April 27, 2009

EXCLUSIVE

No one 'playing chicken' at Wright Poultry Farm

By Scott Wright

OSCEOLA — A visit to Wright Poultry Farm at the wrong time can be a squawking, feathery assault on the senses. But unless you're a vegetarian, be thankful that the folks who maintain four 500-foot-long chicken houses in the Osceola community don't mind the “fowl” aroma. It keeps food on their family's table and, ultimately, yours as well.

Mark Wright has been raising chickens for almost four years. He first hatched the idea in 2003 while working at Cherokee Milling, a granary in Centre.
“I started talking to some of the guys who were already raising chickens,” Mark says. “I heard Cagle's was interested in expanding their operation and I was looking to do something different.”

These days, the farm raises chickens for Koch's Foods, which has an office in Montgomery. The company's processing plant is in Gadsden.
“They supply chickens to food service distributors, fast food restaurants and grocery stores across the Southeast,” Mark says.

After Mark made his decision to leave the granary, he spent a significant amount of time – much more than he initially planned – simply getting started.

“I had to go through the process of getting money to build the chicken houses,” Mark says. “When I built, the houses cost about $140,000 each. Now costs have gone up considerably because they are building houses that are bigger than ours, and the cost of material is higher.”

After the bank came through with the start-up cash, there was a ream of government permits to apply for.
“I thought I'd have all my paperwork together in, maybe, a month,” Mark says. “But from the time we started, it was a year before we could even break ground.”
Mark says he and his father, Neil, spent the interim laying waterlines, building roads and preparing the site for construction of four 40 ft. by 500 ft. houses. Construction finally began in November 2004.

“We placed our first flock of birds about seven months later, in May 2005,” Mark says. “It was close to two years from the time I had the idea until we actually got going.”

Mark says each delivery of hatchlings stays on-site for a little over a month. That's how much time he has to grow the baby chicks to their ideal weight of just over 4 pounds.

“They're just little fuzz balls when we get them,” Mark says. “The first 10 days are the most labor intensive, because I manually feed them at the start.”

Mark says the chicks start out in one end of the house. As they grow, partitions are drawn back that expose more and more floor space, until they reach full size and take up all 20,000 square feet.

“The whole process takes anywhere from 35 to 38 days,” he says.


28 days later
After the chicks arrive, the Wrights spend four weeks maintaining tolerable temperatures, monitoring feed and water delivery systems, and making sure the birds stay comfortable and healthy.
“A lot has changed, technology-wise, over the last 20 years that makes our job easier than it used to be,” Mark says. “We have a computer system that monitors all four houses.”

Mark says the computer can turn on fans to regulate the temperature. The system also checks water pressure. If anything goes wrong, the computer calls his home phone and a recorded message describes the problem.
“Seems like it's usually around 3 o'clock in the morning when that happens,” Mark adds with a grin.
Mark says his supplier sends a field representative to the farm after the chicks have been in-house for 28 days. The rep's job is to estimate a date for pick-up based on the average weight of the birds.

“They'll give us a projected date for the birds to reach the target size,” Mark says. “It used to be 3.95 lbs. but they've gone up a bit, to 4.07 lbs. They give us a couple more days to add the extra weight, which can make a lot of difference.”

The initial shipment per house is usually around 30,000 chicks. Hopefully, at least 97 percent of them will make the trip to the processing plant.

“The higher, the better,” Mark says. “More weight equals more money.”


Hot and cold
Mark says one of the most expensive aspects of chicken farming is keeping the hatchlings warm in the winter. The ideal temperature for raising chickens varies from 74 to 91 degrees, depending on the age of the birds.

“That's our challenge, paying the gas bill,” he says. “Some people don't take birds in the winter because it costs so much. Basically, we're just hoping to break even from December through the middle of March.”
Mark says there are plenty of other challenges, too. During the two-week interval between fully-grown chickens leaving the farm and the arrival of the next batch of chicks, there's plenty of work to do.

“We have to get anything that's wet off the floor, blow off the walls and then put down a fresh load of shavings before we get approved by our field rep to take the next batch,” Mark says.
He credits his family, particularly his parents, with helping him become a successful business owner.

“There are a lot of things that would never get done if it wasn't for mamas and daddies,” Mark says.