No Eggs at the Market? Maybe It’s Time to Hatch Your Own.

“They’re out of eggs,” my husband said sadly after returning from the grocery store without his assigned eggs last week.

That’s when I decided that this was the time to consider getting some cute, fluffy, comforting baby chicks and a wooden coop. We could eventually have fresh eggs every day for breakfast—and I have wanted to try raising chickens for years.

But as I looked into it—my husband admittedly isn’t on board yet—I quickly discovered a lot of people are having the same response to this pandemic: There’s a run on both eggs and chicks.

Raising backyard chickens has been trendy for years, especially here in California. But amid the current pandemic, the surging demand for chicks has been so extreme that hatcheries and feed stores are having trouble keeping them in stock.

Many are sold out.

“It’s completely unprecedented,” said Megan Raff, a co-owner of Dare 2 Dream Farms, a boutique seller in Lompoc, California. “There’s a shortage of eggs, and people want to raise their own chickens. We’re all trying to stay home and not go to the grocery store.”

She and her husband sold about 8,000 baby chicks and chickens in March—10 times the rate of a year ago. She is trying to stagger pickup times to allow for social distancing but scheduled 90 appointments over two days.

Meyer Hatchery in Polk, Ohio, says spring is always busy, but March revenues doubled from last year. And to help with social distancing, it just added a drive-thru pickup service for baby chicks.

Many of the chick buyers have had chickens in the past and are already set up with coops. Others have been thinking of raising chickens but were on the fence until now. But there’s a new category of first-time buyer: Parents who are stuck at home with their children indefinitely now that schools are closed.

And they’re desperately trying to find entertaining and educational activities.

One such chick-buying parent is Gioia Jacobson, a marriage and family therapist in Carpinteria, California, who now finds herself at home nonstop with her husband and two young sons.

She tried to order toy Easter eggs on Amazon but found they wouldn’t ship until late April—due to their status as nonessential items.

So instead, Jacobson, who has raised chickens in the past and still has the empty coop in her backyard, decided to order five baby chicks from Dare 2 Dream Farms. She wanted to order Easter Egger chicks, a breed that lays colorful eggs, and she had them in her online cart—but the breed sold out before she could check out.

Instead, she bought less expensive chicks that will deliver more ordinary brown and white eggs. No matter. Her boys are “delighted” and have been kept very busy “watching the chicks go about their little chicken lives.”

Once the chickens mature, in about six months, she expects to have five fresh eggs a day, and in the meantime, she says, there will be “teachable moments.”

Also at home with her two daughters is Allison Zeidler in Monte Sereno, California, who ordered chicks and a coop for delivery in April. She expects her girls to be out of school until August.

“Instead of summer camp, we’re going to have chicken camp,” says Zeidler, with a sigh.

She reasoned that her daughters used to enjoy having chicks in their classroom at school and loved holding them at lunch. “It’s therapeutic and calming,” says Zeidler. The girls are very excited and have already come up with two names: Chickpea and Pickles.

Zeidler’s husband was less enthusiastic. “His initial response was ehh, “ she says. “He wants them as hidden as possible. We kept walking around the yard until we could agree on a spot.”

Raising chickens isn’t for everyone. Many chickens wind up as rescues when people decide it’s more work than they realized. “If you’re buying chicks just for eggs, you are making a big mistake,” says Claire Badener, who takes in rescue chickens in West Los Angeles. “You have to wait six months for them to start laying eggs. A lot of people are going to turn them in to a shelter.”

She also warns that as chickens age, they stop laying eggs, and they typically don’t lay eggs in the winter. “It all sounds good on paper, but chickens will devastate your back yard,” she says. “People get Easter chicks and don’t realize how involved it is.”

She also estimates that by the time she factors in all costs, she is paying about $20 an egg.

Indeed, Facebook groups for chicken owners are now filled with posts by new chick owners trying to figure out the lay of the land. On Chicken, Chicken, Chicken, one owner posted a video of a tiny chick named Speedy racing at high speed around other chicks.

“I’m worried the little guy is going to have a heart attack!!” wrote the owner. ”At first, it was cute, but now I’m worried about him!!”

Baby chicks need warmth, and owners need to start by keeping them indoors in a box with a heater for about four weeks or more. When they’re ready to progress to the backyard, they need a coop to protect them from predators such as coyotes and raccoons.

Typical coops can range in price from $300 to $2,000. But some of the fanciest upscale chicken coops, priced at up to $30,000, have solar power, heated roofs, and automatic doors that let the chickens in at night, making life easier for their owners.

Needless to say, not everyone can go out and buy a chicken without running afoul of various regulations. Some areas aren’t zoned for chickens. And in California, state officials banned the shipments of chicks to certain zip codes in Southern California following an outbreak of the Virulent Newcastle virus.

That includes my own county, Los Angeles—meaning I couldn’t legally buy chicks even if my husband gave in to the idea.

But one neighbor in my quarantined zip code was able to place an order in June through Murray McMurray Hatchery in Webster City, Iowa, a hatchery that ships chicks through the U.S. Postal Service. The order will be filled only if the quarantine has been lifted by then.

The neighbor, Charlie Raine, has raised many chickens in the past, but now he’s down to only two; he and his wife put in an order for 25 more chicks from Murray McMurray Hatchery. “We want to be more self-sustaining,” he said. “It’s seeing the empty shelves and knowing we have the capacity to do something.”

The couple requested only hens when placing their order. “We don’t want roosters,” Raine explained. “The roosters can have bad attitudes.”

Originally Appeared on Vogue