Big Bend Poultry Farmers Scramble to Fight Back Egg-flation

Feb 06, 2023

By Adrian Andrews

Egg farmers and consumers in the Florida Panhandle are facing an “egg-normous” dilemma. The Consumer Price Index notes that just within the past year egg prices have increased by 60%.

Part of that is driven by the presence of an avian influenza that spreads swiftly among birds. The US Department of Agriculture has been tracking the virus since July of last year, but that’s not the only factor behind the rise in egg costs.

Gigi Carroll owns Whitetail Hollow Farms and regularly sells her eggs at the Havana Farmers Market. She said the cost of chicken feed is also going up.

“To combat the cost of feed we are resurrecting our farm from stationary hoop coops to mobile coops that will be moved daily on pasture to offset the need for supplemental feed,” Carroll said in a text message. “We are also reevaluating the breeds we use for layers and only keeping the ones that produce the most number of eggs per year.”

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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