Chicken prices are finally starting to fall. You can thank busy roosters.

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New York(CNN Business) — Over the past year, as some meat prices have fallen, chicken prices have remained stubbornly high. Strong demand, supply issues and even breeding problems with under-performing roosters kept the pressure on. The supply shortage even had some restaurants, like Wingstop, experimenting with less popular items like thighs.

But now conditions are finally easing, paving the way for price declines ahead. In the year through October, not adjusting for seasonal swings, chicken prices had jumped 14.5%, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But in October, prices fell 1.3% from the month before. And promotions and deals are right around the corner.

The poultry industry has been able to work through one of the issues that slashed supply last year — a poor choice of rooster that led to fewer chicks than expected.

In May 2021, poultry giant Tyson explained it was short on chickens because of disappointing results with the type of breeding rooster it had picked.

"We're changing out a male that, quite frankly, we made a bad decision on," Donnie King, then Tyson's chief operating officer and group president of poultry, said at the time. There was an "unexpected decline" in hatchings earlier that year because of the type of roosters it used, King, now the CEO, explained.

Tyson wasn't the only one with the problem, noted Christine McCracken, executive director of animal protein at Rabobank. "If you look across the industry as a whole there were productivity issues that challenged several operators," she said.

Since then, producers "have gone back to a more traditional bird," she said.

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