As of March 1, the United States was home to 74.321 million hogs and pigs, up slightly from a year ago but down 1% from last quarter’s inventory, according to the latest Hogs and Pigs report published Thursday by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.
From that total, 5.892 million head were kept for breeding, down marginally from the December report and 1% from March 2025. Meanwhile market hog inventory, at 68.429 million head, dipped 2% from last quarter, but was 1% ahead from the year prior.
For the under-50-pounds weight category, there were 20.851 million head, unchanged from the year prior. In the 50-to-119 pounds group, there were 18.798 million head, on par with 2025.
In the 120-to-179-pounds group, there were 15.902 million head, a similar figure to the year prior. Finally, for the 180-and-over group there were 12.878 million head, up 2% from 2025.
Lee Schulz, chief economist with Ever.Ag's Livestock Risk Management Team, says the latest Hogs and Pigs Report threw out quite a few surprises, specifically in the smaller weight market hogs.
“The 50-to-119 would be expected to come to slaughter May through June. That was up 0.1% according to USDA. Analysts had it up 1.4%,” Schulz says. “I think it is a bit of a surprise and would tell us that, we would expect a bit tighter slaughter as we get into late spring and summer according to where USDA would be at here, relative to pre-report expectations, but very similar to year-ago levels, right at just up 0.1%.”
Another surprise was the under 50 pounds which come to slaughter July through August of this year. USDA had that “just a tick up from year ago levels,” at 0.2%, where analysts would've had that increased by 1.6%. “So again, 1.4 percentage points difference is notably large and compared to those pre-report expectations, we would expect slaughter to be tighter, but very similar again to year-ago levels,” Schulz says.
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