Farbest Foods expects to raise more than 1 million turkeys a year in brooding barns being built northeast of Lewis, Indiana. The company is building six turkey brooding barns, with each barn measuring 30,000 square feet.
Each of the six brooding barns will receive 28,200 day-old turkeys every eight weeks. When completed, the facility will be the Farbest’s eighth company-owned brooding barn facility
“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,” Jay Houchin, Farbest Foods live production manager, told the Vincennes Sun-Commercial.
The 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 young turkeys are in Wabash Valley counties in Indiana, as well as in some counties in Illinois.
“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 added.
Farbest Foods obtained reclaimed former mining property for the brooding barns.
Two other buildings will be erected on the site, including an office/shop building and a three-sided covered compost building.
