By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

An Abaco poultry farm needs just $150,000 to start their own hatchery in efforts to beat supply chain woes.

Lance Pinder, Abaco Big Bird Poultry’s operations manager, told Tribune Business he needs $150,000 to start a bird hatchery at his Abaco plant and all it takes is four months to get it up and running.

Mr Pinder said: “The only thing is now we need to find eggs. That’ll be the first step, because right now we have to order eggs from Belgium because we can’t find them in the US.”

He added: “Those eggs we are getting from Belgium we will send them to the hatchery in Miami for them to hatch them so we can get birds, but that’s not going to help me out for the next six to eight weeks and in the meantime we are going to be out of product.”

The global supply chain issues is taking a toll on the agricultural industry and there is no sign of the matter being sorted out in the short to medium term as containers are still backed up in China that were on route to the US. As a result of this it is going to take a while to move eggs from Belgium to their Miami hatchery.

Mr Pinder added: “Now the hatchery is one side, but then you also have to do your own breeder programme too. That’s a whole other part of the operation. In the US, you have different entities that do all of these things, one for breeder chickens, one for the hatchery and another for processing.

“We can have our hatchery but we are still going to need eggs and those things are specialised things. You can get the eggs and hatch your own, but you also need breeder chicken parent stock. There is a five year waitlist for breeder stock.”

But in Abaco, Mr Pinder can do all of that on his property because the market is small enough for him to supply the demand. “I would also support someone else who would want to start a hatchery here because right now we still have to get our plant back up to standard after Hurricane Dorian. From what I know, there was another person out there looking into building a hatchery, but he has run into funding problems and it has stalled. I would support them if they get sorted out.”

During normal times, Abaco Big Bird has to source chicks from Miami, Florida. But now, they have to source chicks from as far as Iowa, which presents numerous logistics challenges as it did at the end of July when they lost 3,000 chicks on route from Iowa through Miami International Airport after they were left on Tarmac overnight and died.

Chicks directly from their regular hatchery in Miami take 45 minutes to get into the country, but now Abaco Big Bird has to plan their routes out weeks in advance with a lot more players logistically involved in the process.

Mr Pinder said: “We have been having problems getting chicks in since January. That’s why those chicks have been coming from as far as Iowa and that’s just not feasible. It’s something we tried, but it is just logistically a nightmare. Things are really bad now because the chick shortage isn’t getting any better.”