On a recent Thursday afternoon, Monica Burnside poured a tasty combo of mealworms and cracked corn into a tin bucket at her home on Mercer Island, Washington. She rattled the treat inside the bucket for her chickens to hear. Then, she opened the gate where she keeps the egg layers.

“Oh, Doris. You heard that, didn’t you? You know that sound,” she said, as the chickens scurried over to her. “I’ve trained them to come when the bucket comes out because they know there are treats. That’s how I get them back in here.”

Her four chickens are Doris, Ruby, Maggie and Jubilee. Her flock started in 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. At what she calls her “peak,” Burnside had seven chickens. Since then some have died, including one named Matilda that was attacked by a dog.

“Yeah, losing them is really hard,” Burnside said. “I know for some people they’re just egg layers, but for us, they’re my pets.”

She said she spends anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour everyday maintaining where she keeps them.

“I personally wouldn’t want to sleep where I have poop everywhere. So I clean up their poop and their coop every day — I just scoop it up,” Burnside said. “I have kind of a good routine where it’s just pretty easy.”

It’s a lot of work and can be expensive. There’s the cost of the food. The heat lamps to keep them warm during cold months. Just Burnside’s chicken coop that houses Doris, Ruby, Maggie and Jubilee was $1,200.

Feed stores across Washington are selling out of baby chickens, as people try to get around high egg prices at the market. But there are downsides to having a backyard flock, such as cost and potential exposure to bird flu.

Nick Van Atter, general manager at Grange Supply in Issaquah, said he’s had customers from as far as Oregon drive to his shop to buy baby chicks. He said demand for the birds this year compared to previous years has been overwhelming.

“We have individuals show up two plus hours before we open on the days that we get chicks and line up — kind of like it’s Black Friday,” he said.

The first week Grange Supply had chicks for sale this spring they started out with 500.

“They were sold out in 28 minutes,” Van Atter said.

He said some people are replenishing an aging flock, while others are getting their first birds to produce eggs at home to try and avoid high prices at the grocery store. And Van Atter warned those startup costs are all before your hens start laying eggs, which could take up to six months.

“So once you factor all that in, by the time they start producing eggs, you’re a couple hundred dollars into feed alone,” he said.

As egg prices climb, more Oregonians take a crack at raising backyard chickens

And, of course, there are some safety concerns for bringing chickens onto your property, including salmonella and less commonly, E. coli. And now we have documented bird flu cases tied to domesticated birds.

“Nothing is typical about this strain of avian influenza,” said Peter Rabinowitz, the director of The Center for One Health Research at the University of Washington, which investigates disease between animals and humans.

Infected birds typically shed the bird flu through saliva, feces and nasal secretions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Birds can catch the virus when they come in contact with sick birds or contaminated surfaces, such as water in a bird bath.

It’s rare that humans become infected with the virus, but, since April of last year, there have been 70 human cases of avian flu in the U.S. Most of those happened in Washington, California and Colorado. People sick with bird flu reported no symptoms or mild illness to severe disease. One person in Louisiana died after becoming exposed to the virus by a backyard flock.

Rabinowitz said the risk of domestic birds becoming infected with the bird flu is very low.

“But you know, it’s not like it hasn’t happened here. It has happened,” Rabinowitz said.

No people have died from bird flu in Washington state, but there have been about a dozen confirmed cases in humans. So far, the virus has taken out hundreds and hundreds of farmed chickens. It’s killed wildlife as well as at least one house cat.

“And the risk is greater at certain times of year,” Rabinowitz said.

Like in the spring and fall, when waterfowl are migrating and could come in contact with domestic birds.

Rabinowitz said that the increase in people raising backyard birds does raise concerns that the virus could get better at jumping from animals to humans.

“The more infections that there are, the more chance that there’s going to be a new mutation that is more dangerous like that. It’s just sort of rolling the dice, and at some point you may get a mutation that can do things that the previous ones couldn’t,” he said.

Oregon businesses feel the pressure of rising egg costs

The Washington State Department of Agriculture tracks cases of bird flu in the state and has tips on its website on how to keep backyard flocks safe. The department also operates a hotline, where chicken owners can call 1-800-606-3056 to report multiple sick or dead birds.

Back on Mercer Island, Monica Burnside said she is worried about her chickens becoming infected with bird flu, but is hopeful that a canopy of trees that cover where she keeps them might prevent wild birds from entering her yard.

“I just watch my girls everyday and if they look even the slightest bit sick, I would notice,” she said. And she would take them to the vet.

Burnside’s girls are living an ideal life. They have a view of Lake Washington, where they stretch out their wings and sunbathe – they’re taken care of. Again, she got them as pets. The eggs are a bonus.

But when she weighs the cost of taking care of chickens versus buying eggs at the grocery store, the math is clear.

“It definitely doesn’t pencil out. No, not even close,” Burnside said.

Freddy Monares is a reporter with KNKX. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/04/26/washington-chickens-eggs/