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Better Farming
February 2017
The Business of
Ontario Agriculture
27
FIELD
TRIP
Working to keep up with demand
This Cambridge poultry farm is helping to satisfy the high demand for chicken. A focus on safety and
innovation enables the family to keep production flowing.
by KYLE RODRIGUEZ
C
anadians love their poultry. According to
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canadians
consumed 31.86 kilograms of chicken per person
in 2015 – more than any other meat. Meeting this growing
consumer demand is big business. Canadian poultry and
egg production generated $4.04 billion in revenue, or 6.8
per cent of cash receipts of the country’s farming opera-
tions. No province has more poultry producers than
Ontario, with 39 per cent of the nation’s production
capacity.
Mark Hermann, owner of Whistlebare Poultry Farm in
Cambridge, is one of over one thousand chicken produc-
ers in the province. Taking over from his father Harry, a
European immigrant who built the business, Mark now
works alongside his son, Jonathan.
Together, Mark and Jonathan raise over 150,000 birds
every eight-week quota period. Mark and his family are
incorporating innovative technologies to maximize
production, while maintaining the safety and ethical
standards of the industry.
BF
Mark Hermann, owner of Whistlebare
Poultry Farm, left, and his son Jonathan
walk across fresh December snow toward
one of the five poultry barns housed
on their two properties in Cambridge.
Mark’s father Harry, who emigrated
from Germany in 1957, built and sold
two houses in the area to fund a down
payment on the first farm in 1967. Harry
passed the business along to Mark in the
mid-1990s. In addition to raising poultry,
the family also grows soybeans, corn and
winter wheat.
A softly-peeping mass of approximately 34,000 10-day-old Cobb
breed broiler chicks roam a single story of a Whistlebare Poultry
Farm barn. When they arrive, the mixed-sex chicks have only been
out of an incubator for 12 hours.