I began raising chickens for eggs and meat in 2014. By 2019, I had developed a routine of what I ordered when. I had a set time of year for when I would order chicks. In 2020, when I set out to order my late-summer batch of birds, I realized I would have to wait more than a month later than usual. Every hatchery I looked at had sold out.
When I went to our local hardware store to talk to the employees about their chick sales, they confirmed what the New York Times had written in the article
America Stress-Bought All the Baby Chickens. People were snatching up chicks as fast as they could in the midst of lockdown. They turned to baby chicks last year for the same reasons they turned to gardening and home cooking. A combination of boredom, irregular stocking of grocery stores, and the need for activities to keep children busy led to massive amounts of people buying baby chicks.