As customers face empty shelves and rapidly rising egg prices at the supermarket due to the avian flu and a lower national supply, breakfast lovers have another option - their own backyard.
Founded 12 years ago, Rent the Chicken provides customers with two egg-laying hens, a portable chicken coop, up to 200 pounds of feed, food and water dish and a book on taking care of chickens.
"Within two days of the arrival, your chickens will lay eggs ready to use!" the company promises, adding that the homegrown eggs have one-third the cholesterol, one-fourth of the saturated fat and two times more omega three fatty acids that store-bought eggs.
The company adds, "Your Rent The Chickens should lay about a dozen to two dozen eggs per week depending on your Rental Package. You will know exactly what your chickens eat!"
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Customers can schedule a date on the website or the phone and the company will bring out the chickens, which are already laying eggs, as well as the supplies.
The chickens are also available for adoption if the customer realizes they want to keep them at the end of the rental period, the company added.
Rent the Chicken co-founder Jenn Tompkins told ABC News that their phone is "ringing off the hook" as egg prices go up.
"Our online inquiries are filling up very quickly as well," Tompkins said. "We will run out of hens available for rent. If anyone is interested, please make sure to put their reservation in sooner than later."
She said that the chickens cost around $500 to rent for about six months.
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While that averages out to about $20 a week for eggs, Tompkins said the chickens provide food assurance amid scarcity.
"We are not coming against the high price of eggs," she explained to USA Today. "We are solving a problem of food insecurity; of not having eggs on the shelf. People can have eggs in their backyard."
Eggs Unlimited Vice President Brian Moscogiuri told "Fox & Friends" on Thursday that the country is going through "the worst bird flu outbreak that we've had in the last 10 years since 2015, potentially the worst bird flu outbreak that we've ever had in the history of this country."
In the last year, egg prices have risen 53% since January 2024, and they're already up 15% since January of this year.
In the last three years, 153 million cases of bird flu have been found in poultry.
"We've lost 120 million birds since the beginning of 2022. In the last few months alone, since the middle of October, we've lost 45 million egg-laying hens," he added. "We've lost a significant amount of production, more than 13%. So we're just dealing with supply shortages. And it's just a disaster right now because this virus is in three of the top egg-laying states in the country. It doesn't seem like it's stopping anytime soon."
Joe Defrancesco, a Connecticut farmer who started renting his chickens out five years ago, told WVIT-TV, "It’s really a learning experience. Yes you get an egg per chicken per day and it’s a great thing knowing you have eggs right in your backyard and you're guaranteed."
Tompkins told Axios that the birds also have an added benefit for renters.
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"The chickens provide a level of therapy that people didn't know that they needed," she said.
