Chicken wings are flying off the shelves.

After a year promoting takeout wings and crispy chicken sandwiches, restaurants including KFC, Wingstop Inc. and Buffalo Wild Wings Inc. say they are paying steep prices for scarce poultry. Some are running out of or limiting sales of tenders, filets and wings, cutting into some of their most reliable sales.

Independent eateries and bars have gone weeks without wings, owners say. Chicken breast prices have more than doubled since the beginning of the year, and wing prices have hit records, according to market-research firm Urner Barry.

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Kurstin Laceky, a senior at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, won $3,000 as the top winner at the Moody Pitch Competition recently.

Laceky won for her business idea of Waterhem’s, a patent-pending, all-in-one portable urban chicken feeder system, in the competition put on by the Moody College of Business and the BRF’s Entrepreneurial Accelerator Program, which provides services to innovative startups and works to stimulate entrepreneurship opportunities in north Louisiana.

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Pilgrim’s Pride Corp, one of the largest U.S. poultry producers, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to pay a $107.9 million fine on Tuesday to settle federal charges it conspired to fix chicken prices and passed on the costs to consumers and other purchasers.

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