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There is a LOT of them, but fortunately - they are usually fighting against each-other in battle for supremacy. Only very strong leaders like Abbadon have power to unify them in a crusade against Imperium. Others, like Thousand Sons wander the galaxy in quest for hidden knowledge and some, like World Eaters, just go and kill as much people as possible. But, I am sure that they outnumber Imperial marines 2 or even 10 to 1. And some chapters occasionally join Chaos so their numbers will always be high - no matter their loss.

Chaos marine groups have concocted a number of ways to stay up to snuff. They still recruit from worlds they ravage and worlds within the eye. (I have no source for this statement, but I have a strong recollection of reading it in a novel.)

Though on the whole it is infrequent, marines do turn. Research the Badaab War or the Red Corsairs. This adds to Chaos's numbers.

In "Dead Sky Black Sun", an Ultramarines novel, it is stated that the Iron Warriors have developed a way of recycling the churned matter of dead marines into a feed for "Deamonculabra" (spelling?) which are basically human women (albeit horribly distended and such) infused with Chaos to enable them to give birth to new marines fully grown but without skin (skin is grown harvested from captives in skin camps).

If the Iron Warriors have come up with things like this then it would follow that each Chaos group would have a similar (or entirely different actually) way of re-filling their ranks.

I hope this all does a bit to answer your question.

-Cypher- wrote: it is stated that the Iron Warriors have developed a way of recycling the churned matter of dead marines into a feed for "Deamonculaba" (spelling?)

Spelling fixed for you.

The functioning of the Daemonculaba is definitely the most horrible piece of fluff I ever read on the W40K universe. I mean, it worked by fattening enslaved women to grotesque proportions, then opening their belly, sticking a child into it, closing the belly (and adding a few bits of machinery and chemical injectors), waiting for the child to grow into a monstrosity without skin or into a psychopathic killer without skin and finally grafting skin on the newly formed CSM with the skin of other human slaves...
Damn, how did McNeill ever came to imagine something like that???

Thank you very much Laodamia.

I will say that it is far-fetched and extremely imaginative, but if the Eye isn't the place for it then where else? Gram McNiell hit the nail on the head. That's what makes him a great author. He's able to immerse himself in a world so unorthodox as 40K's.

Anyway, thank you for the fix.