On Saturday (9/22), we went on our first field trip to Georgie Cartanza’s poultry farm. From growing up on a farm I knew a little about raising poultry for consumption. On my neighbors farm where he grew broilers we had two watering stations for 20-30 birds and a box fan that was lifted off the ground to help regulate the temperature of the birds. But to be able to have an insight of it from a much larger standpoint like Georgie’s farm was a great experience to be a part of. What I didn’t know is how much more time, money, and research that goes into having a big poultry farm like hers. This includes everything from ways to compost the dead birds by also helping the environment, having mechanical/ gravity fed feeders and watering stations that are able to be raised up to the ceiling to have access to the birds when catching, and even having the ability to access a control panel that is linked to her phone to tell her what the temperature is of each of the houses. One of the most fascinating things that I found out was that when the birds are getting ready to be loaded into the creates to be brought to the processing plants, the workers who load the birds still have to catch them by hand. And when catching they are usually able to grab 3-4 birds per hand. I that’s what my brother, my neighbor, and myself do when we’re getting ready to prep the birds for slaughter. I figured with all of the technology we have today there would be a much faster and easier way to catch each of the 148,000 birds that Georgie has instead of doing it by hand. Another thing that is nice to know is that the poultry industry is a huge influence for the community. Georgie was saying that for every one job in the poultry business it creates seven jobs within the community which I thought was great. And we also had the opportunity to meet Georgie’s dog!