HARTFORD, Ohio — A fire damaged buildings and killed chickens at Trillium Layer Site No. 4 on April 20. Trillium Farms is the largest egg producer in Ohio and is ranked fourth in the country. A company spokeswoman said Trillium’s Croton egg farm houses seven million chickens. It was not known at publication time exactly how many chickens were lost in the blaze. The fire was reported at 3:20 a.m. and the glow from the flames could be seen in downtown Columbus, 20 miles away. Firefighters remained on the scene until 1:30 p.m. tamping down hot spots. Thirty-five fire departments responded with 47 trucks on scene at one point. 

 “We do not yet know the cause of the fire,” said company spokeswoman Hinda Mitchell. “All team members were accounted for and we are grateful that no one was harmed in the fire. Several barns are affected, and we do not know the full scale of the loss. This is a terrible situation, and we are devastated by the loss of our hens.”

Hartford Village volunteer fire department Chief Mike Richardson said the fire damaged at least two Trillium Farms buildings, with one building 300 feet long destroyed and another damaged, but fixable. 

 The cause, he says, is believed to be electrical. All the chickens were lost in one building and some chickens were lost in two other buildings due to exposure. Richardson didn’t specifically say how many birds were lost to the blaze.

 “There was a partial roof collapse before we got there,” Richardson said. “Due to the damage we were unable to get inside. It collapsed onto itself. It was so far involved, we did what we could.”

 “We are appreciative of the multiple fire departments and volunteers who responded,” Mitchell said. “We ask for everyone’s patience as we work to understand what happened.”

And it’s not the first time Trillium Farms has been hit with catastrophe. In November of 2018, a three-alarm fire at the farms destroyed one of the egg farm’s pullet barns at that same facility but roughly two miles away. That fire was ruled accidental, though the cause was undetermined.

 In a study from the Ohio Department of Agriculture, from 2013 to 2017, 2.7 million animals confined on farms in the U.S. died in preventable barn fires. The study concluded that 95 percent of them were chickens. The single deadliest fire during this period occurred in 2017 in Indiana, when one million chickens died at the Hi-Grade Egg Producers.

Trillium Farm Holdings LLC is a private company jointly owned by two farming families.

 stablished in 2011, Trillium Farms has grown to be one of the nation’s leading egg producers. Production operations include pullets, cage free pullets, egg-layers and cage free layers. It processes both shell eggs and liquid egg on site.

 Trillium has its own feed mills and trucking operations to transport hens and the feed they consume. The heart of the company is located in Croton and Johnstown, with additional locations in Larue, Marseilles and Mt. Victory, Ohio.