Nov. 13, 2008 – The crumpled ruins of the two Brighton hatchery barns served as a
silent witness to a raging inferno.
The crumpled ruins of the two Brighton hatchery barns
served as a silent witness to the raging inferno that swept unchecked
through the buildings last Wednesday,
But there was no time for farmer Stuart Archer to dwell on his misfortunes.
“I’m not gloom and doom today,” a weary Mr. Archer told The Independent on the weekend.
“We
lost two of our barns but the two barns that survived will keep us
going,” he said. “Everybody in the hatchery still has a job today,
including me, and that’s what counts.”
The fire not only
killed 24,000 birds but also 21,600 about-to-hatchery’s eggs – the
hatchery’s daily production. These eggs would normally produce a 40 per
cent yield of about 8,600 day-old chicks for market.
Mr.
Archer is the third generation of his family to run Archer’s Poultry
Farm since his grandparents Cecil and Flo Archer moved the hatchery to
Brighton from Niagara Falls in 1946. Archer’s primary business is
producing day-old chicks for poultry farmers and it accounts for 40 per
cent of Canada’s annual production of eight million birds.
Mr.
Archer said he has been overwhelmed by the assistance he's received
from other hatchery companies as far afield as Quebec, Nova Scotia and
British Columbia.
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