Farbest Farms expects to raise more than 1 million turkeys a year in brooding barns under construction northeast of Lewis.
The company is building six turkey brooding barns, made of concrete floors and concrete stem walls, and each barn will measure 60 feet wide and 500 feet long, which is 30,000 square feet.
Two other buildings will be erected on the site, including an office/shop building, measuring 42 feet by 68 feet, with shower facilities and a three-sided covered compost building, measuring 30 feet by 40 feet, with concrete stem walls.
Each of the six brooding barns will receive 28,200 day-old turkeys every eighth weeks.
“We will house these for about 38 days and then they will be moved to contract family farms to finish growing until 20 weeks (old), then they go to market,” said Jay Houchin, live production manager for Farbest Farms.
The Vigo facility will grow 170,000 turkeys in the 38 days or 1.1 million a year, Houchin said. The family farms that will take the small birds are located in Wabash Valley counties as well as in some counties in Illinois, Houchin said.
“It is a shower in and shower out facility,” Houchin said, as the barns will be cleaned and disinfected after each flock prior to the next arriving. The waste from the enclosed facility will be hauled away from the site, Houchin said.
For biosecurity purposes, the office/shop is for showing in prior to entering the farm to prevent bringing pathogenic agents onto the farm and showering out when leaving the farm.
As far as compost, Houchin said the volume of waste from each flock “is not a whole bunch” as the birds are young.
Farbest Farms obtained reclaimed former mining property for the brooding barns. Because it falls under the state’s agriculture exemption as a right to farm state, building design plans did not have to be approved by the state. In addition, the facility is not open to the public, said Vigo County Building Inspector Paul Mason, who said his department has approved footers for the facility.
The county’s health department approved septic facilities and Natural Resources Conservation Service approved a construction erosion plan. The brooding’s eight buildings have an estimated construction cost of $1.67 million, according to building permits filed at the Vigo County Building Inspection Department.
“This will be the eighth company-owned (brooding barn) facility,” Houchin said. The birds from the brooding barn, when fully raised on family farms, will be processed at Farbest Farm’s fully-automated, 227-000 square-foot processing plant in Vincennes.
Farbest Farms currently has other brooding barns in Dubois, Martin, Washington, Pike, Spencer and Knox counties and one in McLean County, Kentucky.
Vigo County was selected for the single purpose brooding barns for its geographic location to the Vincennes processing plant and to family farms, Houchin said. “We also wanted to be able to get onto U.S. 41 as a connector to our facility in Vincennes,” Houchin said. The Vigo County brooding barns, expected to be in operation in mid to late May at 11100 East Stephen Drive, will employ five full-time workers, Houchin said.