than a year ago. “Who wants to go into a store and pay $7 for a dozen eggs?” said Greg Privett, president of Privett Hatchery, who supplies chicks to Tractor Supply. “That’s what’s driving demand this year. It’s strictly egg prices.”
At three or four bucks each, Tractor Supply will make, at most, $50 million from selling chicks this year. “It’s pretty immaterial,” said CEO Hal Lawton, for a company that does $14 billion in annual revenue. But then you add in the rest of the stuff. Customers spend about $100 to get started, once they buy a brooder to keep the birds warm, water and food dispensers, shavings and a bag of feed.
When they arrive at the destination post office, the local Tractor Supply store gets a call. The fastest employee gets to take a joyride. “We drop whatever we’re doing in the store to go pick them up,” said Greymi Rosa, a district manager who oversees a dozen stores in North Texas. They don’t want the chicks to overstay their welcome. “These guys are going ‘chirp, chirp, chirp’ at a thousand miles an hour,” Rosa said with a laugh.