Fewer Turkeys, Same Feast

We are turning the calendar pages to fall and, with that, plans for holiday meals are coming along. American Farm Bureau Federation Economist Bernt Nelson says USDA’s latest Turkeys Raised Report gives us some important insight on the size of the U.S. flock ahead of Thanksgiving.

"Now this number came in estimated at 195 million turkeys raised in 2025. This is down about three percent from 200 million turkeys raised in 2024. Now, if we look a little bit further back, this is down 16 percent from about 10 years ago, and 35 percent from the peak of the report, which had about 301 million turkeys being raised in 1996."

He says turkey farmers saw some good news on the HPAI front throughout the last few months, but the situation is starting to change.

"We had very few detections throughout the summer. If you looked at June, there was just a couple detections, none in July, and just a couple in August to kind of round out the month. But now, as we've gotten into September, cases have started to pick back up again. There have been 15 additional detections in September. This has affected about three-and-three-quarter million birds."

But the good news, he says that turkeys for Thanksgiving - they're already in the pipeline. Again Bernt Nelson, American Farm Bureau.