A new study finds 13-percent of all homes in America now have some sort of backyard bird flock, and the nation’s largest producer of “pet” poultry is in north-central Iowa.
Rudd-based Hoover’s Hatchery sells millions of chicks every year across the country and offers more than 200 poultry breeds.
Besides the many varieties of chickens, there are ducks, turkeys, geese, quail, pheasants and other game birds. Hoover’s spokesman Matt Bradley explains how raising poultry got to be so popular.
“People really want to understand where their food comes from, and they want to be closer to it, and they see the health benefits of that,” he says. “During the COVID era, people really wanted to do something productive around the house, and so they really got into it there, and it expanded greatly in those years. And anytime egg prices go up, they start to look into it, and once they get into it, they don’t tend to leave.”
Bradley didn’t have Iowa-specific numbers, but says around 11-million households nationwide are now raising backyard birds, and more flock to the hobby every year.
“There are meat birds that you bring home and then you raise them in order to butcher them, but typically what we see, the vast majority is people bring home hens that lay eggs and then they get their daily egg allotment from their hens,” Bradley says. “Really, people treat them like pets. You could consider this as one of the largest pet industries in the country, actually.”
Hoover’s is sprouting a new wing into consumer products for the first time, offering what it touts as premium chicken coops made of heavy-duty recycled plastic. Bradley says raising backyard birds is exceptionally popular, but one of the biggest drawbacks is the chore of cleaning out the coop.
“This coop is specifically designed to be the easiest to clean on the market,” Bradley says. “The panels are completely removable, the roof completely comes off, and so you have all that access that you need to get in there and rake it out and hose it out and clean it in five minutes where a traditional coop is a weekend project.”
The ten-bird coop carries a $1,200 price tag and it’s being rolled out to several retailers, including Murdoch’s, Country Store, and 400 Tractor Supply locations. He says the recycled plastic is key.
“You get horror stories of wood coops rotting, getting mites in there that you can’t get out. There’s annual maintenance of having to sand it down if it’s wood and reseal it,” Bradley says. “Those are all the problems that we’ve solved because this is a recycled plastic construction, so it doesn’t rot and it doesn’t warp, so it’s not only easy to clean, but very rugged and it’ll last 20 years or more.”
Founded in 1944 in Rudd, Hoover’s also has hatchery facilities in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Missouri.