Lessons from Egg-mageddon

How we got here and how to begin taking steps to give yourself sovereignty over your food supply

Who would have thought that eggs, a grocery store staple long known for being affordable and consistently available, would suddenly become impossible to find? Even when you DO find an evasive carton, it’s luxuriously priced.

I had first heard about an “egg shortage” on Instagram, but I blew it off as something exaggerated to the extreme, like many things on social media. When I went to my grocery store the following weekend, it was almost eerie to see that, in America, there were entire shelves empty of something I had taken for granted as always available. Probably a coincidence, but on that particular day, my grocery store was all out of grass-fed milk as well, so needless to say I had a bit of an “oh shit” moment.

Now, how did we get here?

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one factor behind the egg shortage is an outbreak of avian influenza, or bird flu, a highly contagious virus that is often fatal to chickens.

The outbreak was detected in February of 2022, with more than 57 million birds having been affected by it. Of course, like everything else, inflation is also playing a large role in the prices we are seeing at the register for eggs. Bird feed, packaging, and, of course, fuel are playing a huge role in driving up the overall price of eggs.

The Fragility of our Food System

In an article we recently wrote on how hunting can help you take control of your food source, we covered how woefully unprepared we are in America for any catastrophic event that could disrupt our food supply chain.

Especially when only a few companies own our entire food supply.

So, whenever a virus disrupts one of those companies, or for that matter, a virus that affects humans and shuts down the processing plants of those companies, we all feel the swift and severe effects in our wallets and on our shelves.

Taking Action

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on egg production, but I’ll tell you what I’m starting to do to take action around securing our own food supply.

Buy eggs from local farmers

If you can’t grow/produce your own food (yet), find local producers that can. Get to know them, visit their farms and ranches, and build those relationships.

Sure, it can be more expensive than buying from a grocery store, but think about where your money is going- either to some multinational corporation or the farmer that lives in your community and probably aligns more with your values.

Another benefit here is that farmers are usually more than happy to share their secrets of the trade with you if you ask.

Research

If you are looking to get into producing your own eggs, ask yourself a few questions first:

• How many eggs do you realistically eat per week?

• How much space do you have?

Once you start going down the rabbit hole of keeping chickens, you realize there are WAY more species of chickens than you probably imagined. Each of those species has different personalities, tolerances to different types of climates, and uses. Some may be better for laying eggs while others are better for eating, and others are somewhere in between.

Different species also produce varying amounts of eggs per week, so once you figure out how much you eat and the space you have available, you can figure out how many chickens of which species you should buy to get you what you need in a given week.

Our Next Steps

We are currently in stage 1 of the above, meaning, we are still buying from local farmers as much as possible. But, I’ve begun researching chicken breeds to see what I could conceivably keep in our yard to produce the number of eggs we eat per week (which is a lot).

If I keep falling deeper into this rabbit hole, I presume the next step would be researching how to build housing or a coop for my presumed chicken flock, followed by, how I keep them alive.

Again, all very preliminary for us, but I think it’s good to at least be thinking about how we can gain food independence for our family as the world around us becomes ever more unreliable.

After all, with my hunting for our red meat and Maddie currently neck deep in garden planning, it just makes sense for us to begin thinking of how we are going to keep eggs on the menu.

Does the recent Egg-mageddon have you researching if raising chickens is right for you? Where are you at in your journey if so?

We would love to hear from you and any knowledge or insights you have on the topic!

- Sebastian