May 30, 2008

US poultry slaughter surges by 11 percent on-year

The amount of US poultry slaughtered on April 2008 was 3.76 billion, up 7 percent from March's 3.511 billion and 11 percent from 3.69 billion of April 2007, the USDA reported.

The bulk of the total was young chickens at 3.17 billion pounds, followed by turkeys at 520 million and mature chickens at 48.03 million pounds.

US year-to-date total of slaughtered poultry is 14.572 billion pounds, an increase of 7 percent from January to April 2007's 15.584 billion.

The preliminary live weight totalled 5.04 billion pounds, compared to 4.735 billion a month ago and 4.59 billion a year ago.

Live weight for all chickens averaged 5.59 pounds per bid, an improvement of 1 percent from both last month and last year.

The year-to-date average is 5.57 pounds per bird, compared to 5.48 from January to April 2007.

The chicken slaughter for April totaled 782 million head, up 6 percent from a month ago and 8 percent higher than a year ago.

Turkey slaughter was 22.26 million head, 6 percent above last month and 9 percent more than last year.