Raising your own chicks might just be the cutest N.L. pandemic fad

Homesteading hobbieshave become ubiquitous since pandemic restrictions began, but the latest craze to hit Newfoundland and Labrador has caught farmers and suppliers totally off guard, as spring sales of chicks skyrocket.

"It's just been absolutely crazy this year. It's almost like the panic buying of the toilet paper happened with chickens," said Aden Frey, the vice-president of Frey's Hatchery in St. Jacob's, Ont., which supplies several farms on the island with spring orders of baby birds.

Frey's Hatchery has been sellingto small family farms and backyard flocks inseveral provincessince 1946, and Frey said he has no such sales surge to compareto this year's poultry popularity, estimating company salesin 2020 are up 40 to 50 per cent over the year before.

"It mushroomed, and we scrambled to increase our capacity," he said."We're doing a few different things, using one facility that we don't normally use, just toincrease our capacity just to satisfy the demand."

Farmers and feed stores on the island portion of the province typically place mass orders for day-old chicks each spring for their customers, with the chicks arriving via airplane cargo holds.Those fluff balls are destined to become laying hens for eggs, broilers for meat, and even ducks and turkeys (and full disclosure: the author's backyard coop is awaiting such a shipment).

Farmers on the west coast report that the typical spring order of up to 2,000 birds has ballooned to 4,500, whileKrista Chatmanof Three Mile Ridge in Lethbridge said she's filling her fourth order for chicks, whilein a normal year she would top out at two or three. Her first order capped out at 2,000 chicks.

"Definitely, the chickens is a fad, like the toilet paper," she said.

Backyard boom

Other provinces, like New Brunswick, have seen an uptick in chicks for 2020, but Frey and Chatman agree that raising backyard flocks has been a growing hobby in recent years.

"There'sa huge amount of interest in homesteading, growing food, raising your own," said Chatman.

• 'Chick day' brings out new New Brunswickfarmers for in-demand chickens

Food security was part of the reason the Pike family of Shoal Brook took the plunge into poultry, getting six chicks in mid-May to raise for eggs, even if the agricultural ideacame as a bit of a surprise to mom Deidre.

"I never in my whole life thought i would ever own a chicken," she laughed.

"We were talking about the shortage of fruits and vegetables and things like that, what with the weather and the fact that we're on an island," she said."So we thought, 'Well, we can do our part.' We planted some vegetables, and we'll get our own eggs, and that's a start."

The Pikes live ina small, rural community on the southern shore of Bonne Bay, where having a few chickens is no issue with regulations. But even larger centres in Newfoundland and Labrador are fairly feather-friendly, with Corner Brook allowing up to four laying hens, and St. John's allowing"a small number" of chickens, according to its planning department.

So far, the Shoal Brook chicken experimenthas been a success, said Pike, with the chicks occupying a lot of her two daughters' time and attention.

On a cuteness scale of one to 10, the Pikes ratethe chicksa "15."

Future farmers?

Fluffy and adorable they may be, but the stakes of keeping chicks alive and healthy are exponentially higher than any sourdough starter.

Looking forward to egg production comewinter, the Pikes don't find their birdworkload too much to bear, and her daughters have enjoyed their extensive chicken research.But they also aren't taking any bets as to whether they'll stick with chickens as a permanent pastime.

"It could very well be the start of something, we'll see. Right now we'll take it as it comes," said Diedre Pike.

The bird suppliers aren't too certain about the future for the fad either, although Chatman hopes some future farmers might be budding among the new backyard flocks.

"It is a lot of work for your own food. Hopefully no one gets discouraged from that," said Chatman.

For the Frey operation, which hatches millions of eggs a year, staff are trying to figure out how to handle operations heading into 2021.

"We're hoping it's not quite so busy," said Frey.

"It's hard to know. Like, is it going to be anywhere near this next year? And so how much do we prepare and how much do we spend?"

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador