By STAN MADDUX

Indiana Correspondent

NORTH MANCHESTER, Ind. — More than 1 million chickens perished in a fire Oct. 2 at a northern Indiana egg-producing operation.

Despite such a large death toll, the company is not scrambling to recover because of the 1.5 million or so chickens surviving the fire, as well as having about 7 million more at several other locations.

“We still have the rest of the birds to supply our customers and we’re pretty rapidly making progress on replacing temporarily the birds that we lost and making long-term plans, also,” said Bob Krouse, president of Midwest Poultry Services, Inc.

Five chicken houses at Hi-Grade Egg Producers outside North Manchester were destroyed in a blaze first reported about 10 p.m. It is believed none of the birds in any of the roughly 50,000 square-foot buildings survived, said Brady Airgood, assistant chief of the Chester Township Fire Department.

“They were a complete loss,” he said.

About a half-dozen other chicken houses, along with the egg processing building, were not damaged, said Airgood. He explained the cause of the blaze was not known at press time, but one possibility being looked into was spontaneous combustion from manure stored in a warehouse attached to the first chicken house that caught fire.

“We’re still investigating,” he noted last week.

When firefighters arrived, one of the structures was already engulfed in flames, beginning to spread to one of the other adjacent structures. Airgood said each destroyed chicken house was just 20 feet from another, and not helping the situation were light winds pushing the flames toward the other structures.

“There was just enough wind that it kept moving it to the north,” he noted.

Three of the buildings saved were about 100 feet away from those destroyed in the blaze and opposite from the direction of the light breezes, he explained. The other undamaged buildings were at more distant locations on the property.

Airgood said he never experienced such a large fire before that posed challenges such as having to move trucks and other equipment each time another structure began going up in flames. The heat was also tremendous, but not enough to keep firefighters from getting close enough to the flames with their hoses.

Two aerial trucks were brought to douse water on the flames from above and more than 20 departments assisted with the fire. No human injuries were reported.

Hi-Grade Egg Producers operates under the umbrella of Midwest Poultry Services, a sixth-generation family-owned business founded in 1875 and one of the top 10 largest egg producers in the nation. All of the plants combined produce about 1.5 billion eggs annually, distributed mostly in the Midwest, Krouse said.

He said the company has two other egg-producing operations near North Manchester, along with two others in Illinois and Ohio. All of the buildings and chickens lost in the fire will be replaced, he added, and praised the effort involved in dousing the blaze and saving some of the structures.

“The way they fought the fire, everything they did to help us out was outstanding,” Krouse said.