Rising egg prices have been mentioned in plenty of financial and economic conversations in the past two years, but not in my household.
For nearly 20 years, my husband Michael and I have kept a small flock of backyard chickens.
It’s been my way of keeping some of my farm roots alive while living in the city, but it’s also been a great way to keep our refrigerator full of fresh eggs.
If you invite me to a cookout or party, I’m typically the one bringing a pound cake or deviled eggs because we’re almost always overloaded with them and seeking ways to offload some.
I’ve been a bit quiet about our supply lately, as I’ve listened to friends lament the increasing cost of eggs. Egg prices increased 13.8 percent in January, according to a recent episode of the Breaking Points podcast.
They were up 53% from January 2024 to January 2025, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted in January that egg prices were likely to go up 20 percent this year, according to an ABC News report.
I don’t understand why more people don’t keep chickens in their backyard. Here are four benefits:
Natural pest control
If allowed to roam, chickens can greatly reduce the amount of bugs, small snakes, small rodents and other pests in your yard.
Easy keepers
Chickens don’t require walking, grooming or veterinarian visits. Just keep food and plenty of clean water for them and you can even go away for a few days at a time without needing a pet sitter.
Waste reduction
Chickens love kitchen scraps including animal fat, fruits and vegetables. You can feel less guilty about letting fresh fruits and vegetables go bad in your refrigerator if you can feed the spoiled items to your chickens.
Fertilizer
Chicken poop is an excellent fertilizer for your vegetable gardens and flowerbeds. I never thought I’d put this sentence in a blog post, but here it is.
My only complaint about keeping backyard chickens is that there are times when egg production diminishes.
They don’t lay eggs when they’re molting- losing their feathers and growing new ones for the winter months. This typically happens in the fall. Although we get more eggs than we can eat throughout the summer months, production diminishes during the winter because the days are shorter and chickens need 14-16 hours of daylight to produce eggs.
I used to get aggravated by having too many eggs and giving them away to friends and neighbors in the summer and then having to buy eggs at the grocery store in the fall and winter because the hens weren’t laying.
That all changed in 2023 when I discovered the art of water-glassing eggs.
This is a preservation method where you put fresh eggs in a jar filled with water and pickling lime. Most websites that offer instructions on this method say this keeps the eggs good for up to one year. I’ve been experimenting with the time and can tell you that we are using eggs in our household that have been glassed for 16 months and they’re still good. You can use glassed eggs the same way you use fresh ones- you can bake with them, and you can scramble/fry them.
I suppose our friends are a bit disappointed that they don’t receive as many eggs from us as they once did, but it makes my heart sing to have found a way to keep ourselves supplied with fresh eggs year-round.
April 2025
