A Realistic Look At The Chicken Market

Chickens taste great, but would you be ready to care for a live chicken? Dnyuz.com reports that in light of the COVID-19 situation, Americans have been “stress buying” chickens in an effort to “prepare” that some companies have likened to the obsession with purchasing toilet paper.

Apparently when times are tough, people want chickens. Chick sales go up during stock market downturns and in presidential election years.

Murray McMurray Hatchery, of Webster City, Iowa, ships day-old poultry through the Postal Service, and is almost completely sold out of chicks for the next four weeks.

“People are panic-buying chickens like they did toilet paper,” said Tom Watkins, the vice president of the company.

Down at your Tractor Supply Company, a national chain of farm stores, long lines snake out the door into the parking lot before the store opens on the morning of a chick delivery. Many feed stores report they are selling out of chicks almost as fast as they can get new orders in.

Some of these buyers are simply replenishing their flocks, having put in orders weeks or months ago. But many people who have bought chicks in the last week are first-timers. (source)

I have been raising chicken for years, and it is a lot of fun. It is true that there has been an increase in chicken purchases this year- I have seen it myself, but I do believe that this story is exaggerated. One can go right now and buy a series of chicks from many stores without issue. Those who sell chickens often tend to run out fast, and in the years since I started, I have seen no fundamental difference in the purchase rates.

This news about the chicken market is similar to the situation with the coronavirus. While I have reported on it a lot, because it is a major story, my greater concern is that we actually do not know what is happening with virus, or even what it is. It my personal opinion (and strictly my opinion), there is a possibility based on what I have seen there may be more than one variant of the same virus being spread, similar to how there are different strains of the same STD (hence the “drug curable” and the “drug resistant” variants of gonorrhea, for example).

The truth is, we do not know details, but we can say that:

a) there is a virus
b) it seems to be a real threat
c) this threat, while real, is being exploited for maximum control in all fields of human life

I can make similar notes about the chicken market for,

a) there has been an increase in purchases because of concern
b) in spite of said purchases, there still is a lot on the market
c) one can still get chickens in a reasonable amount of time if one wants to do them.

In the next few weeks, I may put out a series on chickens and how to take care of them. I want to do this because as I have said before, there is only so much that can be said about the current situation other than documenting it. Rather, you as an individual need to learn basic skills just like what people in the recent past had, for regardless of the effects of the virus, the ability to make one’s own “chicken soup” or “vegetable medley” from one’s own efforts, while more expensive, is a matter of personal satisfaction as well as taste, for there is no chicken soup like fresh-out-of-the-pot or vegetables right from the garden. With people having a lot of time at home now and saying there is not much to do, what is better than getting some exercise, learning a new skill, and one that tastes great too?

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