A late-night fire broke out at egg producer Forsman Farms located on Mowery Avenue in Stockholm Township, Minnesota on May 28th, 2022.
The Wright County Fire Department received a call at 10 PM. Firefighters from Wright and Meeker counties, as well as volunteer firefighters, responded to the fire.
According to Fox 9, crews discovered flames coming from a barn housing approximately 200,000 layer hens and manure after arrival. Significant damage occurred, with minimal damage to a neighboring building, explained the Wright County Sheriff's Office. None of the 200,000 birds survived the event.
A spokesperson for the producer stated, “Overnight, a fire destroyed one of our barns at our Howard Lake farm. No one was injured and we are grateful that first responders were quickly on scene to put out the fire. Unfortunately, chickens were lost because of the fire. We are evaluating the extent of the damage – which appears to be confined to a single structure – as well as investigating the cause of the fire.”
The egg industry cannot afford much more loss
Over the last couple of years, barn fires have been a major issue for the U.S. egg industry, with most of the fires affecting 150,000 to 250,000 laying hens at a time. However, fires have not claimed the largest number of hens in recent months.
Since February 2022, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has impacted 27,374,700 U.S. commercial table egg layers. Iowa has had 12,735,100 hens affected, the most of any other state by far. Pennsylvania is the next most affected state, with most cases occurring in Lancaster County, at 3,846,300 hens impacted and Nebraska not far behind at 3,864,900 hens.
According to Egg Industry Insight’s top companies survey, there are approximately 345 million layers in the U.S., meaning that HPAI has claimed 7.9% of U.S. layers over the last three months.
