Poultry Your Way - Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems ...

MANAGEMENT
ALTERNATIVES
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FARM PROFILE • Industrial: Confinement
some that are almost fully mature, and “birds are naturally cannibalistic,” Joel adds. The term “pecking order” came
from a common bird behavior in which weak birds are attacked and often killed.
Some people think that turkeys would be better off in less restricted environments—open or free range. Joel
doesn’t agree. “Some people do grow turkeys in open range,” he said. “But you lose your control over the
environment. Skunks, opossums, raccoons—a whole range of omnivores and rodents—spread diseases such as
cholera. Birds such as starlings carry avian influenza and mycoplasmic diseases.” Joel likes his turkeys inside, where
he can exercise effective environmental controls.
Family-size business
While 100,000 turkeys sounds like a lot, Joel said his is really
about a family-size operation. He employs one other person
full-time. His wife and three daughters, ages fourteen, twelve
and ten, work when new poults arrive and must be settled
into their new homes, 720 to each cardboard ring. From then
on, it’s a monitoring process for Joel and his employee. Daily
chores include:
• Monitor new poults. They need to be checked every
couple of hours during the first few days. Little turkeys
can die if they get turned on their backs as they sleep, so
Joel walks through, staff in hand, and stirs up the sleepers.
• Pick up dead birds.
• Check and move drinkers, which hang from the ceiling.
If litter is wet, fork it up so it dries and remains friable.
• Check feeding system. Feed moves into feeder pans from
bins serving each barn. There are two 18-ton grain bins at
each grower barn and two 9-ton bins at the brooder
barns. Flexible augers deliver grain to feed pans
suspended from the ceiling.
Two-day old turkey poults in brooder house, 720 poults
within each ring.
It takes about an hour per barn per day for this monitoring, Joel said. Other routine, but not daily, tasks include
manure management. Joel is one of a few poultry producers who composts manure. He uses four acres of land
and generates 1,500 to 2,000 cubic yards of compost each year. “We hope to cover our costs,” he said of the
composting operation. Joel sells the compost, mainly to organic farmers. As markets become better established
and more growers see the value of compost, he hopes it will command a profit. “We no longer make sales of small
quantities,” he said. “It is just too time consuming.” But with just a few acres of land, and no crop production,
manure has to move away from the farm, and do so in a nonoffensive manner. The farm is right outside the town
of Hamilton—and upwind. The manure composts “acceptably,” Joel said. All barns are bedded with softwood
shavings. Each brooder barn is cleaned out completely and disinfected between batches of poults. Brooder barn
waste is high in shavings (carbon) and low in manure (nitrogen).
Grower barns need not be cleaned completely or often. The litter in the growing barns is kept dry and aired out
by mechanical rototilling until the barns become so crowded with maturing birds there’s no longer room for the
tractor. During the last few weeks, a crust of concentrated manure builds up, and is removed before a new batch
of birds comes in. High-nitrogen manure and the brooder barn shavings compost fairly well. Overall, he said, the
carbon to nitrogen ratio is 15 to 18 to 1; an optimal level would be a higher carbon 30 to 1.