Dropping 150 eggs at once is always a messy situation, but as egg supplies dwindle and consumer demand rises, the mistake was felt more profoundly at Hahn’s of Westminster last week.
After an employee dropped about 12 dozen eggs while carrying them into the store, Hahn’s Manager Vicki Norris refused his request to pay for the mishap.
“I’m like, ‘You can’t afford them,’ ” Norris said. At Hahn’s, a dozen eggs from 4 The Girls Farm in Hampstead costs $8.50.
With egg prices soaring and ongoing concerns of bird flu contamination, Baltimore-area farm vendors say they are selling more eggs than ever.
“For certain eggs, color and size, we are slightly cheaper than some grocery stores,” said Liam Dempsey, manager of Bullock’s Country Meats & Farm Market in Westminster, where a dozen eggs cost $7.50 as of Feb. 20. I guess because they’re local, people aren’t as nervous about the bird flu.”
Martha’s Farm Market, a sixth-generation beef and poultry farm in northern Harford County, has raised its egg prices in response to the outbreak, a trend that many local farmers are following.
Prices for a dozen eggs have increased because of the bird flu fears: $10 at Breezy Willow Farm Country Market in Ellicott City, up from $7; $9.99 at Mary’s Land Farm Store in Howard County; $5.50 at Martha’s Farm Market, up from $4.
Julie Yarrington, owner of Martha’s, said that the increasing nationwide demand for eggs has impacted her market’s supply and, therefore, its prices.
“We have not encountered the bird flu at all here, but what happened was, we kept our prices very reasonable and people were coming out to buy eggs who had never been here before. They were pretty much cleaning us out,” she said.
The U.S. Agriculture Department predicts that record egg prices could soar more than 40% this year as the Trump administration offered new details Wednesday about its plan to battle bird flu and ease costs. With an emphasis on farms’ tightening measures to prevent bird flu’s spread, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the USDA will invest $1 billion on top of the roughly $2 billion it has already spent since the outbreak began in 2022.
The main reason egg prices have climbed — hitting an all-time average high of $4.95 per dozen this month — is that more than 166 million birds have been slaughtered to limit the virus’ spread when cases are found, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most were egg-laying chickens. Since the start of the year, more than 30 million egg layers have been killed.
Though most of Martha’s customers are from Harford County, Yarrington suspects some began driving to Street store from longer distances as egg prices in grocery stores have surpassed record highs.
As a result, the Yarringtons found themselves running out of eggs daily, despite collecting anywhere between three and six dozen per day from their chickens. The increased traffic at their farm led the Yarringtons to enforce a limit of two dozen eggs per customer.
“You know how it is when you go to pick up something, you want to get eggs or whatever, and you get there and there’s none there,” Yarrington said. “I just felt really bad for our customers that were driving to get them and couldn’t.”
Eggs are “like the golden goose,” said Jaime Brooke, a nutritional therapy practitioner at Mary Land’s Farm in Ellicott City who also works in the farm’s store.
Brooke said the store has been getting frequent calls from customers asking if eggs are in stock and requesting to set some aside. While staff works to bring more eggs to the store if they run out, Brooke said eggs often will be sold out by the end of the day. Some customers are interested in more humane products or items that aren’t ultra-processed, she said, with people usually willing to pay more for eggs coming from healthy chickens.
Dr. Jennifer Trout, a Harford County native, was appointed by Maryland Agriculture Secretary Kevin Atticks in October to oversee animal health as the state veterinarian. Trout said Wednesday that the bird flu epidemic impacted the state at the beginning of January after a die-off of chickens occurred at two commercial poultry farms on the Eastern Shore. Die-offs also were reported in Delaware, she said, but to a greater extent.
Five commercial poultry farms in Maryland are currently affected by bird flu, as well as a backyard flock in Montgomery County, according to Trout.
Trout said that there are several biosecurity measures that poultry farmers can take as the USDA works to approve vaccines and make them available. These measures include wearing dedicated footwear and coveralls in hen houses, cleaning up feed spillage on the ground and limiting the number of visitors near poultry facilities.
“You can apply that to backyard poultry as well, right? If you have multiple coops, and if you’re going in and out of them, make sure that there’s foot baths to disinfect your boots,” Trout said.
At Martha’s Farm Market, Yarrington said her family is “pretty strict about biosecurity” and is taking measures to prevent customers from bringing the bird flu to her farm.
Yarrington said many of her hens are also older and are not laying as many eggs as they used to. To solve that issue, her family recently looked into acquiring more pullets, which are typically hens less than 1 year old, but their supplier has told them to expect delays as many other poultry farmers in the region try to supplement their flocks with more egg-layers to help meet high demand.
At Haviland Hens Farm in Clarksville, Deborah Pacheco is hoping the disease doesn’t make its way to Howard County.
“It worries me, definitely, because we’re not bringing any outside hens or roosters or anything in right now due to the avian flu,” Pacheco said.
Pacheco has a small flock of 16 hens after a “devastating” incident when a raccoon broke in, but the bird flu makes it challenging to rebuild. She said she hopes there is action taken to help with the bird flu and increased testing so the disease doesn’t reach levels “as bad as it can be.”
The farm doesn’t want to risk losing its flock by bringing in new birds, she said, and with not all hens laying eggs yet, the farm is able to get about a dozen eggs a day. There’s currently a waiting list for eggs, Pacheco said, but there have been other times when eggs are in higher demand, so it’s not the first time there’s been such a list.
“It is an increase in demand. It’s just that there aren’t that many farms in this area that sell fresh eggs and a lot of people in this area like to live healthier and have fresh eggs so they reach out out to the farms,” she said.
Trout called the demand for eggs “inelastic” on Wednesday, noting that it takes five months for a pullet to start producing eggs and become a hen. She noted that while many farmers in the state are purchasing pullets in the wake of the die-offs, it will take months before egg production rates return to where they were prior to the epidemic.
“I would like to say that egg prices are going to go back to normal in the next month, but I can’t say that because you don’t know where everybody is in raising the replacement birds for those [egg] layer facilities,” Trout said. She did, however, add that warmer weather slows the spread of avian influenza outbreaks.
Trout encouraged poultry farmers, or even people with backyard coops, to register their flocks with the Maryland Department of Agriculture. Those who register are put on a distribution list and receive alerts about the outbreak and recommended biosecurity practices.
Trout said that those interested in registering must own at least two chickens to be eligible for alerts. To register, visit https://mda.maryland.gov/AnimalHealth/pages/poultry-reg-faq.aspx.
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