As late as 2020 Poland had the title of being the largest poultry producer in the EU.

The first cases of A.I started at the beginning of January 2021 and continued till the beginning of June. 5 months of instability and stress in fear for the next case to be found and how it will affect the functioning of farms, slaughterhouses, local markets…

During this period there have been 360 declared outbreaks in Poland and as a result 1,010,000 ducks (including 106,000 PS) and 180,000 geese (including 32,000 PS) have been culled.

In total, 12 127 000 poultry birds (including 1 780 000 PS) – layers, hens, geese, ducks, turkeys, guinea fowl – were eliminated in Poland.

The most affected areas were Wielkopolski and Mazowiecki, where the country’s largest producers are located and where there is the greatest concentration of farms.

The seriousness of the Polish market situation is further reinforced by the A.I. epidemic in the Czech Republic, where the largest producer lost 90,000 Peking PS ducks, reducing its supply to Poland by 6 million ducks.

The replacement of the PS herds will take almost a year.

In these difficult times Grimaud Freres partners remained stable. These are companies like AMI and Wielkopolska spolka drobiarska DROB that are the biggest producers in Poland and that took supply from Grimaud Freres of Pekin females over the past 6 months.

As mentioned above, Grimaud Freres has been very proud to announce the relaunch of our PS Pekin deliveries for our historical customer Plemreproduktor Zelenchukskii following the avian flu outbreak that struck his farm in September 2020.

The situation was quite complicated and the new flock was long awaited in Zelenchukskii’s duck farm.

Our delivery took place with a rather unusual and rarely known change of situation: the plane of the flight Paris – Moscow experienced technical problems and had to return to Roissy – Paris.

Moreover, despite 52 hours of transportation between our hatchery and our customer’s farm, we only deploy 2.5% mortality, which once again demonstrates the quality of our ducklings and our professionalism in preparing such shipments.

Grimaud Freres will continue accompanying his customer, all along the production period with regular visits as well as through technical data exchange on regular basis in order to obtain the best technical performances.