This past weekend I had the pleasure of visiting an organic poultry farm run by Georgie Cartanza. I was shocked to learn it was mostly a one-man business. Most of the technology producers use today saves a lot of physical labor older generations had to do. Luckily instead of turning the temperature up and down by hand, an automatic system regulates the temperature by itself as needed with fans, heaters, etc. Georgie’s goal in her chicken houses is for the birds to feel as little change in temperature as possible.

As we saw in the houses, technology also allows them to be fed automatically. Once the food gets below a certain level a sensor alerts the system to put more food into the feeders. We could even hear the noise of the food going down into their feeders. Once we stepped into the houses for the first time I was pleasantly surprised. The chickens would move away when we stepped in but as we stood there long enough they would slowly get closer and more comfortable with us. For 37,000 chickens in one house, they were barely making noise. Despite some of the misconceptions I’ve heard, the chickens were moving with ease despite being a couple days away from being processed. Being an organic farm comes with certain requirements like having a door for them to come in and out freely to an outdoor space the same size as 50% of their inside space, and enrichments for them to play on. Most people think that the chickens with the access outside would be outside all of the time, but only a few

chicken at a time would step out for a few seconds and go back in. Georgie runs a wonderful farm with making an impressive number of 5 million pounds of chicken per year from all her hard work and previous experience helping other producers start their own farms. I learned a lot about the poultry industry that opened my eyes about possible careers in the future.