NAICS 112310Canadian industry · 6-digitregional market

Chicken egg production

SoftwareLivestock & Herd Management Software 112

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in raising chickens for the production of eggs, including hatching eggs. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 535
Under 10 employeesA: 82%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–427151%

5–916631%

10–196412%

20–49265%

50–9951%

100–19931%

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 535 Canadian establishments with employees, 82% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario17332%

British Columbia12523%

Quebec12423%

Manitoba469%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting, US · opened 2020

88%

1 year

71.7%

3 years

61.8%

5 years

53%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 112, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

regional competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 112 Animal production and aquaculture

Quota is a purchased asset under supply management and a moat for whoever holds it. Outside quota the operator takes the packer's price on a biological production cycle that cannot be hurried.

Who sets the price: Packers, processors and — in Canadian dairy, poultry and eggs — supply-management boards that set price by quota.
The software it runs on: Herd and flock management, feed and health records, traceability.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 1123 Poultry and egg production covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 1123

Supply-Managed Poultry & Egg QuotaStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost + regulatory drag

This is the best farm business in Canada to already own. Chicken, turkey, eggs and hatching eggs are supply-managed: a board matches production to demand, the price is set from a cost-of-production formula, and the 1,958 establishments [A] sell everything they are allowed to grow. The allowance is the business, and the screen is about what it takes to get one. In Ontario, the largest province for this group, a chicken farmer must hold at least 14,000 units of quota, and the board is explicit that it 'does not regulate the price of quota which is bought and sold on the open market' [B]. Its new-entrant programme lends up to 10,000 of those units to a farmer who buys the first 4,000, on a fifteen-year commitment — and has admitted forty-seven farms since it began [B]. In eggs the number is public: BC Egg's exchange cleared at $370 per unit of layer quota on 2 September 2026, with 6,370 units on offer against 33,930 units of bids — an 18.8% fill rate — one application per person, local buyers first, and a clearing price that may only rise when the board's own conditions are met [A]. A unit is, broadly, the right to keep one laying hen. Whatever flock size makes a living, the quota for it is bought at a price the board does not set, and is released in parcels too small and too rationed to assemble a farm from. The result is what dairy shows in Dairy Quota & Beef Herd Operation from the other side: a licence that capitalises the whole future margin into its purchase price, so that the entrant buys the profit in advance from the person leaving. The unregulated corners — the small-flock exemptions, ducks, quail, pastured specialty — are real, and the exemption exists precisely to cap them below commercial scale. Growing past it requires the quota the exemption exists to avoid.

NAICS 11235 vendors named9 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 112 Animal production and aquaculture

Livestock & Herd Management SoftwareOne thing must be true

binding constraint: willingness to pay

Incumbent Merck Animal Health (Allflex / SenseHub) and Datamars

The cow-calf operator is the most numerous and least software-paying buyer in agriculture, and the money in the category sits in the ear tag rather than the subscription — Merck and Zoetis bundle the software with the hardware they already sell through the vet channel. A software-only entrant is selling against a free attachment. Same shape as the farm-management record at 1151. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 1123 vendors namedOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Managers in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture One industry 93.1%

Fishing vessel masters and fishermen/women One industry 92.4%

Workers in agriculture and fishing occupations One industry 88.9%

Agriculture, horticulture and harvesting labourers and related occupations One industry 85.4%

Logging machinery operators One industry 81.9%

Logging and forestry workers Mostly one sector 61.5%

Contractors and supervisors, agriculture, horticulture and related operations and services Mostly one sector 16.3%

Managers in natural resources production and fishing Mostly one sector 12.5%

Logging, forestry, landscaping and other related labourers Mostly one sector 6.5%

Tourism and amusement services occupations Mostly one sector 6.2%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 14.2%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 3%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 1.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 1.5%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 1.4%

Office administrative assistants - general, legal and medical Across the economy 1.1%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 1%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 1%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 82% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →