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Comment by hwillis | Hacker News Reader

Bird flu has 95% lethality in chickens and takes ~48 hours to kill. It's not like they can get away with ignoring it. Testing happens when you wake up and half your birds are already dead.

That said OP is asserting local costs haven't changed without evidence. Even if that were true (and I don't think it is- local farms are also being hit hard eg duck farming in NY) it probably speaks far more to small operations having a harder time changing their prices. Or the cheap eggs are just places who haven't been hit yet.

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I was wondering how I could provide evidence for you other than walking to the grocery and taking a picture, but I found at least one of our local farms that has their prices online: https://www.maplewindfarm.com/collections/retail-store -- I'd expect it would be quite easy for them to change their prices on their own storefront and in their farmstand, where I often buy their eggs.

A dozen large eggs there right now is $7.90, which is right in line with what their costs have been for at least the last year (they are one of the more expensive local brands).

Unfortunately I just went to the grocery last night, so I don't have any reason to swing by today, but next time I do I'll try to remember to snap a pic of the egg section to share.

I've seen a bunch of posts online from the farms about how they're doing biosafety protocols, keeping groups of chickens isolated from each other, etc. I'm sure that increases their costs somewhat, but whatever they're doing seems to be keeping them insulated from the worst of the flock die offs, and regardless, their prices haven't really changed.

To add to this, checking Craigslist... local chicken owners here are selling their extra eggs for about $7-8 a dozen here as well (20m drive from a major US city).

Only marginally more expensive than store eggs, but a lot fresher, unwashed (will keep for a long while on the counter), and you can see exactly where (and from whom!) the eggs are coming from.

Biosafety prevents or delays the farm from being infected. It doesn't lessen the impact once it happens. One bird can infect all the others in hours even when they are in separate buildings just from spreading on clothing. If they are infected they will die.

If a small farm gets an infected bird, they can't just raise the prices of their eggs. Those eggs will just disappear from the stores because all the birds are dead. If they are doing rigorous isolation, like hiring totally separate people taking care of completely isolated flocks, that should increase their prices. Farms that are spending more money on isolation and chosing not to increase prices are still at high risk- they just haven't been unlucky yet.

Well I certainly don't know enough about chicken farming to argue with you about it from any position of authority, and I haven't talked personally to any farmers about it yet.

Regardless, we have continued to see the availability of all the usual local eggs with very little fluctuation in price. Perhaps they have all been lucky.

Anecdotes aren't data, but I'll chime in to agree - the locally sourced eggs have gone up in the last few years, but only from like $4.99 to $5.59.

The "generic egg" have gone from $0.25 a dozen during some price war 6-7 years ago to $6.99. That price has caused the local eggs to sell out first where they used to always be available.

Just to be clear, I never claimed to have data. I said "fresh, local eggs have remained around the same price here," "here" being where I live. The whole discussion is based on that anecdote. GP noted that I made that assertion without evidence, so I was just trying to provide evidence that I wasn't inventing it out of thin air.

I suspect that the combination of our and other anecdotes in the thread may suggest though that there is some merit to the hypothesis that small, local farms are more resilient to this kind of mass pandemic, although it may vary from region to region, especially with the number and quality of local farms, which is probably much higher where I live than some other rural states and/or in major metropolitan areas.

I’ve never seen eggs for 0.25/dozen.

In case anyone was curious, the Internet archive on my parent commenter's link shows large dozen egg prices of: $7.90 March 2024, $7.50 November 2023, $6.50 February 2023.

Oh good thinking! So in line with the sibling commenter, they’ve gone up some, but not a crazy amount, with most of that increase happening prior to the outbreak. And still cheaper than Vital Farms prices mentioned by others elsewhere in the thread.

I personally don't really like eggs. I only buy them when I need them for ingredients in something I plan to cook soon, so I haven't been tracking their price over time. But we are making a cake this week and had been hearing about the eggs problem for a while now.

Yesterday, eggs were not sold out at my local grocery store. There was a sign saying they may limit purchases. The crappy bottom of the barrel eggs were selling for 9 dollars a dozen. Pretty much all the eggs that touted organic or farm fresh on their containers were going for 4 to 5 a dozen, which seems reasonable. I assume those are from the local farms.

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