The call to IT was strange. A cochin rooster had accidentally changed a password on a cash register and someone had to come and unlock it.
“We had to explain the situation: a chicken changed the password, and we don’t know what it is and he won’t give up,” said Sue Cristante, the owner of the fluffy bird. She took her chickens to work and dressed them up as bumblebees to advertise the fact that shoppers at Peavey Mart, a hardware store in Ontario, Canada, could now buy beehives. “It took a while for them to respond.”
In the store, Cristante, 56, offers her expertise to customers who are building their own couples. Before the pandemic, the company probably sold one chicken coop per year. “Now we can’t keep them in stock,” she said. “Chickens are really affected.”
In the US, the $30 billion retailer Tractor Supply hopes to capitalize on the extent to which people have grown to cherish their chickens. Although they often raise chickens as a way to live a more sustainable lifestyle and get a guaranteed source of fresh eggs for breakfast, people have fallen in love with them.
“Chickens are truly the new third pet,” says Hal Lawton, CEO of Tractor Supply CNBC on April 25. “The vast majority of our customer base enters this category and views them as pets – they name them, care for them as such, and it has been a great new source of growth for us over the last five years. years or so.”
Of the company’s 34 million customers involved in its loyalty program, one in five owns chickens, he added.
Chicks themselves cost three to four dollars each, but once a customer starts building a flock, he will need coops, heaters, feeders and waterers. The average flock size for customers is 14 birds, although nearly 30% of the company’s chicken keeping customers have 20 birds or more.
“In America, the new companion animal is the chicken,” CFO Kurt Barton said in a statement Fortune.
Last year the company sold 11 million chicks, which was more than double the number sold a decade ago. In 2022, the company launched a brand, Impeckables, to cater to poultry hobbyists. Branded items include chicken toys like a xylophone, tambourine and fruity treats mixed with mealworms — and they’re “all the rage this year,” says Nicole Logan, senior vice president of general merchandising at Tractor Supply.
The company has also expanded its “chick days” events. What used to be a six-week project with live birds in the store that families could take on a Saturday outing is now an eight-month event with groups of fluffy chicks displayed in the stores under heat lamps with food and water. The company aims to be a one-stop shop for anyone who wants to take chickens home and start a backyard flock.
A 2024 survey of attitudes toward chickens found that 13% of American households now collectively own 85 million backyard chickens, with an average of five per owner. A survey of 2,000 chicken keepers as part of the study found that almost 90% were women. Among the 20% who reported caring for chickens with health or other issues, such as special needs or disabilities, flock owners said they had used chicken wheelchairs, walkers or a hammock to support birds with a broken back. About 82% of owners say they arrange for a chicken sitter when they go away for the weekend, and 12% say they let their chickens come into their home whenever they want.
However, that introduces one of the only downsides to chickens: their bathroom habits. “If you’re sitting on the couch watching TV with your chickens, you’re definitely going to get pooped,” says Cristante. She runs an Etsy shop, Chickenwear by Sue, where she sells colorful, hand-sewn chicken diapers and takes custom orders. She has shipped fashionable chicken clothes to customers in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and almost every state in the U.S., she said. For a client in England who brought a pet chicken to her wedding party, Cristante made a dress with a white satin harness, a small veil and small pearls, with a burgundy bow at the back, to match the groomsmen. “It was a very interesting project,” she says. In New York City, a customer requested a Halloween costume, and Cristante sent vampire outfits with removable capes and bat wings.
“Chickens – if you’ve never been around them and don’t know – have their own personalities, and some are quite affectionate and smart,” Cristante said. She described a popular breed of fluffy chickens known as silkies, “like huge cotton balls. They are very docile and easy to care for, and honestly they make very good pets.”
Trish Sie, 53, a film director in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, started with a half-dozen girls and a chicken coop from Williams-Sonoma. The flock grew after the chickens “exceeded all expectations in terms of how much fun they are to keep as pets,” she said. “They all have different temperaments and personalities. They learn their names and they will name you. Sie, who directed films as Pitch perfect 3 And Playersalso makes video content with her chickens, including dances and music videos.
“I am so connected to our dogs, and they are man’s best friend for a reason, because they love people,” Sie said. “But with chickens you have to earn their trust because you are a big thing that can eat them.” Currently, her family has eleven chickens plus a rooster named Brian.
Sie thought she was imagining it at first when she realized that the chickens all made the same noise when they saw her. But after looking into it, she discovered that chickens have names for a number of things in their lives. After three months on a film set, she came home late at night, after the chickens had already gone to bed. Just before midnight, she crept over to the chicken coop to see them roosting and whispered, “Hello chickens.” Three woke up and sleepily cackled the sound that is their ‘chicken name’ for Sie.
Sie’s favorite, Ruby, unfortunately passed away last summer. The bird had a long life at Sie. Once, after suffering from a prolapsed cloaca, a common problem in female birds, Ruby let Sie hold her for several hours while her husband gently “reset” the organ with his hands. Ruby lived for another three years after that. “That’s the kind of thing they’ll let you do if they just trust you,” she said. A jeweler friend recreates Ruby’s foot in sterling silver, encrusted with onyx stones; Sie plans to wear the piece around her neck in honor of Ruby.
According to Tractor Supply’s Lawton, part of what’s underlying the chicken boom is the general lack of affordability for millennials and Gen Zers in urban areas. One of the few areas that these demographic cohorts can afford to purchase homes are the suburban, suburban, and rural parts of the country. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service found that migration to rural areas increased by a factor of 45 between 2020 and 2022, compared to before the pandemic.
“We believe that the sense of community we find in our markets, and perhaps more importantly, the ability to secure a piece of land at a reasonable price, has ensured that the trend of rural migration is here to stay for the time being. Lawton said during the company’s earnings call last week.
Once there, the Millennial and Gen Z generations try to live cleaner lives, gardening fruits and vegetables and raising chickens, Logan said. The poultry category is a gateway to a more sustainable lifestyle, she said. Moreover, this target group is willing to spend more on organic ingredients. Ten years ago, organic chicken feed made up 1% of the company’s poultry feed sales; now it is more than 10%, she added.
“Every day I wake up thinking, ‘How do I get more people interested in this?’” Logan said.