By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA

Turkey produced 19.6 billion hen eggs in 2018 with an annual hike of nearly 2 percent, the country's statistical authority said on Wednesday.

"The number of laying hens having reached laying maturity (excluding breeder hens) totaled 76,932,853 units at the end of 2018," TurkStat said.

Last year, Turkey's chicken meat production reached 2.16 million tons -- relatively stable compared to 2.14 million tons of production in 2017.

Throughout the year, the country also produced over 69,500 tons of turkey meat and 134 tons of quail meat.

Official figures revealed that the total amount of the slaughtered poultry was 1.24 billion units last year, while 99.4 percent of them were chickens.

Last week, TurkStat also announced that the number of poultry increased by 3.2 percent year-on-year in 2018.

There was nearly 360 million poultry -- including broiler and laying hens, turkey, duck, goose -- in Turkey as of the end of last year.