Are High Prices Scrambling Your Easter Egg Dyeing Traditions? [Survey]

Some families may skip coloring Easter eggs this year as egg prices remain persistently high due to bird flu outbreaks. Wholesale prices dropped to about $3 a dozen last week, but the price drop wasn’t immediately seen at the grocery store. (Shutterstock),

Americans usually buy upwards of 180 million eggs every year at Easter time, cracking some for traditional feasts and decorating others for Easter egg baskets and hunts.

Dyeing eggs could be an expensive activity this year, with prices more than double what they were a few years ago — before millions of chickens were euthanized in outbreaks of avian influenza that began about three years ago. About 30 million egg-laying chickens have been slaughtered this year alone to contain the highly pathogenic virus spread by wild migrating birds.

Prices have climbed so high that some people contemplated dyeing potatoes, marshmallows and even onions, according to videos surfacing on social media and elsewhere.

There is some good news.

Egg prices are coming down after wholesale prices shot up to a shell-shockingly high wholesale price of more than $8 a dozen earlier this year. By last week, they had fallen to $3 a dozen, a 9 percent decline from the week before, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent weekly egg market report.

The report also noted that grocery store supplies have “greatly improved in recent weeks, and consumers are once again seeing fully stocked shelves and enjoying a range of choices without purchase restrictions.”

Eggs still aren’t cheap, though.

It can take three weeks for lower wholesale prices to translate to lower retail prices, which averaged $4.15 a dozen in early April.

One reason for the decline is that bird flu cases are down significantly to about 2.1 million in March, compared with 12.64 million in February and 23.19 million in January. The lower prices could be fleeting.

Bird flu outbreaks have been occurring for about three years now, and the USDA noted earlier this year that U.S. consumers should brace for continued high pries through 2025. March forecasts indicated that egg prices will increase overall by almost 58 percent through the end of the year.

Does any of this change your Easter egg decorating and meal preparation plans? Have you cut back on eggs in general? What are you serving instead? Fill out our informal survey below and come back to Across America Patch next weekend to see the results. As usual, we won’t collect your email address.