Tens of thousands of chickens are dead after a barn fire in southeastern Manitoba.
Fire crews from the municipality of Hanover were called to the blaze near Blumenort around 3:40 Sunday morning.
The barn was owned by Dixon Poultry Farms, a family-run egg producer.
When crews first arrived, the fire was well underway so they took an defensive stance and waited for the fire to breach the roof of the barn.
“These barns are well built, they’re metal on the outside which contains the fire inside for an extended period,” Hanover Fire Chief, Paul Wiebe said.
“We don’t enter these structures to fight a fire and in this case the inside was quite heated, so we just fight the fire from the outside.”
Crews were able to get the blaze under control, but not before half the building was destroyed.
“We have reports of approximately 27,000 chickens that were lost … I’ve been stressing that there were a significant amount of chickens that were saved.
“Half of the barn was destroyed and the rest is still fully in production,” Wiebe said.
Most of the structure is gone, but the Dixon family say they plan to rebuild in the future.
Officials have not released the cause of the fire.
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