A bird-flu fueled mass die-off of egg-laying hens in November and December has Haines grocers struggling to keep up with the demand for eggs. 

IGA owner Mike Ward said he’s been having trouble getting eggs at all three of his stores in Haines, Wrangell and Petersburg for months. 

“Its been a crapshoot,” he said. “One store didn’t get any, one got some, one got quite a bit,” he said.

Ward said he has been in all three stores in the last month, helping staff figure out how to find brands that have not been impacted. The brand he usually orders, Oakdell, dried up. That’s likely due in part to the company’s lost of more than a million chickens in a flock in Franklin County, Washington where the USDA confirmed highly pathogenic avian flu and the birds had to be euthanized. Ward said he had to switch to Cherry Lane but the costs doubled. 

“It seemed like we were gouging because the prices were so high,” he said. 

Now the stores are ordering from wherever they can to try and get enough eggs on the shelves. 

“We shotgun blast and order every egg possible basically and then you get what you get,” he said. 

Just down Main Street, Sarah Swinton, who co-owns Olerud’s with her brother and parents, had eggs on Tuesday but she wasn’t sure how long they would last. She said they’re not having any problems getting eggs. 

“I’m not going to tell you my secrets, but I have them,”she said, with a laugh.  

They are having trouble meeting the surge in demand from customers who would typically be buying eggs at IGA. 

“Last week, I sold out early,” she said.  

Swinton said Olerud’s also buys from Cherry Lane, but she’s going with a different brand, too, to give customers a break as prices have gone up. 

Ward said milk deliveries have not been routine either and at least one of his three stores is not getting its milk order right now. That could be attributed to an ongoing multi-state outbreak among dairy cattle. According to the Centers for Disease Control several cases of the bird flu has been found in U.S. dairy cows and there have been recent human cases in U.S. dairy and poultry workers. 

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