Survey of small-enterprise chicken operations in the United States

The National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) Small-Enterprise Chicken study was conducted to better understand bird movement and biosecurity practices of commercial poultry operations having fewer than 20,000 chickens. A stratified random sample of 2511 operations having 1000-19,999 chickens was selected from a list maintained by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), based primarily upon data from the 2002 Census of Agriculture; 1789 (72.1%) operations participated in the study. Over one-half of operations were contract operations with breeding birds, and one-fourth were contract operations without breeding birds. Only 17% of operations were independent (noncontract) operations. Independent operations were primarily table-egg producers and to a lesser extent, growers. Independent operations were more likely to have birds other than chickens, to allow outdoor access to birds, and had less stringent biosecurity requirements compared to contract operations.