Arizona egg expert explains how bird flu keeps farmers scrambling and prices high

PHOENIX — Egg prices are unlikely to fall significantly until a stubborn bout of bird flu can be eradicated, according to the leader of a major Arizona egg supplier.

“Eggs are like any other commodity: as supply goes down, the price does go up,” Glenn Hickman, president and CEO of Buckeye-based Hickman’s Family Farms, told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show on Tuesday.

One day after officials announced that a backyard poultry flock in Maricopa County tested positive for avian influenza, Hickman explained that the average American consumes the output of one egg-laying hen in a year.

“There’s a chicken out there working for you somewhere, and so when we lose birds, like we have been with the bird flu for the past three years, we do have a deficit,” he said.

Lingering bout of bird flu is keeping prices elevated

The impact of the bird flu can be seen in the cost of eggs as tracked by the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumers paid an average of $3.37 per dozen in October, a surge of about $1.30 from a year earlier but below the $4-plus prices from nearly two years ago.

A 2015 outbreak affected the market for about a year, but the average price for a dozen eggs was rarely above $2 again until an early 2022 outbreak. Millions of hens have been lost to the virus since then, reducing the egg supply and keeping prices high.

“It’s affected different farms across the country. … You get one farm filled back up and another farm goes down. Some farms have gone down multiple times,” Hickman said.

Hickman said the persistence of the current bout of avian influenza has been troubling.

“We went basically with no bird flu in commercial premises from 2015 to 2022. So this round is perplexing because it has hung around,” he said.

The virus can be carried by migrating waterfowl, who don’t get very sick from it but can transmit it to the birds on egg farms.

“The best thing we can do is practice really vigilant biosecurity where we absolutely limit the amount of people who can come onto the farm,” Hickman said.

In addition, anybody who enters a barn with chickens in it must shower before going in and every vehicle on the property gets sanitized, he said.

Hickman farms bring lasers to the battle against bird flu

Hickman said his family-owned egg business is always looking for an edge in the fight against bird flu.

“Today we just bought lasers that are nonevasive, nonharmful to wild birds,” he said, explaining that the green dots scare away unwanted feathered guests without hurting them.

The vigilance is required because every bird on a farm where avian influenza is detected has to be killed to keep the disease from spreading.

Hickman said it could take up to two years for an egg farm to get back to full operating strength.

“It’s really expensive … to depopulate the farm and handle the mortality in a safe and secure fashion, clean the entire farm, and then sanitize the farm and get it ready for new birds. … It’s quite an undertaking,” he said.

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