Well, howdy there, internet people, it's Bell again.

So today, we're going to talk about eggs, disappointment, and Trump.

It's unlikely that Trump will somehow get egg prices to go down.

In fact, they'll go up over the average for 2024, probably by a lot.. Or as a VP for a major egg producer said,

there's a very real chance we could flirt with record highs. Right now, prices are high because

we're in peak demand. The last quarter of each year has a lot of holidays that lead to people baking or ordering baked goods.

That means more demand for eggs.

That means prices are higher.

But there's another issue that egg producers have been dealing with since 2022.

HPAI.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza. Bird flu. That's why the price of eggs has been going up and down for the last couple of years. Chickens for major producers were

destroyed because of outbreaks. Reports say that in 2024, about 33 million egg-producing chickens were destroyed.

Around 15 million, so almost half, have occurred since the middle of October. On Saturday,

the governor of Iowa issued a disaster declaration because of four detections of avian flu this month. The numbers of impacted birds

is in the hundreds of thousands, but we don't have the numbers yet on those destroyed. From the

time they hatch to the time they produce eggs is four to six months. But with multiple producers

across the country dealing with the issue,

it's been hard to get the number of chickens needed. Producers have been unable to rebuild the

national flock size to 2022 numbers because of the string of outbreaks and consistent losses of

egg layers. For those with backyard chickens, remember,

your bird can be impacted too. It's not just something hitting factory farms. The symptoms

you need to look for are a lack of energy, decreased egg production or weird-shaped eggs,

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