Poultry
Overview
Poultry farmers raise chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys. There are two types of chicken farms: one that raises the chickens for meat, and the other one that raises chickens for eggs.
Poultry barns have technology that needs to be managed, like these feeders and watering lines that can be raised as the chicks grow.
Large modern poultry farms will only raise one type of bird such as egg layers. Some small farmers might raise different breeds of chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese. There are no big-scale duck and geese farms like there are for chickens and turkeys.
This is a modern turkey farm where feeders and watering lines run on the sides of the barns for the birds.
Year at a Glance
Farmers buy their chickens or turkeys from a hatchery when they are only one day old. The birds are raised in barns and farmers take very good care of them until they are ready to go to the processing plants.
Farmers enter the control room of a barn in the morning to check that the temperature, humidity, and ventilation are all working properly. Then they enter the barn with clean, barn specific boots to check that there is enough feed and water, and also repair anything that is not working properly.
The poultry barns have a lot of technology that has to be monitored by the farmers.
The farmers record what they see in the barn twice a day including the temperature, humidity levels, and thermal comfort of the birds. Back-up power generators and alarms are tested periodically in case an emergency, such as a power outage, happens and can be dealt with.
This is a close-up photo of a turkey head!
Turkey farms are especially busy near Thanksgiving and Christmas time. They have to make sure their turkeys are the right weight and size for holidays so they can sell them to grocery stores and local customers.
Christmas and Thanksgiving are busy times for turkey farmers because many people use turkeys for holiday meals.
