LAKE MILLS, Wis. — Daybreak Foods Inc., one of the nation’s largest egg producers, recently had to furlough a total of 87 employees at two of its Wisconsin farms due to bird flu outbreaks at each facility. Daybreak Foods is a family-owned egg producer that supplies liquid and shell eggs to food processing and foodservice companies.
According to the company’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, the estimated duration of the layoffs is around five to seven months; it was expected to start on or about April 1, 2026.
Multiple departments will be affected by this layoff, with the highest number of employees impacted to include furloughed positions such as line worker, sanitation tech, and animal caretaker. Other affected job titles include bio building attendant, maintenance tech, manure tech, dock attendant, processing lead, and quality tech.
“We hope to be in a position to recall impacted employees in the future as we are able to repopulate the birds at the facilities and move towards returning to full operations, and we anticipate that potential period of recall will be between August and October 2026,” Chris Fridsma, Daybreak Foods’ vice president of human resources, wrote in the letter. “We also may identify work opportunities at other Company facilities to offer impacted employees and, if so, we will notify impacted employees as applicable to explain any available opportunities.”
The company made it clear that these layoffs are the result of unforeseen circumstances caused by recent bird flu cases at the facilities and nothing else. The USDA requires farms and facilities impacted by bird flu to depopulate affected birds.
Daybreak’s depopulation clean-up process is reaching an end, but it will take an unspecified amount of time to gain approval to repopulate the flock and complete the repopulation. So, the company realized that there will not be enough work available at the impacted facilities to support all of its current employees.
The letter was sent on March 27, 2026, so the company tried to give as much notice as possible about the layoffs, consistent with federal and Wisconsin state WARN laws.
