Baby Chick Market Report — July 2026
The index's first monthly report: repricing (or the total absence of it), stock churn, next-hatch calendars, and catalog composition across six US hatcheries in the summer trough.
Published July 29, 2026 · figures recomputed from data through October 24, 2026 · by Chick Price Index
This is the index's first monthly report: what actually happened in the US day-old-chick market in July 2026, measured from daily snapshots of 5 hatchery catalogs — not from sentiment. Tracking began July 14, 2026, so this report covers the back half of the month; future reports will span full months.
The headline: a market with fixed prices and moving shelves
Across 105,926 day-over-day listing comparisons this window we observed 1 genuine repricings — details on the price drops page. The action was all in availability: 1048 listings sold out and 667 came back, with the busiest single day (September 17, 2026) seeing 93 status changes.
July is the trough — and it shows
On the latest snapshot, 734 of 1,283 tracked chick listings (57%) are in stock. That's the summer lull: hatcheries take the bulk of their orders in late winter and spring, and by July the pressure is off. Only 0 of 67 compared breeds are sold out at every hatchery that carries them right now — in April that list looks very different.
The market by hatchery
| Hatchery | Chick listings | In stock | Breeds | Median in-stock price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cackle Hatchery Missouri | 436 | 394 | 82 | $8.44 |
| Meyer Hatchery Ohio | 303 | 62 | 52 | $6.89 |
| My Pet Chicken online retailer | 281 | 278 | 48 | $9.99 |
| Murray McMurray Hatchery Iowa | 251 | 0 | 64 | — |
| Sunnyside Hatchery Wisconsin | 12 | n/p* | 4 | — |
*Sunnyside publishes prices but not live stock, so we never mark its listings in stock. Listing counts are individual sex-and-breed offers, not birds.
Price landscape
The cross-hatchery medians this month: pullets $12.99, straight run $9.99, cockerels $7.99. The full span runs from $2.99 broiler cockerels to $69.99 collector-tier pullets — the shape of that range is mapped in What do baby chicks cost? and the sex gap is measured in The pullet premium.
Data notes for this window
- McMurray is absent from our 2026-07-27 snapshot (collection gap on our side; no comparisons are made across the gap).
- On 2026-07-29 we corrected how Cackle's catalog is read: grouped catalog pages previously contributed a price field that wasn't a live offer; they're now resolved to their real sexed listings. Historical prices for those pages were blanked rather than guessed. Details in the methodology.
- Availability for McMurray seasonal listings can include the price being removed entirely (314 removals, 133 reappearances this window) — treated as a null, never as a price of zero.