U.S. bird flu outbreaks blamed for Nova Scotia meat chick shortage

Erin Pottie · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 02, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

Nova Scotian farmers are among those dealing with a shortage of outpouring chicks owed to outbreaks of avian influenza successful the United States.

About 20 per cent of nutrient chickens produced successful Canada are hatched from eggs imported from the U.S. But due to the fact that of losses determination owed to the vertebrate flu, less eggs are disposable to Canadian hatcheries, according to Amy VanderHeide, a poultry husbandman and seat of the non-profit group Chicken Farmers of Nova Scotia.

"The interaction of avian influenza successful the United States has had an interaction connected our hatching eggs," VanderHeide said connected Tuesday. "It's caused a spot of a shortage present for us, not conscionable successful Nova Scotia, but crossed the country."

Each year, Nova Scotia farmers nutrient much than 20 cardinal nutrient chickens, astir of which are consumed wrong the province.

VanderHeide said Nova Scotia's commercialized producers person been dealing with a scarcity of chicks for astir a month. Flock numbers crossed the commercialized assemblage are down 3 per cent compared to this clip past year, she said, portion respective small-scale farms person been told by suppliers to look elsewhere for chicks.

Tim Levangie is the proprietor of Thyme for Ewe Farm successful Millville, N.S., which raises astir 1,400 nutrient chickens, besides known arsenic broilers, per year.

Last Friday, Levangie and his woman heard from a section workplace supplier who said their bid of outpouring chicks could nary longer beryllium fulfilled. 

"We were fractional excited due to the fact that we didn't person to rise chickens and past erstwhile we realized that it's 30 per cent of our income, it's a small little exciting," Levangie said. 

"Just the other paperwork that's progressive successful getting a licence and the other vigilance required erstwhile raising furniture oregon nutrient birds this twelvemonth with the avian influenza, it truly made america deliberation 2 oregon 3 times astir raising chickens again."

VanderHeide's enactment is present moving with hatching groups to effort to find capable eggs to get tiny flock producers off the ground. 

She said the shortage of birds could person a important interaction connected smaller businesses. 

"It's tough, particularly with immoderate of them looking astatine the imaginable of losing their full season," she said. "It's a batch of income for their year.… If we tin find the eggs, the hatcheries volition hatch them and get them retired to whoever they tin perchance get them to."

VanderHeide said she expects the existent shortage of hatching eggs volition not past agelong due to the fact that flocks that were deed hard successful the United States are present rebuilding.

"It looks precise promising that determination volition inactive beryllium a [small flock] season, it whitethorn conscionable beryllium delayed," she said. 

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