Young’s Jersey Dairy will use plastic eggs for its annual Easter egg hunt — a first in 42 years.
The dairy is located in Yellow Springs in Greene County.
The popular event typically uses real, cooked eggs. But with higher prices and less supply, Young’s has moved to offer a more affordable option.
"This has been a free event since we did it in the early '80s. So we weren't going to start charging and we weren't going to short change the amount of eggs," said Young's "CIEIO" John Young.
Young’s Jersey Dairy will instead fill 10,000 plastic eggs with free coupons to ride the new carousel.
"If you're not coming for the Easter egg hunt to get a ticket, I'd probably come a different day," Young said. "Because the most people we've ever had on the carousel in a day is 3,000. So we're exceeding that by 7,000 by default."
The decision was made two months ago when the dairy realized that even its suppliers struggled to get eggs to the business.
“It was more of a thought process in taking 10,000 eggs out of local inventory might cause issues," Young said.
In the previous year Young’s spent 30 to 40 cents per egg for Easter. This year, eggs were going for 65 cents a piece.
Young said using plastic eggs saved them enough money to donate the difference to local food banks.
“So the Second Harvest Food Bank in Springfield and then The Foodbank in Dayton — so $3,000, so each of them are gonna get $1,500 from us.”
So far, Young said the community has responded with excitement to continuing the hunt in a new way. Young says he expects more than 2,000 attendees on Easter Sunday at 2 p.m.
"The second we put it on Facebook, we got a lot of positive feedback," he said. "There were a lot people that were fearful that we weren't even going to have the Easter egg hunt because of the increase in costs and decrease in inventory. So I think they're just happy that we still have something."
Young's hopes to return to real eggs in future hunts, depending on the cost and accessibility.
"I wouldn't say 100% because nothing's certain these days, but I would say for sure we're going to try to go back to regular eggs next year," Young said.
