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The objective of the article was to present trends in international trade in live domestic poultry in the light of the profitability of its domestic production. From the theoretical point of view, the discussed subject is extremely important in the context of the effectiveness of the market and its structures as well as for the entities which are active within it. This is valuable to the live poultry producers and processing industry of this type of meat and also to the economic policy. The study concerns the years 2004-2014 and uses annual data obtained from the Ministry of Finance and the Central Statistical Office of Poland (GUS). In the last few years there has been an increase in the positive trade balance for poultry products and a significant increase in the domestic production of poultry meat as well as a decrease in the profitability of poultry breeding (measured by the procurement price of poultry to the price of compound feedingstuffs for chicken for fattening ratio). This means that nonfeedstuff cost components as well as breeding and technological advancement play an increasingly important role in the production of this type of livestock. Chicks were the dominant assortment both in the export and import of live poultry. In the years 2004-2005, 2010 Poland was a net importer of that assortment. In 2006-2009, 2011-2014, more units (birds) of live young poultry were exported than imported, which mostly resulted from a relatively high export of chicken chicks (other than laying hens). The quantitative balance of foreign trade in large live poultry was negative in the whole studied period. This was conditioned by a relatively high import of live chicken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]