BROILER producers are ending the year with a late surge in chick placings, helping the sector to consolidate a healthy return to expansion during 2024.

With just the December figures yet to be recorded, the industry is showing overall growth of nearly two per cent for the first 11 months of this year, compared with the same period of 2023. That equates to an extra 19 million chicks placed.

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The latest figures for November saw one of the largest monthly increases this year, with chick numbers rising by 6.5% year-on-year, to 85m for the month. This followed the 2.8% rise in October, and amounts to an extra 8.1m birds across the two months.

The 12-month rolling total of UK placings now stands at 1159m. If this month’s eventual figures prove to at least match those of last December, it will be the highest annual total for three years.

It comes after successive declines in 2022 and 2023, with annual totals down to 1148m and 1141m respectively.

According to Defra’s long-term data, the peak year for broiler placings in the UK so far was 2021, with a total of 1,185m.

Turkeys

In the turkey sector, the uptick in placings in October failed to carry through into the latest figures for November.

Poult placings fell by 4.1% last month to 590,000, a drop of 25,000 compared with November 2023.

In the last 12 months, there were only three months when poult numbers showed an increase over the year before.

As a result, this latest decline in placings brings the overall contraction for the 12 months to November close to 1.2m, or 11%. The final total for this year is likely to be just under 10m birds placed.

It will be the third successive year that the UK-reared turkey sector has shrunk.

As recently as 2021, Defra was recording annual poult numbers as high as 15m, so the sector has declined by a third in that time.