Poultry in motion: chickens fly off the shelves as COVID-19 buying hits fodder stores
Forget hoarding toilet paper and hand sanitisers, now there’s been a run on chickens. Actual, live chickens.
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South Australia is in the grip of a major chicken shortage.
No, not the breast and thigh fillets that have been flying off the supermarket shelves along with the toilet paper and hand sanitiser, but actual live chooks.
Fodder stores around Adelaide have been selling out of chickens in minutes as the COVID-19 buying frenzy extends to livestock.
Sandersons Grain and Fodder owner Vikki Threapleton said she sold 120 hy line brown chickens – usually around a month’s supply – in just 45 minutes on Wednesday morning.
“I came in to open the shop and there were people working on laptops from their cars waiting for us to open,” she said.
Ms Threapleton said demand was so high that she had to impose a five-chicken limit on customers.
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“I also quizzed people to make sure that they had proper coops set up,” she said.
And anyone thinking that their new purchases were set to pump out eggs straight away will probably be disappointed.
“They’re still about six weeks away from laying,” Ms Threapleton said.
Up at Mt Barker it’s a similar situation, with Mt Barker Fodder Store selling almost 200 chickens on Wednesday. Store worker Jay Watkins said it would normally take the business several weeks to sell that many birds.
“We had 200 chickens on Wednesday and I think we have about 20 left,” Mr Watkins said. “I think people are just bunkering down and making sure that they’re going to have an egg supply.”
Mr Watkins said the store also put a limit on how many chooks were sold each family.
“Generally four to six chickens is plenty for the average family,” he said.
“I guess they really are laying the golden egg at the moment.”
While backyard chickens have had a major resurgence in recent years, it was during the rationing years of World War II that keeping chooks reached its zenith, with millions of Aussies harvesting their own eggs along with fruit and vegetables.