GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

T&T’s poul­try farm­ers are nav­i­gat­ing a pe­ri­od of pro­duc­tion chal­lenges, wa­ter con­cerns and ris­ing op­er­at­ing costs that are putting pres­sure on the coun­try’s sup­ply of eggs and chick­ens, with con­cerns be­ing ex­pressed that re­duced avail­abil­i­ty could lead to high­er prices of the coun­try’s favourite pro­tein.

On Wednes­day, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries is­sued a news re­lease out­lin­ing that “the cur­rent tight­en­ing of poul­try sup­ply is be­ing in­clu­enced by a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors,” in­clud­ing “ex­cep­tion­al­ly hot con­di­tions” among the con­sid­er­a­tions.

While some poul­try farm­ers are re­port­ing sig­nif­i­cant heat ef­fects on their op­er­a­tions, the lat­est da­ta from the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices Di­vi­sion in­di­cate that “the month­ly av­er­age tem­per­a­tures­for 2026 are gen­er­al­ly close to the long-term av­er­age.”

Ques­tioned on what the Met Ser­vices da­ta show about re­cent tem­per­a­tures com­pared with the his­tor­i­cal av­er­age for this time of year, act­ing chief cli­ma­tol­o­gist Kaidar Kissoon said there have been “no sig­nif­i­cant tem­per­a­ture anom­alies” ob­served at Pi­ar­co so far.

The da­ta shows that:

* Jan­u­ary 2026 record­ed an av­er­age tem­per­a­ture of 31°C, ex­act­ly in line with the long-term av­er­age;

* Feb­ru­ary was slight­ly warmer at 31.5°C, com­pared with a long-term av­er­age of 31.3°C, which was al­so the tem­per­a­ture in Feb­ru­ary 2025;

* March 2026 record­ed an av­er­age tem­per­a­ture 31.7°C, be­low its long-term av­er­age of 32.1°C and be­low the March 2025 av­er­age of 32.7°C;

* April 2026 was al­so be­low av­er­age, record­ing 32.1°C com­pared with the long-term av­er­age of 32.8°C. The av­er­age tem­per­a­ture in April 2025 was 32.4°C

* The biggest dif­fer­ence in the avail­able 2026 fig­ures came in May, when Pi­ar­co record­ed an av­er­age of 33°C, com­pared with the long-term av­er­age of 32.7°C and a May 2025 av­er­age of 31.5°C.

* June av­er­aged 31.6°C, just be­low the long-term av­er­age of 31.7°C (31°C last June);

* Ju­ly record­ed 31.8°C, com­pared with a long-term av­er­age of 32°C and 32.2°C in Ju­ly 2025.

Four of the first sev­en months of the year record­ed av­er­age tem­per­a­tures that were be­low the long-term av­er­age and less than for the same months last year.

Heat sea­son con­tin­ues

The ab­sence of a sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al tem­per­a­ture anom­aly, how­ev­er, does not mean farm­ers should ig­nore heat man­age­ment.

The Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices said the heat sea­son runs from April to Oc­to­ber, with Au­gust to Oc­to­ber nor­mal­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing “ex­ces­sive heat and high tem­per­a­tures.”

The cur­rent out­look is for heat to con­tin­ue through Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber, ease some­what in Oc­to­ber and de­crease more no­tice­ably in No­vem­ber.

Farm­ers have been ad­vised to in­crease ven­ti­la­tion in poul­try pens and hatch­eries, in­stall blinds and oth­er de­vices to pre­vent di­rect so­lar ra­di­a­tion from en­ter­ing the fa­cil­i­ties, and pro­vide an­i­mals with fresh, cool wa­ter.

Pro­duc­tion drops sharply

For Tarou­ba-based egg pro­duc­er Kester Hors­ford, those prepa­ra­tions have be­come a ne­ces­si­ty.

Hors­ford en­tered the egg in­dus­try in Jan­u­ary this year, op­er­at­ing a fa­cil­i­ty with rough­ly 4,500 lay­er hens.

The busi­ness got off to a strong start, with the farm achiev­ing about a 95 per cent yield dur­ing the first quar­ter and pro­duc­ing near­ly 3,600 eggs a day.

“From Jan­u­ary to March, it was a healthy pro­duc­tion,” Hors­ford said.

But pro­duc­tion fell sharply be­tween June and Au­gust. Dai­ly out­put dropped to about four box­es, or rough­ly 1,200 eggs a day, which rep­re­sent­ed a re­duc­tion of about two-thirds from the farm’s ear­li­er pro­duc­tion lev­els.

Hors­ford said the farm al­so lost about 30 per cent of its flock dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

Vet­eri­nary in­spec­tions found no in­fec­tious dis­ease among the birds, he said, with the vets iden­ti­fy­ing heat as the main con­cern.

“Our birds are reg­u­lar­ly vis­it­ed by the vets, and the on­ly thing they say is the heat,” Hors­ford said.

The farm has since in­tro­duced ad­di­tion­al in­dus­tri­al fans and has been cool­ing the birds’ drink­ing wa­ter.

“We have been adding ice to our wa­ter. We run ice wa­ter now for them. We in­creased the ven­ti­la­tion. It’s a strug­gle right now to get back that pro­duc­tion,” he said.

Hors­ford said oth­er farm­ers with­in his pro­duc­er net­work have re­port­ed sim­i­lar dif­fi­cul­ties.

Man­ag­ing con­di­tions in­side poul­try hous­es

Pro­fes­sor Wayne Gan­pat, for­mer Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, said tem­per­a­ture is an im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tion for live­stock pro­duc­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly where poul­try is kept at rel­a­tive­ly high stock­ing den­si­ties.

He said com­mer­cial broil­er and lay­er op­er­a­tions com­mon­ly house large num­bers of birds in en­closed fa­cil­i­ties.

When tem­per­a­tures rise, in­ad­e­quate air­flow and high stock­ing den­si­ties can make it hard­er for birds to reg­u­late their body tem­per­a­tures.

Gan­pat said some farms house “one bird per square foot”, mak­ing ven­ti­la­tion and stock­ing den­si­ty im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tions.

One op­tion avail­able to farm­ers dur­ing pe­ri­ods of heat is to re­duce the num­ber of birds in a pen.

But do­ing so can al­so re­duce pro­duc­tion.

“The way to deal with it is to re­duce the amount of birds in your pen and when you’re re­duc­ing the amount of birds in your pen, the through­put is less. And, of course, that rais­es the price of the fi­nal prod­uct. Sup­ply and de­mand—you’re go­ing to have less sup­ply, and it’s go­ing to raise the price of the prod­uct,” Gan­pat ex­plained.

For pro­duc­ers with the re­sources, longer-term mea­sures could in­clude im­proved ven­ti­la­tion, ex­haust fans, mist­ing sys­tems and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal con­trols.

How­ev­er, those sys­tems re­quire cap­i­tal in­vest­ment and can in­crease elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion.

Gan­pat said heat could af­fect oth­er ar­eas of live­stock pro­duc­tion as well not­ing that milk pro­duc­tion would drop, as well as meat from sheep and goats.

He al­so stressed the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing lo­cal food pro­duc­tion while im­prov­ing the in­dus­try’s abil­i­ty to re­spond to pe­ri­ods of high­er tem­per­a­tures.

“Fresh is al­ways bet­ter, so we should al­ways go for fresh and pro­duce more poul­try, but we have to get the heat wave re­sponse right for the fu­ture,” Gan­pat said.

Weath­er is on­ly part of the prob­lem

Agri­cul­ture con­sul­tant Riyadh Mo­hammed said the dif­fi­cul­ties fac­ing poul­try farm­ers can­not be at­trib­uted to weath­er alone.

He point­ed to a com­bi­na­tion of is­sues af­fect­ing the sec­tor, in­clud­ing chang­ing rain­fall pat­terns, un­re­li­able wa­ter sup­plies to farms, in­ad­e­quate ven­ti­la­tion, cau­tious chick place­ments, high­er im­port­ed feed costs and com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps across the sup­ply chain.

Mo­hammed said the in­dus­try needs a more co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse when weath­er con­di­tions place ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on pro­duc­tion.

“The first pri­or­i­ty is to pro­tect farm pro­duc­tion dur­ing ex­treme weath­er. The Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, WASA, poul­try as­so­ci­a­tions, hatch­eries, feed com­pa­nies, proces­sors and farm­ers should cre­ate an emer­gency co­or­di­na­tion group,” he sug­gest­ed.

He said the group could pro­vide reg­u­lar up­dates on pro­ject­ed sup­ply, chick place­ments, ar­eas ex­pe­ri­enc­ing wa­ter stress and ex­pect­ed re­cov­ery pe­ri­ods.

Such co­or­di­na­tion, he said, could help re­duce mis­in­for­ma­tion, pan­ic buy­ing and un­cer­tain­ty among con­sumers and busi­ness­es.

Wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty should al­so be treat­ed as an im­por­tant part of live­stock plan­ning, Mo­hammed said.

In the short term, he sug­gest­ed that reg­is­tered com­mer­cial farms in vul­ner­a­ble ar­eas re­ceive pri­or­i­ty emer­gency wa­ter de­liv­er­ies at trans­par­ent and af­ford­able rates.

Over time, farm­ers could be as­sist­ed with wa­ter tanks, pumps, back­up stor­age and rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing sys­tems for suit­able non-potable us­es, in­clud­ing cool­ing roofs and clean­ing.

“Every com­mer­cial farm should main­tain a sim­ple wa­ter-se­cu­ri­ty plan cov­er­ing dai­ly de­mand, stor­age, emer­gency con­tacts and al­ter­nate sup­plies,” he said.

Mo­hammed said farm­ers do not nec­es­sar­i­ly need to be­gin with ex­pen­sive tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove their abil­i­ty to cope with dif­fi­cult con­di­tions.

Bet­ter air­flow, shade struc­tures, in­su­lat­ed or re­flec­tive roof­ing, ridge ven­ti­la­tion, tem­per­a­ture mon­i­tor­ing and ap­pro­pri­ate stock­ing den­si­ties could all help im­prove con­di­tions in­side poul­try hous­es.

He said gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance should be aimed at en­cour­ag­ing in­vest­ment rather than cre­at­ing de­pen­den­cy.

In­stead of fi­nanc­ing every farm im­prove­ment di­rect­ly, Mo­hammed rec­om­mend­ed match­ing grants, con­ces­sion­al fi­nanc­ing and clear tech­ni­cal stan­dards to en­cour­age pro­duc­ers to adopt more re­silient prac­tices.

For small­er poul­try farm­ers, he said re­li­able wa­ter sup­plies and im­proved ven­ti­la­tion should come be­fore ex­pen­sive au­to­mat­ed sys­tems.

Mo­hammed is al­so call­ing on com­mer­cial banks, cred­it unions and agri­cul­tur­al lenders to de­vel­op poul­try-spe­cif­ic loan prod­ucts with re­pay­ment sched­ules suit­ed to agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion cy­cles.

He said some ex­ist­ing fi­nanc­ing arrange­ments do not re­flect the cash-flow re­al­i­ties of farm­ing, leav­ing pro­duc­ers un­der pres­sure even when their busi­ness­es are prof­itable.

Grants and low-in­ter­est fi­nanc­ing, he added, could be linked to ba­sic re­quire­ments such as farm records, wa­ter-man­age­ment plans, biose­cu­ri­ty stan­dards and par­tic­i­pa­tion in train­ing pro­grammes.