The USDA this week announced that already high egg prices could jump another 41% this year as bird flu spreads through huge commercial flocks. A Purdue University expert says don’t be surprised to see more mom-and-pop roadside stands selling eggs this summer.
Vaughn and Sharla Koehn have about 30 hens on their hobby farm near Jimtown, and they’re laying about 28 eggs a day. Sharla says that’s more than their family of six can eat, so they recently made a post on the Nextdoor app offering them for sale at $4 a dozen. They’ve been selling in area stores at about $6 a dozen.
"It was like, why wouldn't I share all these eggs, for one thing here, I've got them here, and I know they're so terribly expensive in the store," she said. "So yeah I just put it out there and I got lots of response."
Darrin Karcher is an associate professor of agriculture at Purdue University in West Lafayette, and a cooperative extension poultry scientist. He says he’s hearing more from hobby farms interested in selling eggs and buying more birds for it.
He says production at the end of the year was just starting to come back from the bird flu of 2022. In 2023 and 2024 combined there were only three confirmed cases in Indiana, but there already have been 25 confirmed infections so far this year.
"In '25 we have been hit extremely hard on laying hens," Karcher says, "and so now, even though we were starting to creep up (with production), we are falling below again."
