People flock to backyard chickens as egg prices spike

By the numbers: 11 million U.S. households have backyard chickens and 8 million U.S. households consider their chickens pets, making chickens one of the most popular pets in the country, according to the latest data from the American Pet Products Association.

• That's way more than had backyard chickens in 2018 (5.8 million), per APPA data.
• The fine print: The Department of Agriculture has data on poultry kept on farms, but doesn't track numbers of backyard chickens.

State of play: 2025 is already shaping up to be a big year for backyard chickens (as was 2020), according to Jenn Tompkins, co-owner of backyard chickens company Rent The Chicken.

• She's taking reservations now across the country for rentals to start in April or May.
• "People truly want to know where their food's coming from [and] they're not trusting that the grocery store is going to have what they need," Tompkins tells Axios.

Taking care of hens instead of buying eggs at the store isn't really a cost-saving strategy, though.

Here's an approximate breakdown of what keeping two backyard chickens looks like:

• 8-14 eggs a week during the spring and fall (winter and summer can be slower), if your hens are younger than three years old, says Tompkins.
• $500 on a decent coop and fencing, according to George Natsis, one of several backyard chicken owners in his Mar Vista, California, neighborhood.
• $20 a month for food and upkeep, plus two pints of water a day, Natsis says.
• Emotional toll of scooping chicken poop.

That $620 investment, plus your labor and the cost of the birds themselves, will net you 48 to 84 eggs over six months.

• At the grocery store recently, that amount of eggs, assuming Grade A quality, could have cost you an average of $20-$35, although prices are continuing to rise.
• Ongoing costs will be lower, once you're over the hurdle of your coop being set up.
• Note: More chickens in your backyard will likely mean a lesser difference between how much those eggs will cost you and how much you'd pay for them at the store.

What they're saying: "Balance that with the ROI of the joy the birds give you when they make funny new noises or do cool tricks," Natsis, a business operations manager at Hyundai, tells Axios.

• One of his hens, Esther, does an impressive high jump onto a ledge.
• Natsis and his wife plan to renovate and add three more chickens to the coop, "and then I think it'd be worth it," he says. They're looking forward to having enough eggs that they can give them as gifts.
• And Tompkins' customers enjoy watching "Chicken TV," as they call it. "The chickens provide a level of therapy that people didn't know that they needed," she says.

For noncommittal backyard chicken owners, Rent The Chicken offers delivery and setup up of a coop, two to four young egg-laying hens, chicken feed, and food dishes for a five-to-six month rental period.

• The one-time cost to have two hens from April/May through October/November is several hundred dollars, depending on your location and plan.

Between the lines: As for bird flu concerns, "we have strict biosecurity measures in place to help keep our flocks as safe as possible," Tompkins says about Rent The Chicken.

• She recommends setting aside a pair of shoes as "chicken shoes," used only for going into the coop, and washing your hands after interacting with chickens, just to be cautious.
• "The main transfer is from wild waterfowl. Many of our renters do not have wild waterfowl roaming about on their lawns," she says.

Don't forget: Regulations on backyard chickens vary across municipalities and HOAs.

Fun fact: Two chickens referenced in interviews for this story are named Shirley.

• And yes, a number of chicken puns were shared in those conversations. Among them, a line from Tompkins: "I'm full of yolks. I always crack people up."

Editor's note: This story was corrected to reflect that 8 million of the households with backyard chickens (not all 11 million) consider them pets, making the chicken one of the most popular pets (not the third most popular pet) in the U.S.