Story highlights More than one-third of the birds hatched on Thursday morning

Young turkeys, or poults, need to be in heated barns, company said

(CNN) A barn fire at a Massachusetts turkey farm killed 7,000 young birds, devastating the company's potential Thanksgiving business, farm officials said Thursday.

Bob's Turkey Farm posted on Facebook that the turkeys killed were between the ages of one day and three weeks.

"We spend day in and day out feeding, watering, nurturing and growing these animals and to say we are jolted by the loss of so many lives is not enough," the company, based in Lancaster, Massachusetts, said.

According to CNN affiliate WFXT , farm owner Bob Van Hoof said by the time they were able to call 911, the barn was engulfed in flames.

The poults, as the young turkeys are called, have special needs, including heat and special feed to survive, the farm said, which is why there were so many in one barn. About 2,600 had just hatched Thursday morning.

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