Farm Insurance Fundamentals: Why Your Chicken Farm Needs It
If you have recently purchased a bunch of chickens and plan on selling eggs or even meat, you need to talk with your insurance agent about purchasing farm insurance. You might think that your homeowner's insurance is enough, but by itself, it is insufficient. There are coverage needs that a farm insurance policy will address that your home insurance policy will not. Here are a few key reasons to get farm insurance for your chickens.
Liability Protections
Any time you're dealing with any kind of home-grown foods or other product offerings, you need to protect yourself from liability issues. All it would take is one person contracting salmonella from an egg you sold them to leave you in litigation for years and potentially broke.
Your homeowners insurance policy only offers certain protections for liability issues. In fact, most home insurance policies won't protect you in cases of illness or injury from any kind of business venture, which is what this would be considered. A farm insurance policy for your chickens will include coverage language specifically for these types of threats.
Structural Protections
A home insurance policy won't typically cover any additional dwellings on the property. That means you won't have coverage for your chicken coop under your homeowners insurance policy. Purchasing a farm insurance policy will address this. Your farm insurance policy will offer protections to maintain your chicken coops. If the chicken coops sustain any kind of damage, your farm insurance policy will cover the repairs and replacement of those structures.
Animal Replacement Coverage
Homeowners insurance isn't going to provide any kind of coverage to replace your chickens if something should happen to them. A farm insurance policy, on the other hand, will have specific policy language that covers the replacement of your chickens if something should happen. This actually applies to any livestock, so if you decide to add other animals, they can be covered too.
Just remember that, in order to get coverage for your chickens under the policy, you will have to provide pictures and details about each one as part of the policy. That way, you can file a claim related to a specific chicken or to your entire crop if necessary.
Equipment Protection
In addition to covering your chickens and the coops, you'll also get protection for your farm equipment under the farm insurance policy. This is important because your homeowners insurance, auto insurance, and similar policies won't cover this machinery. Since farm equipment is a significant investment, having coverage like this is important.
Share
