It was then that Gillian Frank and his wife, Kathryn Jones, both 41, discussed how to get chickens. “Wouldn’t that be a fun hobby? And it would guarantee that we had eggs if we had chickens,” Frank told CNN.
Frank, who is a historian at the University of Virginia, and his wife, who is a lawyer, grew up in the Toronto suburbs. Having chickens has never been an aspiration of them, until now. Plus, his 8-year-old daughter, Charlotte, loved the idea.
In April, they added six chickens to the backyard of their home in Richmond, Virginia. They already had two dogs and two cats, but Frank said that chickens actually require much less maintenance than other pets.
The chickens were named by Charlotte in honor of women’s rights activists, Supreme Court justices, and their favorite singers: Susan Egg Anthony, Eggena Keggan, Sonia Eggomayor, Ruth Bader Eggsburg, Egger Swift (after Taylor Swift) and Katy Eggry (after Katy Perry).
“They are fun,” he said. “They are fun little creatures who like to walk around the yard when they are not in their chicken coop and run and bump into all the weeds. They get into the flowers and everything, but I’m looking at the positives.”
In March, sales increased 325%. For April, 525%.
“It started going down because we ran out of everything to sell,” Torres told CNN. “We just didn’t have time to increase production of the product.”
Still, July sales increased 250% since items were resupplied.
Torres said she created the business because in 2004, when she was looking to have chickens for her, there was nothing that attracted customers through the process of buying and raising chickens.
“We have cooperatives, we have supplies, we also have free information and short little guides on the website to give you the basics,” he said.
Customer service agents, who also own chickens, answer questions about how many chickens to get, what to know about chicken coops and what supplies to order, and they even sell the chicks, which cost around $ 5.
“As a seasonal business, we are already busier in spring and summer than winter,” he said. “However, this year, customer service agents were losing their voices and getting the carpal tunnel.”
They discovered that their clients had always wanted to have chickens and thought that now was the perfect time since they worked from home, or how Frank had worried about how they would feed their families.
“We are now allowing people to reserve their cooperative requests in advance,” Torres said. “We have hundreds of orders waiting to ship once the product arrives.”
Torres said she is excited that more and more people are growing in their backyards, controlling how their food is sourced and simply enjoying the outdoors.
Frank’s chickens started laying eggs about a month ago. They produce about half a dozen eggs a day.
“It made us popular with neighbors because we have more eggs than we can handle,” he said. “So everyone on our block that we’re friends with is getting farm-fresh eggs.”
Excess egg stimulated more coronavirus hobbies: cooking and baking. His wife Kathryn makes homemade eclairs, bread, cakes, and souffles, and is being creative in the kitchen.
“I’m scared to find out if it will affect our cholesterol,” he said.
Frank said it is fun to have eggs and cheap to keep chickens, so they will have a new hobby after the pandemic ends.
The hardest part, Frank said, is getting them back at the cooperative, thanks to the rowdy Susan Egg Anthony, who always fights.
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