ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Chick­ens in To­ba­go have re­sort­ed to eat­ing one an­oth­er due to an alarm­ing short­age of an­i­mal feed, rais­ing con­cerns about the state of poul­try farm­ing on the is­land if the in­ter-is­land fer­ry woes con­tin­ue for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od.

Trevor Mc Cooney, man­ag­er at Mc Cooney Farm, the is­land’s largest chick­en farm at Rich­mond Point, Glam­or­gan, yes­ter­day said he was wor­ried the farm, which has been in ex­is­tence for over 50 years, may not sur­vive by the time the Cabo Star re­turns to ser­vice.

“I don’t know how long we could con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing like this be­cause I’m see­ing more prob­lems where it will shut down our op­er­a­tions here. Once these chick­ens start to eat one an­oth­er, once they see blood, they eat the oth­er chick­en right out.

“The oth­er chick­en(s) will join up and work to­geth­er to eat the dead chick­en. This is how se­vere this is. These birds have a kind of can­ni­bal­is­tic be­hav­iour, so to pre­vent that, you have to make sure they are com­fort­able,” he ex­plained.

Mc Cooney said the sit­u­a­tion has be­come dire.

“This is a se­ri­ous prob­lem right now be­cause these birds can’t go one day with­out feed­ing. The mo­ment you lapse one day with­out feed­ing, you have to go two weeks giv­ing them feed­ing and try­ing to bring them back to lay (eggs) be­cause they are go­ing to stop lay­ing when they don’t have the feed,” he said.

Oth­er chick­en farm­ers said they have had to keep the birds away from each oth­er, as they have been strug­gling to get the reg­u­lar sup­ply of feed.

Ray Thomas, own­er of Mount Grace Feed De­pot—the main an­i­mal feed dis­trib­u­tor on the is­land—said he can­not sup­ply feed to the en­tire is­land.

“What I did in the first week, I was able to sell peo­ple their nor­mal ca­pac­i­ty and quo­ta. What hap­pened in week two, we had to ra­tion per­sons,” he said.

“It has come to the point where I can­not de­liv­er to any su­per­mar­ket be­cause there are spe­cial­i­ty feeds for an­i­mals that can on­ly eat feed for a horse and a sheep. So, I’m not con­cen­trat­ing on bring­ing those feeds with the lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty that I’m al­lowed. So, I have to bring broil­er feed and lay­er feeds, so there’s no is­sue for broil­er and lay­er chick­ens get­ting their feed.”

How­ev­er, Thomas said it meant that an­i­mals like sheep, goats and pigs would be left with­out feed.

“But the sup­ply is de­creas­ing as time goes on. So, we are run­ning a shift where we have to know who gets and how much they get, and it’s work now. Be­cause bring­ing con­tain­ers with 1,500 bags, and now we can on­ly get 200 bags a week, that’s where we are. It’s a deep hole. We need car­go ves­sels, and this is a con­ver­sa­tion go­ing on for many years,” he lament­ed.

Mean­while, Sec­re­tary of Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Nat­ur­al Re­sources, the En­vi­ron­ment, and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, Nathisha Charles-Patin, has urged To­bag­o­ni­ans not to pan­ic.

“Food se­cu­ri­ty is im­por­tant for To­ba­go, and I want peo­ple to re­alise that over the years food se­cu­ri­ty has been heav­i­ly un­der­fund­ed. But once we have the funds, I guar­an­tee you To­ba­go can do far bet­ter.”

She said the To­ba­go Agribusi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny can fill the void.

“We have the Cap­i­tal of Par­adise (boat) bring­ing in thou­sands of pounds of fish­ing, bring­ing in yel­lowfin tu­na and bluefin,” she said.

“Peo­ple ex­pe­ri­enc­ing food short­ages in terms of stuff com­ing up and ac­cess­ing goods, please vis­it TAD­CO’s com­pound at Shaw Park and pur­chase your lo­cal healthy meat. We have good deals.”