January 19, 2011

Australian farm loses thousand chickens in Victorian flood

The Australian state of Victoria has been hit by the same flood in Queensland reported in the last few weeks, drowning about 300,000 chickens.

According to a central Victorian poultry producer, the chickens drowned when sheds at its Serpentine farm were flooded on Saturday (Jan 15).

Vicki Gaudion from Hazledene's Chicken estimates the loss will cost the company up to AUD5 million (US$5.02 million).

Gaudion says it only took an hour to flood the sheds.

"On Saturday afternoon, I received a call from the SES saying it was only two hours away, and we still believed we could have saved the farm but it was just too big," she said.

She continued, "We had it coming from three fronts - from Bendigo, from the overflowing Goulburn Murray channel, and also from Serpentine. So we had no hope of saving the farm."