A scary quote
USDA: "There is no treatment for HPAI. The only way to stop the disease is to depopulate all affected and exposed poultry."
Meaning, it is presumed that any reported Poultry case has resulted in a death/culling.
Egg Layer is outpacing Broiler (raised for meat) with infection cases: 65,029,900 to 8,739,850
Egg Layer makes up 78.43% of all Poultry cases while Broiler makes up just 10.54%
Pullets (future Egg Layers) are currenting tracking at 3.2%
Well how many Egg Layers can we lose?
Per the USDA: as of January 1, 2024, there were 379 million commercial egg-laying hens in the United States. 1% increase from 2023.
In order to calculate where we are today and what affect Avian Influenza may be having on our flocks, we are going to have to create a formula to fuel a model.
Key Variables
It takes 18 weeks before a Hen will begin to lay eggs. At that point, they can lay an average of 5 eggs a week.
Lets (generously) assume that only 7% of Egg Laying Hens die each year from non-AvianFlu related causes. Every 18 weeks that’s 9,183,461 (Population X ((Annual Death Rate/52) X 18))
And lets assume commercial operations account for the natural deaths and have already planned to replace them with Pullets. Hopefully they are also able to find a way to replace 50% of all birdflu deaths from the previous 18 weeks, example: 21,308,028 ((Previous 18 week Egg Layer AvianFlu Deaths X 50%) + Natural Deaths Replacements)
Formula
(Current Population - (Egg Layer Natural Deaths + Egg Layer AvianFlu Deaths)) + (Replacements - Pullet Deaths)
Using this formula, we should be able to get a rough estimate of the growth/contraction of the Egg Layer population over an 18 week cycle with a quick model.
If my math is correct, on 2025-01-15 the Egg Layer population hit 348,985,150. A decrease of 30,014,850 from 379,000,000 in January 2024.
By only replacing 50% of Avian Influenza deaths and without easing the disease, we are on track to have a further population decrease of 9,422,150 by 2025-05-22.
That’s a nearly 10% population decline in a little less than a year and a half!
The population will not increase unless we are able to treat Avian Influenza instead of culling the infected/exposed.
See the table below to see a breakdown of Poultry type and a count of AvianFlu cases/deaths.
All data used to feed tables, formulas and models come from the USDAs public datasets on the Avian Flu outbreak.