Other Poultry Production (U.S.) — NAICS 112390

An investor's primer for a general audience — relevant to both public-market and private investors. Federal statistics are cited to U.S. government sources; company facts to trade, corporate, and news reporting. Figures are reported facts; anything about the future is labeled as judgment. NAICS = North American Industry Classification System.

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1. Overview

"Other Poultry Production" is the federal catch-all for farming every domesticated bird that is not a meat chicken, an egg-laying chicken, or a turkey. In practice that means ducks and geese, plus game birds (pheasant, quail, partridge, guinea fowl), squab (young pigeon), and ratites (ostrich, emu, rhea) [1]. It is a small, mature, specialty corner of American agriculture — measured in tens of millions of birds a year, not the roughly 9 billion broiler chickens the mainstream poultry industry turns out [3][4].

Why it is worth understanding despite the size: this is a premium, foodservice- and export-driven protein niche with high barriers to entry, a handful of dominant private operators, and outsized exposure to two swing factors — grain (feed) prices and avian influenza. It rewards operators who control breeding genetics, biosecurity, and restaurant relationships.

Ways in. There is essentially no U.S.-listed pure-play in this code. The commercial industry is private and family-held — a few vertically integrated firms plus a long tail of small farms — so the practical route in is direct ownership, contract growing, or niche branded products rather than the stock market. Public-market investors get only indirect exposure through feed, animal-health, rendering, and diversified poultry names that share the same macro (Sections 4 and 10).

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2. What it is, and what it excludes

In scope (NAICS 112390): establishments primarily raising poultry other than meat chickens, egg chickens, and turkeys. The Census Bureau's illustrative examples include duck, goose, pheasant, quail, partridge, guinea fowl, squab, ostrich, emu, and rhea (ratite) production [1].

Explicitly excluded — adjacent NAICS codes:

• 112310 Chicken egg production
• 112320 Broiler and other meat-type chicken production
• 112330 Turkey production
• 112340 Poultry hatcheries (producing hatching eggs / chicks for others)
• 112990 All Other Animal Production — captures aviary and ornamental/pet birds [1]
• 114210 Hunting and trapping — i.e., wild game, not farmed birds
• 311615 Poultry processing — slaughter/cut/pack plants are manufacturing, not farming; retail sale of the meat is also outside this code

The supply chain typically has four layers: (1) breeding, hatching, and genetics; (2) grow-out farms, often family-owned or run under production contracts; (3) slaughter, processing, and cold storage; (4) sale to retail, foodservice, specialty distributors, hunting preserves, and direct-to-consumer. USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) instructs farms to report birds raised for others under production contracts, so contract growers can appear in farm data even when an integrator owns the birds and markets the product [6a].

Ownership mix. The commercial core is dominated by a small number of private, family-owned, vertically integrated companies that own the birds from breeder flock through processing. Note that an integrated firm's feed mill, processing plant, or branded-food arm may be classified outside 112390, because establishments are coded by primary activity. Alongside the leaders sits a long tail of tiny farms: game-bird operations tied to hunting preserves, artisanal foie-gras producers, hobbyist duck/goose flocks, and a shrunken ratite segment. There are no publicly traded operators of consequence.

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3. How big it is

A caveat first. Our ingested ground-truth federal statistics for NAICS 112390 contain exactly one industry-specific figure: the SBA (Small Business Administration) size standard of $3.75 million in average annual receipts — the ceiling below which a firm counts as "small" for federal programs [2]. It carries no establishment count, employment, or receipts total. That is structural, not an oversight: crop and animal production (NAICS sector 11) is largely excluded from the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns, Business Dynamics Statistics, and Nonemployer Statistics [20]. Farms are measured instead by USDA's Census of Agriculture and NASS (National Agricultural Statistics Service), which count birds and farms, not "firms" and "payroll." So the standard business-statistics undercount here is built in — the right yardsticks are USDA's, and we do not substitute any suppressed value.

What USDA does measure:

• Ducks (the segment's anchor): 24.8 million ducks were slaughtered under federal inspection in 2024, down from 28.2 million in 2023 — a live weight of about 177 million pounds [3]. That decline tracks the bird-flu pressure discussed below; for comparison, roughly 24.3 million ducks were slaughtered in 2021 [5]. Per-capita U.S. duck consumption is only about one-third of a pound per person per year — duck is a treat, not a staple [5].
• Farm inventories (2022 Census of Agriculture, birds on hand Dec. 31): ducks 4.4 million (down 10% from 2017), pheasants 3.3 million (up 33%), quail 9.3 million (up 26%) [4].
• Ratites are tiny and shrinking: the 2022 Census counted 232 farms raising 3,523 ostriches, with 62 farms selling about 1,332 birds — down from 714 farms and 11,188 ostriches in 2007 [6].
• Geese are a minor, largely seasonal segment. USDA's Economic Research Service does not routinely track the markets for ducks or geese, and there is no single reliable source for ostrich/emu prices and volumes [5][6]. Treat any single market-size dollar figure for this whole NAICS with caution.

Bottom line: measured by birds, this is a low-tens-of-millions-of-head industry dominated by duck; measured by dollars, it is a rounding error next to broilers and eggs.

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4. The investable universe

There is no clean public play. The commercial industry is private and concentrated. The names that matter:

Major private owners and operators

Two firms — Maple Leaf Farms and Culver, both in northern Indiana — account for roughly 60% of North American duck supply, and about three-quarters of U.S. duck output including their out-of-state operations [7]. Indiana alone was about 60% of national duck production as of 2017 [8]. Private ownership makes revenue, margins, debt, and valuation hard to compare from the outside — but it also creates succession and strategic-acquisition openings.

Nearest public exposure (indirect only)

Public investors should not assume a company described broadly as "poultry" has meaningful duck, quail, or game-bird exposure. The realistic proxies fall in other NAICS codes and move on shared feed-cost and avian-influenza dynamics:

A naming trap: Maple Leaf Farms (private Indiana duck company) is not Maple Leaf Foods (a large publicly traded Canadian meat company, TSX: MFI) — different companies. Also note a defunct Chinese OTC duck shell once traded under "DUKS"; it was never a real vehicle for U.S. duck exposure.

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5. How the money works

Owners here run a differentiated commodity-protein business.

Revenue = birds sold × dressed weight × price per pound, plus valued byproducts. A market duck reaches roughly 7 pounds live weight in about seven weeks [3]. Duck sells at a meaningful premium to chicken because it is largely a restaurant and export product, and the carcass is monetized in pieces — breast (magret), legs (confit), whole roasters — plus down and feathers for bedding, eggs, ducklings, and, at the top end, foie gras [1][8]. Game-bird and specialty revenue can also come from live birds for hunting preserves, hatching stock, pet products, and rendered protein.

Costs. The dominant line is feed (corn and soybean meal), so the feed-conversion ratio — pounds of feed per pound of bird — is the core efficiency metric, and grain prices set the margin. Then labor, energy, bedding, processing, freight, cold storage, veterinary/biosecurity, insurance, financing, and flock mortality. Because these operators are small relative to broiler giants, they are more sensitive to fixed costs and to a single bad event.

The operating metrics that matter: feed cost and weight gain per marketable bird, hatchability and mortality, live-to-dressed yield, plant and hatchery utilization, average selling price by channel, customer concentration, contract-grower economics, disease history and insurance coverage, and maintenance capital spending.

Vertical integration is the model. The leaders own the whole chain — breeder flock → hatchery → grow-out (company-owned or contract growers) → feed mill → processing → distribution — mirroring the broiler industry's integrator model. Integration captures margin, protects proprietary genetics, and — critically — lets one operator enforce biosecurity end to end [8][10].

Where the profit really comes from: genetics and brand (a better-converting, better-tasting line), product mix (selling breast to fine dining and byproducts elsewhere rather than dumping whole birds), and export access to Asia and Mexico, where per-capita duck demand dwarfs the U.S. [8][10]. Commodity producers are price-takers; branded and value-added products improve pricing but add food-safety, labor, marketing, and distribution costs. Game-bird economics differ: pheasant and quail farms sell live birds to hunting preserves and dog trainers and dressed birds to white-tablecloth restaurants [12][13]. Ratite economics rest on a thin gourmet-meat-plus-oil-plus-leather stack that has never scaled [6].

Cyclicality. Two cycles drive returns: the grain-cost cycle (input squeeze) and the disease cycle (a bird-flu hit can zero out a flock and, for a small farm, end the business). Demand also rides the restaurant/foodservice cycle and export conditions.

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6. What drives demand

• Foodservice and restaurants, especially Asian cuisine (Peking/roast duck), fine dining, and hotels — duck is disproportionately eaten out, not cooked at home [5][8].
• Ethnic, immigrant, and holiday demand — duck and goose feature in Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and Central-European cooking and holiday tables.
• Exports to Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, French Polynesia) and Mexico — a material share of the majors' sales, where disease status and inspection access permit [8][10].
• Hunting-preserve activity drives pheasant and quail — released-bird shooting, dog training, and outfitting [12][13].
• Niche/gourmet and "alternative protein" angles — ostrich/emu meat as a lean red-meat substitute, emu oil for cosmetics, duck and quail eggs — plus foie gras demand where it remains legal, and byproducts (feather, down, rendering, pet food).
• General discretionary spending — dining-out, disposable income, and population set the ceiling. Because duck is discretionary, demand is more income- and travel-sensitive than staple chicken.

Editorial judgment: this is a premium-and-specialty demand story, not a mass-volume protein story. Growth depends on chef adoption, retail placement, distribution, and consumers' willingness to pay a premium.

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7. Regulation

• Disease-control standards. USDA's APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) runs the NPIP (National Poultry Improvement Plan), the voluntary but effectively standard testing/certification program that sets disease-control standards for waterfowl and game birds bred for meat or eggs [17].
• Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) is the central regulatory and operating risk. APHIS mandates rapid response, flock controls, biosecurity, and — for infected flocks — depopulation, with indemnity and cost-share payments. Indemnity does not necessarily cover lost customers, rebuilding cost, or lost future cash flow [16]. The U.S. has not authorized routine HPAI vaccination of poultry, partly over export-trade concerns, which leaves biosecurity and depopulation as the primary tools [11][16].
• Mandatory federal inspection. Ducks, geese, guinea fowl, squab, and ratites (ostrich/emu/rhea) are subject to carcass-by-carcass inspection by USDA's FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Service) under the PPIA (Poultry Products Inspection Act), which also governs adulteration, labeling, and interstate commerce; ratites and squab were brought under mandatory inspection in the early 2000s [14][18]. Small, custom, and state-inspected operations can face different requirements.
• Animal-welfare law. Foie gras — produced by force-feeding ducks/geese — is the flashpoint. California bans in-state sale (litigated for years, with out-of-state-purchase carve-outs), and New York City has pursued its own ban; both have drawn ongoing court fights [15].
• Environmental / other. Larger confined operations can be regulated as CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) under Clean Water Act NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) rules — administered by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and states — for manure, litter, and process wastewater [19]. Zoning, water, odor, labor, game-bird permitting, and labeling rules vary by state and locality.

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8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The industry is already consolidated and still concentrating. In duck, two Indiana firms control roughly 75% of U.S. output [7]. The moats are real for a niche: breeding genetics, processing scale (a modern duck plant is expensive and specialized), biosecurity discipline, and entrenched foodservice/export relationships built over decades of family ownership. New entrants are rare. The strongest barriers to entry are disease-free breeding stock, biosecure facilities, reliable hatchery and feed access, permitted processing capacity, qualified growers, cold-chain distribution, and established restaurant/retail relationships.

The long arc is illustrated by Long Island, once the heart of American duck ("Long Island duckling"): from roughly 90 farms in the mid-20th century to a single survivor, Crescent Duck Farm — which then lost its entire flock to bird flu in January 2025 [11]. Consolidation here is driven by disease exits, thin margins, urban land pressure, and generational succession, not by public-company M&A roll-ups.

The game-bird (pheasant/quail) and ratite segments are the opposite: fragmented and small. Ostrich/emu is a cautionary tale — the 1990s ratite boom collapsed when breeding-stock speculation outran real meat demand, and the segment has shrunk by roughly two-thirds since 2007 [6].

Editorial judgment: further consolidation is more likely through private succession deals and strategic acquisitions of regional specialists than through a large public roll-up. Fragmented data and private ownership make deal sourcing hard but potentially attractive.

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9. Risks

• Avian influenza (HPAI) — the defining risk. It is existential for a single-site farm: an outbreak means total flock destruction, months of downtime, and, with no routine vaccination allowed, no preventive backstop [11][16]. APHIS reports the 2022-onward outbreak has affected more than 166 million U.S. birds across species — making biosecurity a balance-sheet issue, not merely a farm-management one [16][15].
• Feed-cost volatility. Corn, soybean-meal, energy, and freight swings hit thin margins directly and faster than specialty products can reprice.
• Concentration and key-person risk. So few operators means one firm's misfortune moves the whole segment; family ownership adds succession risk.
• Customer concentration. A single restaurant group, distributor, or retailer can be a large share of a small producer's sales.
• Regulatory and animal-welfare pressure — foie-gras and force-feeding bans, and broader welfare campaigns targeting duck/goose production [15].
• Export dependence and trade barriers. A meaningful share of margin rides on Asian and Mexican demand; a disease-driven export ban or tariff shift bites.
• Niche-demand fragility. Discretionary, foodservice-tied demand falls in downturns; the ratite bust shows how fast a specialty protein market can evaporate [6].
• Capital intensity and access. Hatcheries, barns, processing lines, refrigeration, and waste systems need ongoing investment, yet small, private, cyclical operators have limited access to outside capital, constraining reinvestment and disease-recovery.
• Information opacity. Private companies disclose little, so leverage, margins, and customer concentration are hard to verify from outside.

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10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes (indirect only). There is no listed pure-play. Treat TSN, HRL, and SEB as broad poultry/food companies, not 112390 investments; ADM, BG, ZTS, ELAN, and DAR give diversified supplier or byproduct exposure whose returns are driven mainly by businesses outside this code. The honest options are:

1. Upstream suppliers — feed/grain (ADM, Bunge) and animal health/genetics (Zoetis, Elanco).
2. Poultry-macro proxies (Tyson, Pilgrim's Pride, Cal-Maine, Vital Farms) for exposure to the same feed-cost and bird-flu dynamics — while understanding these are chicken/egg/turkey businesses in different NAICS codes, not duck or game-bird producers.
3. Downstream byproduct — rendering (Darling Ingredients).

Private routes (where the industry actually is).

• Direct ownership or acquisition of a family duck/game-bird operation — succession transitions at aging family firms are the most realistic entry, and the barrier (genetics, plant, relationships) is also the moat.
• Contract growing for an integrator — lower capital, lower margin, disease-exposed.
• Private credit secured by land, barns, processing assets, or inventory; and financing for hatcheries, feed mills, and cold storage.
• Farmland and processing infrastructure leased to operators (real-asset exposure to permitted poultry infrastructure).
• Niche branded products — pastured/specialty duck, duck and quail eggs, game-bird-to-preserve supply, emu-oil cosmetics — sold direct-to-consumer or to foodservice, where premiums are highest.
• Agritourism / hunting-preserve businesses pairing game-bird production with paid shooting and lodging.

The underwriting focus for any private deal: flock health and disease history, marketable-bird economics, customer contracts, processing and permitting access, insurance, debt service, working capital, and management succession.

Outlook (forward-looking judgment). This is a structurally small, slow-growth, mature industry — do not underwrite it for volume growth, and no reliable industry-wide revenue base or growth forecast exists in the federal statistics. The near-term overhang is HPAI plus feed costs, which have pushed duck slaughter down (28.2M → 24.8M head, 2023→2024) [3]. The durable tailwinds are ethnic/foodservice demand, exports, and premiumization — a case for value, not volume. The single biggest swing factor is disease policy: if USDA were to permit HPAI vaccination for poultry, it would materially de-risk the whole sector; until then, biosecurity and geographic diversification are the differentiators. Expect continued consolidation, and expect the meaningful returns to accrue to private owners and operators — because, for this industry, the stock market is not where the assets are. The best businesses can still earn attractive margins through integration, premium products, and byproduct utilization; returns should be judged business by business.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 NAICS: 112390 Other Poultry Production (definition, examples, and cross-references). https://www.census.gov/naics/?chart=2022&details=112390&input=112390
2. U.S. Small Business Administration. Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 112390 = $3.75M average annual receipts), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards (Histometrics ingested ground-truth statistic.)
3. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. Poultry Slaughter — 2024 Summary, February 2025. https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/sites/default/release-files/pg15bd88s/k356c167m/z029r057b/pslaan25.pdf
4. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2022 Census of Agriculture — Poultry and Egg Production (Highlights), 2024. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights/2024/Census22_HL_Poultry.pdf
5. Agricultural Marketing Resource Center (Iowa State University). Ducks and Geese. Accessed 2026. https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/livestock-dairy-poultry/poultry/ducks-and-geese

6. Agricultural Marketing Resource Center (Iowa State University). Ostrich and Emu. Accessed 2026. https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/livestock-dairy-poultry/ostrich-and-emu-53585 6a. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2022 Census of Agriculture Report Form Guide (contract-grower reporting instructions), 2022. https://www.nass.usda.gov/AgCensus/Report_Form_and_Instructions/2022_Report_Form/2022_Census_of_Agriculture_Report_Form_Guide.pdf

7. Indiana Economic Digest / WANE 15. Two Indiana farms lead North America in duck production, providing 60% of the nation's duck supply, 2024. https://www.wane.com/top-stories/2-companies-in-kosciusko-elkhart-counties-behind-majority-of-us-duck-production/

8. Hoosier Ag Today. How Maple Leaf Farms Contributes to Indiana's Number One Ranking for Duck Production, 2024. https://www.hoosieragtoday.com/2024/02/07/maple-leaf-farms/
9. Iowa PBS, Market to Market. Indiana Company Tackles Challenges in Duck Production (Maple Leaf ~10M, Culver ~6M), 2023. https://www.iowapbs.org/shows/mtom/market-feature/clip/8905/indiana-company-tackles-challenges-in-duck-production
10. Philadelphia Magazine (Foobooz). Meet Pennsylvania's Duck Dynasty (Joe Jurgielewicz & Son), 2025. https://www.phillymag.com/foobooz/2025/03/03/joe-jurgielewicz-and-son-pennsylvania-duck-dynasty/
11. RiverheadLOCAL. 'Bird flu' outbreak shutters Long Island's last duck farm (Crescent Duck Farm, ~3.5% of U.S. supply), January 2025. https://riverheadlocal.com/2025/01/22/bird-flu-outbreak-shutters-long-islands-last-duck-farm-as-culling-of-90000-birds-is-underway/
12. MacFarlane Pheasants Inc. Pheasant History — America's largest pheasant farm. Accessed 2026. https://www.pheasant.com/about-us/history
13. SC Biz News. Manchester Farms grows into largest US quail producer, 2017. https://scbiz.com/manchester-farms-grows-into-largest-us-quail-producer/
14. Federal Register / USDA FSIS. Mandatory Inspection of Ratites and Squabs (PPIA coverage of duck, goose, guinea, ratite, squab), 2002. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2002/03/22/02-6836/mandatory-inspection-of-ratites-and-squabs
15. CBS News. As bird flu ravages poultry industry, the damage spreads (HPAI scale; foie-gras/duck impact), 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-bird-flu-ravages-poultry-industry-the-damage-spreads/
16. USDA APHIS. HPAI in Poultry (response, depopulation, indemnity; >166M birds affected). Accessed 2026. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-poultry
17. USDA APHIS. National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP). Accessed 2026. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/nvap/reference-guide/poultry/npip
18. USDA FSIS. Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA), 2023. https://www.fsis.usda.gov/policy/food-safety-acts/poultry-products-inspection-act
19. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. 40 CFR 122.23 — Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (NPDES), 2026. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-122/section-122.23
20. U.S. Census Bureau. Business Dynamics Statistics: About This Program and Nonemployer Statistics (both exclude crop and animal production, NAICS 11), 2025–2026. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/bds/about.html; https://www.census.gov/econ/overview/mu0500.html
21. Tyson Foods, Inc. 2025 Form 10-K, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/100493/000010049325000095/tsn-20250927.htm
22. Seaboard Corporation. 2025 Form 10-K (52.5% Butterball investment), 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/88121/000008812126000012/seb-20251231x10k.htm
23. Maple Leaf Farms. Company Fact Sheet, 2025. https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/assets.mapleleaffarms.com/documents/Company-Fact-Sheet-2025.pdf
24. Culver Duck Farms. About Us, 2021. https://culverduck.com/about-us/
25. Hormel Foods. 2025 Annual Report (Jennie-O turkey), 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/48465/000004846525000059/hrl-20251026.htm
26. Darling Ingredients. 2025 Form 10-K (rendering / poultry meal), 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/916540/000091654026000008/dar-20260103.htm