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Daybreak announced in a legal layoff notice to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development that the layoffs will run for 5-7 months as the company works to repopulate its bird operation.

Daybreak says in a statement that it “hopes” to bring back employees affected by the layoffs once it rebuilds its bird population and ramps up operations, although the company said that might not happen until October.

“We anticipate that the potential period of recall will be between August and October 2026,” Daybreak wrote in a statement filed with the state on March 27. The layoffs went into effect earlier this week.

The two egg farms locations are Cold Springs Farms at 2024 W. Hwy. 59, Palmyra, and S & R Farms, 9416 North Tamarack Rd., Whitewater.

Daybreak is shedding animal caretakers, line workers, processers, dock workers alongside quality control workers, sanitation and maintenance workers and manure technicians and bio building workers — jobs that are all impacted because of the farms’ drawdown its production capacity.

“Due to the required depopulation of the birds, the fact that depopulation clean-up operations are nearing conclusion, and the estimated time it will take to obtain approval to repopulate the facility with new birds and complete the repopulation, it has recently become clear that the company will not have sufficient work available at the facilities to support all of its current employees at the facilities at this time,” Daybreak wrote in the statement.

Daybreak says it could reach out to some employees laid off to offer them other possible job prospects at the two farms.

The state Department of Natural Resources found concentrations of the highly pathogenic avian flu in Daybreak’s wastewater in late February.

Federal law requires depopulation of chickens at egg farms that have bird flu outbreaks.