California-based poultry producer Foster Farms is petitioning the Service Transportation Board (STB) for emergency assistance, warning that its dairy cattle and chickens are running out of food, and fast.
Blaming extreme weather conditions, Union Pacific (UP) rail delivery failures, and other factors, Foster Farms says the “point has again been reached where hundreds of thousands of dairy cattle are not being fed, and … millions of chickens will starve to death because of UP’s service failures.”
A day after the petition was submitted, a U.S. freight rail regulator ordered UP to deliver five trains of feed to Foster Farms. However, only one of those trains arrived as scheduled, according to the company.
Because chickens are smaller than cattle, they risk dying more quickly without food than their larger counterparts. To prevent this, Foster Farms says it is diverting cattle feed to its chickens for the time being.
Responding to the complaint, UP blamed its delivery delays on bad weather, which now includes washouts in California due to numerous “atmospheric river” events, as well as rockslides in Nevada. (Related: We warned you about all this and more last year.)
Poster Comment:
Sprout the grain and get 25% more feed that is better for your animals.