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VERNON ACHENBACH JR.
Lancaster Farming Staff
BUFFALO SPRINGS (Leba
non Co.) The roofs of the pair
of poultry houses gleam like a
small lake in a valley near Buffalo
Springs in Lebanon County.
Beneath those roofs are two of
the longest turkey raising facilities
in the East At 915 feet, they are the
longest poultry facility under con
tract to Round Hill turkey pro
ducts, a $65 million-a-year turkey
products producer which has
markets in the New England and
Middle Atlantic states.
Family farm operators Glenn
Wenger and son Steve decided to
invest a large sum of money in the
building when figures showed that
it would more than pay for itself
within the 10-year contract they
have to supply turkeys for Round
Hill.
In addition, the family was look
ing at a way to expand as the fami
ly and family needs expanded, said
Glenn and Steve during an open
house held Tuesday at Wencrest
Farm N 0.2.
“That’s the way the whole thing
is trending,” Steve said, “toward
largo’ operations. Bigger family
farms. You don’t want to take the
family out of-the farm.”
And the Wengers have no inten
tion of eliminating any immediate
family from the farm.
But to protect cash flow, turkeys
seemed like the answer, according
to Steve.
The Wengers already raise hen
turkeys and milk 90 cows at the
first farm. The cow operation
could have been expanded, but
Glenn said his knees suffer from
years of milking cows and manag
ing the birds are more to his liking.
Glenn lives in the house of the
new farm. He’s mainly taking
responsibility for the tuikey rais
ing while Steve, living at the home
farm house, is milking the Holstein
milking string with new brother
in-law Scott Baker.
The milking herd is no slouch,
with a rolling herd average of
22,100 pounds of milk.
The Wengers also grow 320
acres of com, 140 acres of soy
beans, 50 acres wheat and 70 acres
of alfalfa for haylage. The com is
taken in as silage, high moisture
com and the rest is shelled and
sold.
The cows are fed a totally mixed,
ration and achieved higher produc
tion because of it, Steve said.
In addition, the Wengers raise
all the bull calves as steer and
Between the two long turkey buildings are feed storage bins connected to an auger
pipeline delivery system. The three tanks of propane fuel are used to keep brooder
houses at the correct temperature for keeping poults healthy and growing. The win
dow curtains along the side windows allows good, adjustable cross ventilation.
Long Turke;
market them through a Ideal cattle
broker. Currently they have 100
Holtein steers getting ready for
market
Financially, die best bet
appeared to be expanding the turk
ey operation, they said.
They have a minimum guaran
teed price of 4 cents per pound, and
they can reasonably expect to turn
over almost three batches of
40,000 mature tom turkeys each
year, weighing about 30 pounds
each.
The contracting company uses
about half hens and half toms for
its operation, with recent emphasis
going to the value-added products
such as smoked turkey, turkey
ham, etc., according to John
Menges, of New Oxford, represen
tative for Round Hill.
Menges said that Round Hill
contracts for S.S million birds a
year to come from 79 different
facilities located in a 12-county
area within south central Pennsyl
vania and northern Maryland.
He said that demand for the
whole birds has dropped while the
demand for speciality meats has
increased, thus the demand for the
toms.
The Wengers also raise hen
turkeys under contract to Round
Hill. At the home farm, Wencrest
Farm No.l, the female birds are
grown inside a three-story,
300-plus-foot facility.
According to Steve, the hens
have a turn around of about 13
weeks with bird weights at about
IS pounds. The hens are used for
whole bird sales.
Chore Time was the supplier of
the production equipment, includ
ing feeders, feed silos, etc.
Richard Eaton, of Salisbury,
Md., district manager for Chore-
Time, said that the Wenger houses
are the longest he’s ever outfitted,
east of the Mississippi. The next in
line for length is a house 910 feet
long in Virginia.
The reason for the length of the
building comes back to profit
margin it’s less expensive to
install one long building, thus a
reduction in the cost per bird that
has to be invested.
Also. Steve said he and his
father wanted the long buildings
because with a brooder facility for
21,000 birds in each building the
growing birds can be moved to the
finishing stage with relative ease.
The first shipment of birds is
scheduled for this coming week.
First the birds will be kept in the
brooder area, which comprises
House, Long Future
. brooder e;. jneoft. - 5-foot long turkey raising buildings ends where the
people furtherest away stand Inspecting the almost completed facility. Along the base
of the walls are rodent-prevention concrete barriers. Rows of feeders, waterers and
heaters trail back to the end of the brooder section.
about a quarter of the three
football-field-long buildings. The
temperatures have to be controlled
and propane heaters are suspended
from the ceiling.
When those birds are old
enough and huge enough, they are
moved to the remainder of the long
house for finishing out their
weight Ideally, the temperature
should be kept cool.
The buildings are basically long
pole bams, with the support posts
in concrete footers. A 2-foot-high
section of concrete stretches along
the walls and appears as a footer,
but it’s really a rodent-prevention
device.
Floors are earthen and can be
scraped with a skid-loader. The
cement rodent wall should also
make less likely any damage to the
building during cleaning.
Thick gauge chicken wire mesh
covers the windows and adjustable
horizontal curtains allow for a var
ying amount of air movement
Fans have been installed also to
help move air throughout the
building.
Jay Zimmerman, sales represen
tative for Farmer Boy Ag, the com
pany which built and helped
designed the facility, said that the
building is the longest poultry
facility the Myerstown-based
swine and poultry systems com
pany has tackled to date.
Zimmerman said that the specif
ic design came as a result of work-
Right hand near his ever-present walkie talkie, Glenn
Wenger considers a question by an open house guest. The
walkie talkies keep the Wengers In constant communica
tion, an Important safety and efficiency aspect to their
operation.
ing with all the businesses
involved to determine needs and
then proceed with a design which
the owners accepted.
Steve Wenger said the only real
changes to the design provided by
Farmer Boy Ag and Round Hill
were the additions of more auto
mated equipment and a computer.
The wood frame is mostly
2-by-4s and 2-by-8s with some
lathing-size strips holding up plas
tic underroofing. The 6 inches of
insulation is blown into the space
between the roof and the plastic.
The 60-acre farm where the new
buildings are located was recently
purchased by the Wengers. Settle
ment was in March. It had been
cash cropped for the last several
years and was a dairy farm, before
the former owner participated in
the federal dairy herd buyout
program.
The permits required to put up
the facility, under local municipal
ordinance, included a stipulation
that the Wengers had to submit an
acceptable nutrient management
plan in order to receive the okay
for the building permit
Altogether, the Wengers farm
600 acres, which is not enough
land to adequately sustain continu
ous application of the cow and bird
manure (including compost).
In order to get approval for
building permits, Glenn said he
had to go to neighboring farmers
who have cash cropping opera
tions. and ask them if they would
take his manure. Three formers
signed that they would, giving the
Wengers the go-ahead for the
poultry houses.
Glenn said that he does not have
a contingency plan in case some
thing happens to the owners of the
farms and he is forced to seek alter
native uses for the manure.
(Turn to Pago A2S)