MAFF census puts laying flock 4.5m down
By Poultry World staff
THE UKs laying flock was put at 29.4 million birds in the June 1998 census by MAFF – down from 33.9m in 1997. But at the same time, the number of pullets was rising.
MAFF explains this by pointing out that, for the second year running, it had revamped its survey methods, so that the latest figure is not comparable with the previous result.
However, this years figure means that, for the first time the flock has been officially estimated at under 30m.
The latest result looks rather low in the light of the cumulative trend on chick placings at the time. When projected forward into adult layers, they showed the flock still running at peak levels in June last year.
Poultry Worlds estimate of just those birds that are aged 20-72 weeks – which is based on some simple arithmetic – indicated that these birds alone, without any moulted ones, totalled around 33m in June 1998.
Current projections suggest that, by May this year, this estimate of the first year flock will have fallen considerably to 29.7m birds – a drop of over 3 million in 12 months.
It is on this recent decline that the industry is pinning its hopes for a real recovery during 1999.
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