, she estimates feed prices have gone up about $4 per 50-pound bag. Prices vary on what type of feed, she noted, adding organic kinds are more expensive.
Such spikes are especially challenging in the fall when chickens aren’t laying a lot of eggs, she said.
“It does kind of get you upside down,” she added.
To help, Shepard feeds her chickens more table scraps of fruits and vegetables, and buys whole oats and black sunflower seeds to mix into the feed and make it last longer.
“I personally think, in my experience, that feeding more than just feed, just pellets, gives you the best egg yield,” she said. “Sometimes the best times my chickens are laying, believe it or not, are from table scraps – they’re from fruits and veggies that my family didn’t finish or things like that that supplement their diet while there’s no bugs or no green grass and things like that for them to eat.”
Eggs are the No. 1 ingredient at Lincoln Square Pancake House in Greenfield, said owner Costas Stylianou. The restaurant currently pays around $159 for a case of 30 dozen eggs, he said, a steep jump from last year’s prices in the mid-40s.
“You don’t have a choice sometimes,” Stylianou said. “Either you keep going or close down and you go home.”
While Lincoln Square increased meal prices about a year and a half ago due to rising meat costs, Stylianou said the restaurant hasn’t had to yet due to the spike for eggs.
“Right now it’s a crazy, crazy market,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
