Over the past week there have been several articles about poultry operations in Hubei and Sichuan province receiving emergency water deliveries from local fire departments as they run out of water.
One article from Suizhou, Hubei province mentioned a farmer with 12k chickens that were dehydrated and suffering from heat stroke. The local fire brigade dispatched a truck with 5 tons of water to refill the farm’s water tanks and spray down chicken coops in order to cool them.
Another article from Da’an County in Sichuan noted that officials received “calls for help one after another” for water assistance and had dispatched four fire trucks to a large poultry operation.
The operation had not had water for several days, the water tanks for the poultry operation were empty, and even the farm operators were running short on drinking water.
A poultry farm in Hubei with nearly one million chickens said its reservoirs had run dry on August 9th and has had to receive 150 tons of water from the local fire department.
Electricity rationing in Sichuan has also caused issues. One farm which lost power was unable to run its feed mills and was running low on rations for its laying hens.
An aquaculture operation in the region which also faced power cuts said it ran into issues with its backup generators. Unable to circulate water, it faced heavy losses as its fish died and the farmer estimates the loss at around 10k metric tons.
While it is difficult to assess the scope, losses due to heat and drought are happening at poultry and aquaculture operations in central China and the Sichuan region. These losses are likely to be inflationary for poultry, eggs, and aquaculture, and are likely to weigh on feed demand in Q3 and Q4.