The average size of commercial farms has also been increasing while the numbers of producers is declining. As shown in Table 3, the number of poultry farm holdings
decreased by 60.7 percent between 1993 and 2003. However, the number of large
farms (those that raise 10 000 birds or more) almost doubled. The number of chickens
kept in farms in this category increased from 60 to 158 million birds – approximately 163
percent. The total number of chickens increased from 109 million birds in 1993 to 217
million birds in 2003.