There’s an Avian Flu-caused Egg Shortage – are Backyard Chickens the Answer for You?
As we humans grapple with a “tripledemic” of COVID-19, influenza, and RSV (not to mention the lurking spectres of Mpox and staph/scarlet fever infections), it can be easy to lose sight of how our industrial civilization’s systems of production and consumption are interlinked with the subjugation and intensive exploitation of other life. Of course, besides zoonotic disease crises — and other forms of human suffering, such as the endangerment and exploitation of livestock industry workers who are primarily immigrants, refugees, and people of color in the U.S. — the worldwide intensive raising, warehousing, and slaughter of domestic livestock produces mass animal suffering and death even outside of slaughter for consumption, including the rapid spread of highly infectious pathogens that devastate domestic animals as well as wildlife populations.
One of these pathogens, the avian flu H5N1, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates affected more 57 million birds in 2022, including migrating water fowl and raptors, poses no current direct risk to humans, but has caught renewed attention in the U.S. news cycles due to its impact on the availability and prices of grocery store eggs, which are notable at the moment even amidst ongoing COVID supply chain issues and general inflation. The industry response to avian flu in the US has involved horrific cullings by ventilation shutdown – cullings worldwide have killed over 140 million farmed birds.
A frequent consumer response to the resulting egg shortage, based on browsing the news and conversing with others who do the shopping for their household) is something to the effect of “I want to get my own chickens” (said, of course, in varying degrees of seriousness). Certainly, this was my initial response, and would likely be my plan for the spring if I wasn’t planning a major move by autumn. But I would caution others seriously considering the leap to home or community chicken-raising to ponder on some of the less obvious aspects and responsibilities of taking on a flock.
You see, I’ve done this chicken thing before (my last flock went to go live with a zookeeper friend last summer, after I had to face the fact that it was too difficult to keep up with chicken care after moving away from my ex in-laws’ property the last day of 2020— more on this flock later), with many successes, more mistakes, and several tragedies. And I’ve seen many others go through a similar process — every flock, chicken individual, and bit of land is different (as well as the human putting them all together) but there are some common truths and lessons that don’t always occur to someone who is just starting out. People taking responsibility for a key part of their and their loved ones’ diet outside of our civilization’s literally toxic industrial food factories should be applauded and supported, but we also need to think critically about how to truly revolutionize our relationship to the animals that produce our food — and where the material realities of their lives and ours cannot be idealistically transcended.
Assuming a general willingness and ability to care for chickens, as well as a basic understanding of their characteristics and needs — here are three of the initial advisory thoughts that I had when reading recent news about people considering a foray into backyard egg production:
- Keeping backyard chickens during an industry-devastating avian flu outbreak means that you are now responsible for birds that can catch avian flu.
By taking on birds that will need to spend some of their time outdoors during an ongoing pandemic affecting both wild and domestic fowl of all species, you will be taking a crash-course in biosecurity. There are simple mitigation measures that you can take — the following list from the University of Minnesota Extension (which I am not affiliated with, but apparently has a sliding scale-priced backyard chicken course that looks great) is a good place to start:
- Separate your flock from disease sources including wildlife and wild birds.
- Keep your poultry area and equipment clean.
- Separate new or returning birds from your flock for at least 30 days.
- Don’t share equipment between neighbors.
This means that a free-range setup like the one I ran up until 2020, where the chickens had unfettered access to a yard during the day, returning instinctually to their enclosed coop at night, would simply not fly in today’s environment without exposing my flock to avian flu. My flock’s current home, however, is a wire-enclosed run of adequate size shielded above by an open-sided horse shelter.
Although there could be some contact with wild birds and/or their droppings, it is far less likely. Remember to keep separate shoes for walking into your chicken enclosure. This is also good protocol to stop the spread of Marek’s disease, which tragically ran through my (home-bred and unvaccinated) flock one year.
2. The easiest, most popular model of small-scale chicken raising still relies on industrially-produced feed and its supply chains
Off the top of my head, I can recall paying $16.99 for a 50 pound bag of brand-name corn and soy-based, oyster shell-fortified feed in early 2020 — that same bag will sell for $25 now. While these feeds are great for making sure chickens get their core essential nutrients, they rely on intensive industrial agriculture/fossil-fueled transportation and don’t provide chickens (and the humans eating their eggs) all of the vitamins and nutrients that are possible with a more varied and localized diet. There are guides online for mixing your own foundational feed (Mother Earth News is always a great resource). And when that’s not cost-effective or possible, there are plenty of ways to supplement your chickens’ diet with forage greens (which could be cut and brought into a secure run), scraps, and insects.
I used to take hornworms plucked from my tomato plants to treat my flock in the summer — chickens are happiest when they get to pursue and eat small prey like the omnivores they are! Which brings me to another point:
3. (Even if you’re an ovo-vegetarian) you will have to take responsibility over the chickens’ suffering and life vs death decisions — or continue to outsource it.
Eating eggs does not take a chicken’s life directly — but in the egg industry, 300 million male chicks deemed economically useless are crushed to death every year. After an intensive year and half of laying, maximized by the use of artificial lights which keep chickens laying through the winter — egg shortages are still a seasonal challenge even with your own flock unless you also wish to force your hens out of their natural cycles and light the coop — “spent hens” are often turned into pet food.
Buying sexed pullet chicks from the feed store means that male chicks of that laying breed were culled at the hatchery. But if you hatch your own chicks or buy them from a neighbor who breeds chickens what to do with the inevitable “superfluous” males? Too many roosters in a flock will fight each other bloody and interfere with best breeding practices. At some point, some males will have to be culled. It’s up to you —if backyard slaughter is unappealing or not allowed where you live maybe you’d rather sell or give your roosters to someone who does eat meat and knows how to slaughter and process humanely? Backyard chicken regulations in many cities means that you may have to deal with any “accidental” roosters before they are fully grown and disturb the enforced peace.
And, you will have to make peace with whatever you decide to do with hens who lay consistently for about 3–4 years, but live on average to about 8–10 years of age. It always seemed ungrateful to me to kill a hen who had fed me her eggs, but I also didn’t have enough economic stress to worry about feed cost — and I fundamentally saw the hens as pets, rather than livestock, (which could lead to a whole philosophical debate, especially since I only -felt- that way about one of the roosters!) One of my hens, Moira, a Silkie, still had the hormonal response to brood other hens’ eggs once she was too old to lay her own.
And the question of suffering — there is a lot of it in the chicken world, as they are a prey animal, though when properly cared for, they can also be very resilient. Illness, injuries, predators, poisoning — some preventable, some less so. You may be required to end their suffering yourself, as I once did when I came home to a chicken that had been fatally wounded by a neighbor’s escaped dog. Eggs are a source of protein that is considered ‘vegetarian’, but whether in industrial farms or in a backyard, they still require grappling with many of the same ethics and consideration as meat production and consumption.
