The US egg market managed a rally in July, and it did not last. Large white grade A shell eggs, cartoned and delivered on USDA’s New York metro benchmark, climbed from the mid-$0.60s to just shy of $1.50 before retreating into the $0.80s, where the market remains unsettled. September is likely to be the fourth month of the past six with an average below $1. For most of the past two years $2.00 per dozen had a reputation for being cheap, against annual averages above $3 and a peak beyond $8.00, and LEAP Market Analytics is now skeptical of the market clearing $2.00 at any point between here and the end of 2027 absent an extreme shock.
Supply is growing, availability much less so
USDA-NASS put the US table egg flock just shy of 315.0 million hens as of August 1, the largest first-of-month inventory since December 2024 and 4.8% above the same date last year. Cumulative production through July stands at nearly 54.2 billion, running 4.7% ahead of the 2025 pace.
What clears through domestic channels is a different figure. Exports are running 25% ahead of last year on a January to June basis, at 3.2% of production, while imports over the same period fell 87%, from 889 million shell egg equivalents to 116 million. Between the two, plus population growth, a 4.7% production increase became a 1.8% increase in per capita availability, which still leaves the US 8.8% below where it was in the first half of 2019.
Upstream, caution is creeping in. Egg-type hatchings totaled 57.0 million in July, down 2.1% year on year, and the January to July figure of 399 million trails the 2025 pace by 3.5%. That baseline was exceptionally large, so LEAP still projects the average table egg flock up 1.8% and production up 2.3% next year, while flagging that as a high-end scenario for buyers.
Cage-free looks saturated
Cage-free layer inventories averaged 150.7 million in August according to USDA-AMS, an all-time high and more than 10% above August 2025. That is now almost 48% of the entire egg market. LEAP is increasingly of the view that expansion in response to state mandates and corporate sourcing pledges overshot, and the price data is consistent with it: cage-free wholesale spot prices have regularly underperformed the conventional market by $0.25 or more relative to how they have historically tracked, even though input costs run at least 20% higher. Some producers are downpacking cage-free eggs as conventional to recover a little value.
Feed is the new pressure
LEAP’s composite condition score for corn fell from 68% in mid-July to 62% by August 30, against 69% last year. Pro Farmer’s crop tour put average US yield at 173.2 bushels per acre, and LEAP has cut its own outlook to 175.9 from 178.9. Having warned buyers for months that cash corn could reach $5 and Illinois soybean meal $325 to $350, LEAP now reads its own warning as too cautious. On its estimate of net returns, industry profitability is signaling weaker conditions than at any point in recent memory.
