Can Backyard Chickens Make Up For Egg Prices?

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. $3.49, $4.49, $9, those are the prices some people I know have paid recently for a dozen eggs. Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I'm looking at you with that $9 a dozen, but I don't have to tell all of you grocery shoppers out there, the eggs are getting pricey. With egg prices soaring, have you thought about getting your own chickens? According to an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, you would not be alone. The article reports that with egg prices up 60% year over year, many people are setting up their own chicken coops, people who've never raised chickens before.

It turns out a backyard chicken coop is not so simple from expecting new chicks to immediately start laying eggs, which they don't, to simply not knowing how to care for them. Many people have found raising chickens to be more work than they bargained for. For our final segment today, we're going to talk to someone who knows what it takes to raise chickens. Bill Hlubik is a professor of agricultural agency for the Rutgers Cooperative Extension and director of the Middlesex County EARTH Center. He's going to explain what it takes to raise chickens in the backyard and answer your questions about it. Thanks for joining us, Bill, welcome to WNYC.

Bill Hlubik: Hi, Brian. It's great to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we want to hear your stories. A, how are you coping with the rising price of eggs? Are you making half-egg omelets? 212-433-WNYC. Did you or someone you know recently get backyard chickens? Share your experience. 212-433-WNYC. What has surprised or delighted or undelighted you about the experience? 212-433-9692. Bill, you're at Rutgers, is this happening more in New Jersey?

Bill Hlubik: Yes, it is, Brian. We are seeing quite a new number of people coming in and trying to raise their own chickens for eggs especially. We have some beginner farmer programs and a lot of the beginner farmer programs, people come in and that's one of the first things that they want to do, is get chicks and start raising chickens. In our programs, we walk people through all the different steps that you need to consider when purchasing chickens and caring for chickens, it's not a very easy process. Of course, animals, as any animal that you raise, has to be cared for, fed, watered, making sure that it's protected from any predators, so it's a considerable amount of work.

Before you get into that, make sure that you have the time to do it. It can be a very rewarding thing to do to raise your own chickens and have your own eggs, and we have students wanting to do that at Rutgers University. We actually have a group that does that, that I work with. Plus I have many beginner farmers and established farmers raising eggs right now in everything from small scale to a little bit larger scale.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear our first caller story. I think we're going to hear [unintelligible 00:03:27] chicken grows in Brooklyn. Megan in East New York, you're on WNYC. Hi, Megan.

Megan: Brian, thanks so much for my call. I love your show. Super excited to talk about my chickens. I live in East New York. I have a backyard and about two or-- I think it was two years ago, my son brought home a baby chick that his dad had gotten him on Easter. I was like, "What are we going to do with this guy?" Instead of just having one, which would be dangerous because it gets too cold, now we have six.

A cautionary tale, be careful what you get yourself into. I think that your guest was just mentioning those items. A couple of things is that not every single breed of chicken will lay eggs, so you would want to look into that first. Also, they will not lay eggs in the winter especially if you treat them well. They don't produce eggs like they do if they're in a factory and they're given hormones and all these things to actually produce the eggs.

It's safer for them not to produce them in the winter, so we don't have many now. They also stop laying after about three years and they live between 6 and 9, maybe 10 years, so it's a really big deal. If you set up a chicken coop in a backyard in Brooklyn, you are also setting up a little habitat for those guys that our mayor is really trying to combat.

Brian Lehrer: Those guys.

Megan: You will have a rat problem.

Brian Lehrer: Oh boy.

Megan: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Really? Wow. Do you wish that that original Easter gift instead of baby chicks was some marshmallow peeps or something?

Megan: Absolutely. In fact, I have a box of marshmallow peeps that I look at just because they're cute to see. I look at them and I'm like, "Oh, if only. No, I love my chickens.

Brian Lehrer: You do?

Megan: They're playful, they're fun, they're happy, but they don't lay eggs anymore.

Brian Lehrer: Megan, thank you so much for sharing your story. Oh my God, Bill, a cautionary tale, it sounds like.

Bill Hlubik: Yes, well, with chickens, they're gregarious animals, so you would want to have at least three or four chickens anyway when you get them so that they can hang out together and they actually are calmer and will provide a better production if you have a group of chickens. Usually, we don't recommend people buy singles, and when you go online to look for baby chicks to purchase them, usually many places sell 20 to 25. You can get as few as three to five online, but I wouldn't recommend probably having less than three or four that you would order so that they can hang out together.

Brian Lehrer: Do they really attract rats?

Bill Hlubik: Well, anything that can get to them-- They don't necessarily attract rats if you keep the pens clean and you have a good process whereby you're removing the waste products, but you do have to protect chickens from anything that could go after it, whether it be snakes or rats or foxes, or even hawks, because hawks will dive down and go after chickens. Where people have pens set up, usually we recommend that you set up a pen for them where you have between 4 and 8 square feet per chicken. Then if you have a run area that's outside--

Brian Lehrer: Per chicken?

Bill Hlubik: Yes, per chicken. Then you would have a run area outside that's anywhere from 10 to 15 square foot per chicken, if you can do that. There are chicken tractors where you can actually move the whole unit, that includes the area where the chickens are in a small building, and then you can move their outside run. With the outside run, you do need to protect that with chicken wire and protect all the edges so that hawks can't get in there or other animals to attack the chicken. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another-- yes, you have to know what you're doing on many levels there, it sounds like that.

Bill Hlubik: Oh, yes. These kits that you can get--

Brian Lehrer: The local parks may need to install chicken runs next to the dog runs.

Bill Hlubik: Yes, that's for sure, but [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Let me go to another caller just for time.

Bill Hlubik: Oh, sure.

Brian Lehrer: Is it Arie or Arie in Somerset, New Jersey? You're on WNYC. Hi, there.

Arie: Thank you. Good morning. It's Arie. I live in Somerset, New Jersey, and I have 25 chickens, and I'm raising them for, well, probably eight years, not the same chicken, but I changed a bunch. It's all the same kind, Rhode Island Red. First of all, it's extremely easy. They don't demand much, just food and water. We have a coop and we collect all the manure and we use the manure in the summer for the garden.

One of the things that people don't know about the eggs is that you actually don't have to refrigerate them. I have too many for my consumption, so I just have it in my car all the time. I just give it to friends and coworkers and whoever wants eggs. There's always eggs in my car even in the summer, and they're all always fresh. They lay one egg a day so I probably have two dozen every single day. I [unintelligible 00:09:06] compost sources.

Every leftover food that we have, even peels, when I peel my apples or my carrot or whatever, I cut my pepper, I always put on the side. Any leftover bread, rice, potatoes that are cooked, they eat it all. The only biggest problem is that where I live, there's a lot of foxes, raccoons, and others, and protecting them, it's a difficult task. We do have a wooden coop where they stay at night where we collect the manure and then they have probably a 20 by 20 open yard that is covered with [unintelligible 00:09:46] fence, and [inaudible 00:09:48] fence.

Brian Lehrer: You have that much space.

Aria: They have that much space, and they just love it.

Bill Hlubik: Nice story, Arie, thank you very much. Call us again. Susan in Mahwah, you're on WNYC. Hi, Susan.

Susan: Hi. I just wanted to make a note that it seems to me that if the price of eggs has gone up so much that it would go to figure that the price of chicken would have gone up as well. That's not something I've been finding, so I think it's really quite peculiar that the price of chicken has not gone up when the price of eggs has gone up. That's all.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Bill, is that your observation at the Rutgers Agricultural Extension there, and if so, what would explain it?

Bill Hlubik: Yes, part of that reasoning is for raising egg chickens. Our feed costs went up across the board due to a whole lot of different factors across the country and across the planet, in terms of grain supplies. The increase in cost to those growers for egg supplies has increased. Some of that stabilization is probably going to change, where you are going to see the price of meat go up eventually due to the higher feed costs. That's probably going to happen in the not too distant future, because whenever costs go up for growers, of course that translates to cost to the consumer.

A lot of local growers try to keep their cost down as much by growing and raising their own food, and mixing some of their own food for the chickens. In that way, if they're doing that, some of your local growers can actually keep some of their costs down, whether they're growing chickens for eggs, or whether you're getting meat chickens from local farmers. To grow them yourself, you're going to find that prices, just in general, food costs have gone up 30% to 40% just within the past 6 months, so it's considerably higher.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Linda in Vernon, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Linda.

Linda: Well, hello, Brian. I just wanted to share my experience with chickens, and that is as a parent of two 4-Hers. We brought a bunch of chickens, well, hens, of course, and they would be loose in the yard. They eat ticks, they eat leftover everything, like spaghetti, meatballs, they eat eggs, they eat everything. They're very easy to care for. The girls used to have to bathe them before shows, and they were really nice in the bathtub. They would just lay down and let the kids do anything to them. They wound up being wonderful pets, but they're a mess to take care of. The coop was dirty, but if you only have a few, they lay eggs every single day. It was really enjoyable.

Brian Lehrer: There you go. Bill, we have time for a last word from you, of advice, or whatever, if people are considering, if they have the space, getting their own backyard chickens given the price of eggs right now and the stories we've heard. I do have some people saying the caller who said he leaves eggs out in the car, they don't need to be refrigerated, that that may not be safe, so maybe a quick comment on that, and any other closing thoughts. 30 seconds.

Bill Hlubik: Oh, okay. Sure. Leaving eggs out, when eggs are hatched, they have a protective coating on them, so they can survive for a couple of weeks or so in ambient, normal temperatures, not high temperatures, but once you wash them then you remove that protective coating.

Brian Lehrer: Not in the summer so much.

Bill Hlubik: No, not in the summer. That's a food safety issue, so I would recommend refrigerating them [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That has to be the last word from Bill Hlubik, professor and agricultural agent for the Rutgers Cooperative Extension, and director of the Middlesex County EARTH Center. Nobody here but us chickens. Bill, thanks a lot.

Bill Hlubik: Take care, Brian. Good to be with you.

 

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