Why Are Egg Prices So High? When Will They Return to Normal? — Randy’s Chicken Blog

What’s up with the ridiculously high cost of eggs? Simple. It’s bird flu. Well…maybe it’s not so simple. But once you’ve sorted through all the complexities of modern farming practices, government policy, world economics, and what all of that has to do with the price of beans in China, it really comes down to one thing. Eggs are expensive pretty much entirely because of bird flu. Maybe you’re thinking, “Okay, it’s bird flu. How do we fix it? Is anybody trying to fix it? When will I be able to scramble a few eggs without putting a second mortgage on my house?’  

Oh. Well. Sorry. Don’t look at me. I’m just a blogger. I can’t solve your problems. But maybe I can answer some of your questions. Read on and I’ll do my best.

The current flavor of bird flu that’s killing chickens and other birds in the US and around the world has been named HPAI H5N1 (clade 2.3. 4.4b). That’s probably not important to remember unless you’re a microbiologist. But if you do remember it, you’ll sound really smart if anybody should happen to ask. Or you could casually drop it into a conversation the next time you’re hanging out with friends…and you’ll sound really smart!

HPAI H5N1 (clade 2.3. 4.4b) was first detected in the US in 2022—just as Covid was waning.  In the early months of this new bird flu epidemic I wrote a three-part series of articles on bird flu. The information I wrote in those three-year-old articles is still relevant because that bird flu epidemic is still with us! And that’s surprising a lot of people. Past bird flu outbreaks in U.S. poultry flocks have come and gone. The strict U.S. bird flu public health efforts that have been in effect for a lot of years have always worked. But not this time. This tenacious and horrible little virus is not even slowing down. To date (April 2025) over 166 million commercial poultry birds have been culled. Egg prices have increased astronomically. It’s in cats now, and over 80 other mammal species. It’s in dairy herds in multiple states; thus, it’s in dairy products (the virus is dead as long as the milk has been pasteurized). Any number of people have become infected, and now, in January of this year, the first human has died.

A lot of people have a lot of questions. Thus, I decided it’s time for an update to my 2022 bird flu articles. Since I’m a chicken blogger and my audience is mostly people who keep backyard chickens, I planned on writing about the effect of the bird flu epidemic on those people and their backyard birds. But, as I began writing, questions surrounding price of eggs and how that affects all of us kept creeping into my text.

The price of eggs is not the main concern of backyard chicken folks. Actually, it’s not a concern at all since eggs magically appear out there in the coop every single day! But the rising cost of eggs definitely is the main concern of you folks who find your eggs at the local grocery store. And since there are a lot more of you than there are backyard chicken keepers, that’s where I’m going to start. In my next article, I’ll circle back and talk specifically about bird flu as a disease, and how it could affect backyard flocks. But for now, I’m going to start with that main, troubling question:

If you get your eggs from the store rather than the backyard coop, you are painfully aware of egg prices. The April 2025 consumer price index shows that eggs prices are over 60% higher than a year ago, compared to a rise of 3% for food in general.

It’s all about supply and demand. Between the beginning of 2022 and April 2025, 166 million poultry have been affected by bird flu. “Affected” means that they either succumbed to the disease or were euthanized because they were in a flock with sick birds. Compared to early 2022 there are currently 9% fewer laying hens. Fewer hens mean fewer eggs. Fewer eggs mean higher egg prices. We all learned in Econ 101 that when demand exceeds supply, it creates a market imbalance that leads to shortages, higher prices, or both. In the case of eggs, consumer demand is inelastic—egg buyers want, need, and will buy eggs regardless of the price. So as the supply shrinks, the price will go up.

This actually creates a lucrative situation for egg producers. All egg producers are charging higher prices for the eggs they sell, whether or not they’ve lost hens due to bird flu. Cal-Maine, the largest egg producer in the U.S., saw 2023 gross profits that were seven times larger than 2021. Cal-Maine’s flocks were not affected by avian flu during that period. Cal-Maine’s shareholder dividends in FY 2023 were $250 million—that was 40 times more than the previous fiscal year.

Large egg producers that have lost flocks are not suffering as calamitously as they could be. They are compensated for their losses. Most large egg producers participate in federal biosecurity programs designed to reduce the likelihood of bird flu outbreaks. As participants, these producers receive “compensation and indemnity” payments when they depopulate their flu-infected flocks. The federal government paid egg producers $1.25 billion for compensation and indemnity between January 2022 and November 2024.