CINCINNATI — A new report on inflation shows egg prices had the highest increase across all items in the US market.
According to the Producer Price Index, there was about a 210% increase in the cost of eggs in the last year.
The high prices have more and more people turning to homesteading, raising their own chickens for food. And that means big business for the Mt. Healthy Hatchery. The family-owned business is nestled off Winton Road and has been open for 99 years.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time now, the only way you get in a business like this is you grow up in it,” said Mt. Healthy Hatchery President Rob O’Hara.
O’Hara is the third generation and is already training the next generation to run the business.
The hatchery supplies 60 breeds of chicks, ducks, turkeys and game birds to big farm stores, mom and pop feed shops and the average backyard farmer across the country.
O’Hara said they have been slammed trying to meet the demand.
“About 300,000 a week at peak,” O’Hara said.
O’Hara said they are shipping 25-30% more birds than last year.
“Right now, it’s pushing us to the limit of what we can do, phone lines are jammed constantly,” he said.
They work around the clock to meet the demand because O’Hara said they want to be able to provide for their big and small customers.
According to O'Hara, egg prices do have a lot to do with it.
“People are panicking a little bit,” O’Hara said. “I think anytime there’s instability in markets, people kind of go back to their roots and want to do things for themselves, self-sustaining type things.”
Rob says the spike isn’t new. They saw a similar demand during the pandemic when people had more time for homesteading.
“Backyard chickens, they grow almost every year and municipalities are changing rules and regulations where people can have 6, 8, 10 chickens in their backyard,” O’Hara said.
For example, The Village of Silverton just passed a new ordinance allowing homes to have up to six hens with some regulations.
But Rob warns, raising your own chickens for eggs isn’t necessarily saving you money. And chicks do take some work. But he said it is a better product and you’ll be dealing with high egg prices well past Easter.
“They’ve had to destroy about 50 some odd million birds, it takes time to replenish those birds,” O’Hara said.
“It takes 5 months before a bird lays an egg, so when those farms have to be destroyed out of safety, it takes a long time to replenish that part of the market.”
Many things haven’t changed in Mt. Healthy, O’Hara said they still ship the chicks through the USPS and can be anywhere in about 48 hours.
Customers can pick up the birds at the post office or stop by the Mt. Healthy location.
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