Broiler chicken supply to stabilise this month, says Green

The country should begin seeing an increase in the availability of broiler chickens later this month, after sections of Jamaica experienced a shortage in the product during February.

The announcement was made by Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, Floyd Green, as he responded to questions on Friday during the sitting of the Standing of Finance Committee at Gordon House.

He noted that during Hurricane Melissa in October 2025, the poultry sector lost approximately 700,000 broiler chickens, majority of which came from small backyard farmers who lost birds and coups.

“They are now in the process of reestablishing, so the sector has gone through some tightness. Based on the numbers that we have been tracking from about the third week in January to parts of February, we would have had a reduction in production, below the normal level,” Green explained.

He added that Jamaica’s standard broiler production exceeds two million chickens.

“But based on our intervention, we have distributed about 80,000 baby chicks, [and] our engagement with the companies we expect to see our broiler market return sometime during this month in terms of parity for the demand,” Green stated.

Meanwhile, the Minister advised that the layer chicken market is expected to rebound sometime in June.

He disclosed that over 400,000 layers were lost in Hurricane Melissa, which compounded the 40,000 lost the previous year during Hurricane Beryl.

“We do expect based on our engagements with the private sector, that we will have about 320,000 layers ready by June. Until then, there will still be some tightness in terms of people being able to get layers,” Green said.

He further noted that this will also impact the availability of local table eggs, which should begin improving by August.

“Based on our projections we expect when those 320,000 birds come back into the market about May/June, probably we are still looking at July/August before we see parity return,” the agriculture minister advised.

The Ministry committed to ongoing consultation with the Jamaica Egg Farmers Association to ensure official data reflects the experience of producers.

- JIS News

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