The B2B WATT Poultry 2023 special edition of the egg industry report highlights information on the largest egg producers as well as future estimates about cages. The top 10 of the 38 largest egg producers in the United States are companies rated by the size of their layer flock at the end of 2022.
The top 10 companies are:
| 1. Cal-Maine Foods, 45.97 million | 6. MPS Egg Farms, 12.10 million |
| 2. Rose Acre Farms, 25.07 million | 7. Center Fresh Group, 12.00 million |
| 3. Hillandale Farms, 17.75 million | 8. Prarie Star Farms, 10.40 million |
| 4. Daybreak Foods, 17.00 million | 9. Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch, 9.90 million |
| 5. Versova Holdings, LLP, 16.95 | 10. Michael Foods, 9.90 million. |
And the remaining 28 largest egg producers have laying flocks of fewer than 10 million hens. According to their survey, half of U.S. table egg-laying hens will still be held in cages in 2025. A combination of state legislation driven by ballot initiatives and future cage-free egg procurement agreements from large food service, food processing, and retail. The corporations are pushing a progressive conversion of laying hen housing in the United States from cage to cage-free systems.
Since Walmart and Kroger backed down on their promises to buy only cage-free eggs in 2022, there won’t be a full transition to cage-free housing. Consumers’ persistent desire for less-priced cage-produced eggs, and the anticipation that not enough chickens will be housed cage-free by 2025 to meet all cage-free egg purchasing pledges and state laws, prompted the nation’s two largest supermarkets to respond.
Cage-free chickens now account for around 34.6% of the total table egg-laying flock in the United States. The USDA predicted the entire U.S. table egg layer flock on November 1, 2022, to be 309 million hens, a 5% decrease from the same in 2021.
The year 2025 serves as both an implementation date and a pledge deadline for egg customers who claim to be switching to cage-free eggs. In 2025, egg producers in the United States expect that more than half of the country’s chickens will still be housed in cages.
The average of the 32 responses predicted that in 2025, hens in the United States would be housed 48.4% cage-free and 51.6% in cages. For this projection to come true, more cage-free housing for around 47 million hens would need to be built. And substantially double the rate of building and conversion seen in the previous year.