National egg shortage impacting local businesses, holiday dinners
While hundreds of shoppers attempt to prep for the holiday weekend, one Chino farmer is doing all he can to provide the people with the holiday season's hottest commodity — eggs.
A nationwide egg shortage has seriously impacted how Americans put together their holiday meals, with many stores shelves empty on a day-to-day basis. On top of inflation affecting how stores stock their inventory, a deadly strain of avian influenza has limited the country's supply of eggs.
"It's been hard to get, hit-or-miss at the grocery store," said Bryn Keene, one of many shoppers searching high and low for any eggs she can find.
With such a large amount of shoppers failing to find the necessity at their local stores, they're instead flocking to Billy's Egg Farm in Chino.
Billy Mouw reports selling thousands of eggs a day at his "small" family farm, which houses around 30,000 chickens. With his daughters assistance, he's able to shell out the eggs a dozen at a time to drivers back up into the street at his farm.
"We hand gather all the eggs every day — 25,000 eggs by hand," he said. "I only have so many eggs to sell ,but we just limit at the end of the day to how many one person can buy."
While he's enjoying the increased business, he said that nationwide inflation has also driven his costs up when it comes to feed and transportation.
He says demand is unusually high— as the bird flu has resulted in the culling of 50 million chickens in 46 states this year.
"Most of the eggs you get in your grocery store come from the Midwest and there is a bird flu," he said. "They just don't have the eggs to ship here right now."
According to Consumer Price Index data, the cost of eggs has increased by nearly 50% from this time last year.
Experts suggest that it will take months for egg production to return to normal rates.
