Farm Egg Demand Always High for Vacchianos

It's hard for Anthony Vacchiano to say if the egg recall has caused any rise in demand for eggs from his farm.

"We always sell out," said the Vacchiano Farms owner at the Millburn Farmers Market on Tuesday. Vacchiano Farms is the only farm vendor at the market selling meat and eggs. There was a pile of cartons of brown eggs on the table at the stand on Tuesday with a sign saying they were $3.50 per dozen.

"Our demand always stays the same," Vacchiano said. "It matters how the chickens are performing on how many eggs we have... We can only sell what we have."

The Vacchianos have 1,000 chickens that lay about 800 eggs per day. Vacchiano said it is the right number of chickens because they get along with each other. If he had more, the chickens could start fighting with each other.

But the number of eggs the chickens lay can go down during the course of the summer if there is hot weather like this summer, he said. During the hotter stretches of weather, the chickens were laying less eggs, he said.

Earlier this month, millions of eggs produced by two Iowa farms were recalled because of salmonella contamination. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tips online on how to prevent salmonella from eggs.

While Vacchiano said he cannot tell if there's an increase for local farm eggs, he said people are talking about the contamination with him. He's also noticed different people buying them than the regular egg customers.

He said at the Summit Farmers Market one person, a regular egg buyer, came very early and bought 15 dozen eggs. One dozen was for the customer's family and the rest were for his neighbors who had never bought farm eggs from him in the past.