00:00We created this business to increase the convenience and the ease of backyard farming and urban farming in general.
00:09Backyard chicken farming exploded in the wake of COVID, high egg prices, and an outbreak of bird flu.
00:15That increase in suburban ranchers has created a burgeoning business to support it.
00:21Over the last decade, chickens have become a top five pet for American families.
00:26It was something that a neighbor had going on, and it was during COVID.
00:33My name is Michelle Zimmer, and I'm the founder and CEO of Bloomington Farm and Feed.
00:38And so I noticed that they had a flock, and we went over there and got to play with them and whatnot.
00:47And it blew my mind that you could even have chickens in the city.
00:51After enjoying her neighbor's birds, Michelle Zimmer told her husband about this revelation.
00:55And I was waiting for him to say, that's good for him.
00:59But he said, my mom had chickens once.
01:02And I thought, he didn't say no.
01:05And so that Easter, we ended up picking out a handful of baby chicks for Easter for our kids.
01:15According to the American Pet Products Association, around 8 million households considered their backyard chickens pets in 2024.
01:22Chickens fall just below dogs, cats, and freshwater fish on the list of most popular pets in the U.S.
01:29I started seeing this backyard hen thing catching on in the 2016, 18, 19.
01:37And it was because a little bit of a, I want to know where my food comes from.
01:41I, you know, I've seen some documentaries and industrial agriculture.
01:45My name is Damian Mason, and I am a farm owner, farm boy.
01:49My background is in agricultural economics.
01:53The COVID thing spiked that whole growth.
01:56I mean, it just threw gas on that whole fire because then it was, oh my God, they're fighting over toilet paper in the parking lots outside of Safeway.
02:03And I can't trust this.
02:06So then it became, I want to do this.
02:08The Zimmers moved to a home in Bloomington around eight years ago.
02:11It came with a 12 by 12 garden plot, and Michelle had a rough time getting anyone to help with those chores.
02:18However, once we got chickens, now everybody's involved.
02:22All the kids, they help with the chores.
02:24They love collecting the eggs.
02:26They help name them.
02:28They help keep the birds or chickens social.
02:31And it's actually brought us together as a family unit just by having chickens.
02:36Egg prices topped $6 per dozen in March as avian flu cases caused producers to cull their flocks.
02:44Since then, prices have stabilized below $3 per dozen.
02:49Aside from price savings, raising your own chickens allows you to control its intake, which affects the eggs.
02:55So if you're getting eggs that come out of a commercial facility, they've been fed corn, which is the energy source.
03:01And then a lot of times they'll put things like soybean meal in there as a protein source.
03:05And don't kid yourself.
03:07These massive egg-producing farms have nutritionists on staff or as consultants that are absolutely dissecting the rations every day
03:16to make sure that they're getting the most efficient gain of egg production to amount of feed fed.
03:23Finding high-quality, locally-produced chicken feed in the suburbs of Minneapolis proved to be an adventure.
03:29Each month, Michelle would take an hours-long round trip to the other side of the Twin Cities.
03:34But an accident gave the Zimmers another challenge.
03:38I was fine doing that, actually, until one day when my husband was in a pretty terrible accident and he was in a hit-and-run accident.
03:46On a frigid December day in 2022, Luke Zimmer saw a woman stuck in a snowbank along 35W South near Johnson Street Northeast in Minneapolis, stopping to help tow her out.
03:59A Toyota Sienna van hit him, according to State Patrol.
04:03At that point, my world shifted a bit and we were preparing to live with a paralyzed individual in our house.
04:13As Michelle took part in Luke's recovery journey, the Zimmers relied on their friends and family to bring the staples they needed.
04:19When it came to chickens, they had to take whatever they could get for the time being.
04:24It was during that time when it just hit me so much that I wish there was something that was more convenient or I wish there was something that was closer or things that had a higher quality closer to my fingertips.
04:36And that's when Michelle launched Bloomington Farm and Feed, a direct-to-consumer backyard chicken farmer supplier in the Twin Cities.
04:44We're like Instacart for backyard farmers, and so it's like next-day delivery.
04:49So a lot of people in the city, they're busy.
04:53They've got their families, the soccer moms, maybe their single parents, maybe their car broke down.
04:59Whatever the case may be, we want them to be able to still have that high-quality feed that they deserve, you know.
05:06Bloomington Farm and Feed is a family business that delivers products to customers within a 20-mile radius of the metro.
05:13And they provide more than just chicken feed.
05:16We do provide chicks, and we deliver them to your front door if you live in the metro.
05:21And so that has been just so rewarding to be able to have that for people.
05:28And we always make sure that they have the right setup.
05:32Sometimes we help them with their setup just as a concierge to make sure that they start off on the right foot with these little creatures.
05:43So it's been pretty fun.
05:44Business is booming, and Michelle's looking beyond the delivery-only business that has her trekking across Minneapolis-St. Paul.
05:51Our sales from last year to this year was almost 200% in general, and that's just overall sales.
06:00We are in the process of looking for a storefront, actually, so that we can get a central location for people to come and check out the merch themselves and ask questions and have a much larger supply or availability than what we currently have.
06:18On paper, raising chickens may sound easy, but there are things to be aware of.
06:23Hens are an easy keeper as long as you can keep the 50 different things that eat chickens out of them, right?
06:29From fox to coyotes to possum to raccoons to, you know, armadillos or whatever.
06:34If you live in the suburbs, you think it's cool.
06:37Your neighbors may not because you've got hens out there, or maybe you go out and stir the stuff up, but it smells a little bit one day.
06:44It's not necessarily a bad thing to do this.
06:46Your cost of production per egg, I don't know that you could argue that you're saving a lot of money.
06:51But none of that matters to the zimmers, and before you ask, no, they don't eat their backyard chicks once their egg-producing days have come to an end.
07:01For more on this story, go to san.com or the Straight Arrow News app and search backyard chickens to learn more about backyard farmers and the businesses that support them.
