What is actually published about the US broiler grower.And what is not.
Every number we use in our own materials, with its source, its sample size, and its age. Including the places where the honest answer is that no figure exists.
A company that sells early warning should be able to show its own working. This page is that working. It exists because we found ourselves quoting a single survey of 77 producers in one state as though it described the national grower population, and we would rather correct that in public than leave it standing.
How to read this page
Where a figure comes from a federal statistical program we say so and give the sample. Where it comes from a single academic survey we give the response rate and the state. Where we could not find a published figure at all, we say that instead of estimating one. Nothing on this page is our own data. We do not have any yet.
How many growers there actually are.
The census figure and the commercially relevant figure are not the same number, and the gap matters for anyone sizing this market. The 2022 Census of Agriculture counts 31,877 broiler operations, but 17,052 of those sold fewer than 2,000 birds — backyard and pastured flocks, not contract houses. The operations that run climate-controlled houses under an integrator contract number closer to 16,500.
| Measure | Figure | Source and year |
|---|---|---|
| Farms with broiler sales (all sizes) | 31,877 | USDA NASS Census of Agriculture, 2022 |
| Of those, sold fewer than 2,000 birds | 17,052 | Same census; these are not contract houses |
| Operations with poultry sales, current estimate | ~28,000 | USDA NASS Farm Computer Usage and Ownership, August 2025 |
| Average houses per grower | 4.3 | USDA ERS EIB-126, 2011 ARMS |
| Delmarva region: houses / growers | 4,814 / 1,225 | Delmarva Chicken Association |
| Delmarva contract income to growers | $347M | Delmarva Chicken Association |
| Current national broiler house count | no published figure | Not collected by any federal program we could find |
The house is already automated. The office is not.
This is the single most important thing we understand about our own market, and it took correcting ourselves to see it clearly. Broiler houses are not low-technology environments. By 2011, 84 percent of houses had integrated electronic controls, and every house built that year had them. That is a federal survey of 66,680 houses across 17 states with a 70 percent response rate. Anyone pitching a grower on the idea that their house needs sensors is fourteen years late.
What is missing is not instrumentation. It is anything that reads the instrumentation over time. In a 2024 survey of Tennessee broiler producers, 98.1 percent had temperature sensors and 85.2 percent had water meters — but 57 percent used no farm software of any kind. The controller holds the current value and sounds an alarm at a threshold. Almost nothing on the farm looks at the trend.
The Tennessee survey is a thesis, not a federal program: 77 respondents, one state, 531 questionnaires distributed for a 14.5 percent response rate, and per-question counts between 53 and 73. We should not have generalized it nationally and we no longer do. Its value is that two independent datasets land in the same range. Tennessee beef producers reported 22.5 percent software use in a separate 2024 study, and the EU Joint Research Centre found 23 percent farm management software use across 1,444 farms. Three different populations, three different methods, all clustered near a quarter.
| Finding | Figure | n | Population and source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Houses with integrated electronic controls | 84% | 66,680 houses | US broiler houses, 17 states, 70% response — USDA ERS EIB-126, 2011 ARMS |
| Houses built in 2011 with those controls | 100% | same | USDA ERS EIB-126 |
| Producers using no farm software | 57% | 77 | Tennessee broiler producers, 14.5% response — Klingberg thesis, 2024 |
| Using data-management systems | 24.6% | 77 | Same Tennessee survey |
| With temperature sensors | 98.1% | 77 | Same Tennessee survey |
| With water meters | 85.2% | 77 | Same Tennessee survey |
| With cameras | 25% | 77 | Same Tennessee survey |
| Software use, Tennessee beef producers | 22.5% | 137 | Independent corroboration — Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 2024 |
| Farm management software use, EU | 23% | 1,444 | EU farms — EU Joint Research Centre, 2025 |
| Farms with smartphone | 82% | national | USDA NASS, August 2025 |
| Farms with internet access | 85% | national | USDA NASS, August 2025 |
Why growers do not buy software
The same Tennessee survey asked. Cost was cited by 42 percent, 31 percent said it did not fit their operation, and 27 percent cited complexity. But the finding that shapes how we go to market is a different one: 61 percent said they need to see a technology working on a farm before adopting it. Not a demo, not a datasheet — a farm. That is why our first commitment is a validation study rather than a launch.
On who decides: 46 percent of respondents identified themselves as the primary decision-maker on technology purchases, while 41 percent said they would consult their integrator. The grower can buy, but the integrator has a voice in the room.
Mortality has risen for twelve years while feed conversion improved.
The bird got more efficient every year. It also got harder to keep alive.
The National Chicken Council publishes US broiler performance annually. Between 2013 and 2025, mortality rose from 3.7 percent to 5.95 percent. Over the same period feed conversion continued to improve. Both trends are in the same table, published by the industry’s own trade association, and they run in opposite directions.
We are careful about what we claim this means. It is not evidence that software would have prevented anything. Longer-lived big-bird programs, changes in flock mix, and disease pressure all sit inside that number, and the association does not decompose it. What it does establish is that the loss side of the ledger has been getting worse for over a decade in an industry that measures itself relentlessly on the efficiency side. A 2.25 point rise in mortality across roughly nine billion birds a year is not a rounding error.
| Year | Mortality | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 3.70% | National Chicken Council, US Broiler Performance |
| 2025 | 5.95% | |
| Change | +2.25 pts |
The best public data on what a grower earns is fifteen years old.
This is a genuine problem for anyone trying to price a product for this market, ourselves included. The authoritative account of US broiler contract economics is the USDA Economic Research Service report built on the 2011 Agricultural Resource Management Survey. There has been no comparable national survey since.
What it establishes: growers are paid under performance-adjusted contracts, and 94 percent of those contracts contain performance incentives. The report includes a worked settlement in which one flock of 334,391 pounds carried a performance adjustment of negative $2,006. That is the mechanism our product has to matter inside — a grower does not buy software to feel informed, they buy it if it moves the settlement.
We cannot currently tell a grower what a point of feed conversion or a point of mortality is worth to them, because no one publishes it. We would rather say that than produce a number.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Median grower household income | $68,445 |
| Capital cost, four houses | $924,000 |
| Contracts containing performance incentives | 94% |
| Worked example: performance adjustment on a 334,391 lb flock | −$2,006 |
| Value of one feed-conversion point to a grower | no published figure |
| Value of one mortality point to a grower | no published figure |
What we looked for and could not find.
These are not rhetorical gaps. Each one is something we would use if it existed, and its absence changes what we are able to promise.
No study quantifying the outcome benefit of earlier detection
There is published work on how early a signal can be detected. There is nothing we could find that measures what happens to mortality, weight, or settlement value when a grower acts on that signal earlier. The entire commercial case for early warning in poultry rests on an inference, not a measurement.
No dollar value per point of performance
Absent from the ERS work and from anything published since. Without it, no honest return-on-investment calculation for this category is possible, and any vendor presenting one is modelling, not citing.
No current national house count and no controller market-share data
We know 84 percent of houses had electronic controls in 2011 and that roughly 45,000 controllers sit in one vendor’s installed base. We do not know the denominator. Nobody appears to publish it.
No US broiler detection lead-time figure
The published lead-time work is retrospective, European, and concerns avian influenza. None of it is a US broiler house and none of it was validated prospectively. This is the gap our own validation study is designed to address, and it is treated at length in our note on detection lead time.
One thing this product is not for.
Ventilation failure kills birds in ten to twenty minutes. It is the most feared event in a broiler house and it is completely outside the reach of a daily record. Any product built on once-a-day data cannot address it, and we will not present it as though it can. That job belongs to the controller alarm and the backup generator. We work on the slower conditions that a daily record can actually see.
References.
- MacDonald, J. Technology, Organization, and Financial Performance in U.S. Broiler Production. USDA Economic Research Service, EIB-126. 2011 ARMS; 66,680 houses, 17 states, 70% response rate. ers.usda.gov
- Klingberg, K. Precision Technology Adoption in Tennessee Broiler Production. University of Tennessee thesis, 2024. n=77; 531 questionnaires distributed; 14.5% response; per-question n 53–73. trace.tennessee.edu
- National Chicken Council. U.S. Broiler Performance, annual series. nationalchickencouncil.org
- USDA NASS. Farm Computer Usage and Ownership, August 2025. esmis.nal.usda.gov
- USDA NASS. 2022 Census of Agriculture. nass.usda.gov
- Adoption of precision technologies among Tennessee beef producers. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 2024. n=137. sciencedirect.com
- Delmarva Chicken Association. Facts and Figures. dcachicken.com
Found an error on this page?
We would rather hear it from you than leave it standing. If you have a correction, a better source, or data we should be reading, send it.