Farm Horizons
•
While only four chicken operations were affected
in Minnesota, they were all massive, causing a sharp
decrease in birds, noted Nathaniel Taylor of Forsman
Farms, a local producer whose facility was not hit.
Currently there are nine million chickens in all of
Minnesota, after some restocking, compared to 11.4
million before the outbreak, according to Minnesota
Board of Animal Health. In Iowa, where they had 58
million chickens, they’re at 37 million now.
“There was a wild swing in egg prices nationwide,”
said Taylor. “The cheapest eggs are in the Midwest.”
A manager at Marketplace in Cokato noted: “There
was an uptick in prices for a while, I think engineered
by egg producers, but they have dropped the last couple
months. In fact, we had a sale on them recently. The
supply is plentiful, and it’s a non-issue now.”
A New York Times report on chicken farms in Iowa
in May said this was the first such large-scale crisis in
the US, although farmers in Asia and elsewhere have
grappled with avian flu epidemics. The virus seemed
to follow migratory bird pathways from the Pacific
Northwest to the Midwest, the Times reported.
Stricken farms were hit hard, not only financially,
but emotionally, as well.
“Most did not understand what was happening,
April 4
•
Page 22
where the virus came from,” Thompson said. “The disease was so deadly it was unbelievable. It’s not like human flu. With the avian flu, the vast majority die within
three to five days. It was really hard for the producers,
because this is what they do, every day, from the first
thing in the morning to the last thing at night.”
After avian flu struck one operation after another,
the price of eggs soared through the second half of
2015 before starting to come back down in January.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecasts
an average price for large eggs of $1.66 a dozen in
2016, a decrease from the 2015 average of $1.84, but
higher than the $1.42 average in 2014, before the avian
flu outbreak.
The USDA report on Minnesota’s chicken and egg
industry showed that January production was 226 million eggs, down 22 percent from last year, and down 1
percent from December 2015. The number of layers in
the state in January was 9.46 million, down 20 percent
from last year but slightly above December 2015.
The retail price increase of eggs from June to December was anywhere from 24 to 51 percent higher
than the same month in 2014, before stabilizing in
January, according to Maro Ibarburu, a scientist and
business analyst for eggs at Iowa State University. The
price of large white eggs “delivered to the store door in
the Midwest” was, she said, starting in May, up any-
HORSTMAN’