Eggs-tra, eggs-tra, read all about it – the Joe Brain Petting Zoo has a tasty way of raising some spare cash, even if Facebook seems to have an issue with this year’s installment.
The zoo has brought back Egg Wars, a series of online auctions selling fresh eggs laid by the zoo’s chickens - Latte, Raven, Sarah and others currently without names. The bidding is done on a series of Flin Flon-related Facebook pages, allowing hungry users to poach a dozen fresh eggs weekly, usually on Fridays.
The chickens have already laid almost 200 eggs this summer and will likely lay another hundred by the time the zoo shuts down for the summer in late August.
“We get bids on every post and they’re consistent. In the days before the weekend, like Fridays or Saturdays, usually we get the highest bids there. I think people are taking them out to the lake with them,”said Melissa Richardson, the manager of the zoo.
When the draws began last year, Flin Flon Facebook users were all a-twitter, with the auctions raising much needed funds for the zoo. That said, some aspects of this year’s event have proven to be not all they’re cracked up to be.
Some of Richardson’s Facebook posts selling the eggs have been automatically deleted by Facebook, leaving her scrambling to find new options or make new posts.
“Facebook has their issues with us posting the things –they think we’re selling animals and they don’t allow animal sales, so they keep shutting my posts down,”Richardson said, adding an attempt to sell compost from the zoo to gardeners earlier this year was also removed –no bull.
“If I post them on there, they think we’re selling animals, so they hide the post.”
While Facebook’s deletion policy may sometimes say ‘enough is un oeuf’, Richardson is continuing the auctions until the zoo’s closure next month, as long as the posts stay up. All yolks aside, she also hopes to hold a live auction later this summer, during the zoo’s annual Hay Day on August 23.
“We’re thinking we might, for the last week or two we’re open, when we might save up some cartons of eggs, we might do like a live bidding,”she said.
