How many flocks were produced and 2025 and how many were culled?

To understand the sheer scale of the 2025 egg market cycle, we have to look at the macro numbers reported by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). 2025 was a year characterized by a desperate race between devastating disease losses and aggressive hatchery replacements.

Here is the breakdown of the U.S. national flock numbers for 2025:

1. Hens Culled (The Bust)

2025 was a historically brutal year for the poultry industry, largely driven by the continuation of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) epidemic. Because the virus is highly contagious and fatal, USDA protocol requires entire flocks to be strictly culled (depopulated) if even a single case is detected.

• The 2025 Losses: In just the first few months of the year (January through April 2025), over 30.6 million commercial laying hens were wiped out across the U.S., with states like Ohio and California being particularly hard hit.
• The Broader Wave: When looking at the full winter-to-spring epidemic wave spanning late 2024 into mid-2025, the industry lost an estimated 50 million laying hens.
• The Resulting Lows: Because of these mass culls, the total U.S. table-egg laying flock plummeted to a decade-low of roughly 283 to 286 million hens by March 2025 (down from a healthy, pre-disease average of around 330 to 340 million).

2. Flocks Produced (The Rebuild)

To capitalize on the resulting sky-high egg prices and restore the national supply chain, commercial hatcheries ran at maximum capacity throughout 2025 to produce replacement pullets.

• Monthly Hatch Rates: According to USDA hatchery data, the industry was hatching roughly 50 million to 57 million "egg-type" chicks every single month throughout 2025.
• Annual Replacements: This translates to roughly 600 million to 650 million egg-laying chicks produced over the course of the year.

Why is the production number so much higher than the total flock size? Because commercial hens only have a profitable laying lifespan of about 18 to 24 months, farmers are constantly rotating out old hens and bringing in new pullets. Under normal conditions, the industry replaces about half its total flock every year. In 2025, that replacement rate was pushed to the absolute limit to offset the massive gap left by the 50 million culled birds.