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HAY RIVER
Nestled away in Delancey Estates, at the bottom of a hill on the outskirts of Hay River, 118,000 Bovan chickens diligently peck away at feed day and night, in rows 400-feet long, to produce one-tenth of a million eggs daily.

Glen Wallington, manager of Hay River Poultry Farms Ltd., stands at the end of a 400-foot row of chickens in one of the company's two chicken barns. When the barns are at full production, he said the chickens can produce approximately 110,000 eggs each day. - Herb Mathisen/NNSL photo

"You'd be amazed by how many people are surprised that there is a chicken barn out here," said Glen Wallington, manager of Hay River Poultry Farms Ltd.

Wallington moved to Hay River from Northern B.C. in 1994 to take a position as the pastor of the town's Baptist church. While he'd never been involved with farming – outside of some homesteading with a few chickens, a cow and a goat, he said – Wallington took the job at the barn because he didn't want to leave Hay River.

"This is the first major farming endeavor I've undertaken," he said.

And it's quite an undertaking.

Wallington has to keep roughly 118,000 chickens happy, in the 64,000-foot facility that contains two barns, a cooler, a packing area and a maintenance shop.

The chickens live in two separate barns and Wallington said it takes about 10 minutes for an egg to travel down the system of conveyors from the far end of the laying plant to the packing area.

Food, light levels, feed and temperature are monitored very carefully, said Wallington, since these factors affect the chickens' mood and productivity.

"Basically, our goal is to make them as comfortable as possible; a happy chicken lays at full production," he said, adding a chicken will lay about five eggs each week. He said the chickens typically lay their eggs between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. each day.

"When the birds are at full production, we're packing about 110,000 eggs each day," he said.

One of the challenges he faces is keeping the temperature perfect. The barns were noticeably warmer than the packing station and Wallington said heat was being generated by the chickens. The barns are kept between 21 C and 24 C, he said, but because a chicken's body temperature is about 60 C, they have to suck out warm air from the barn, even in the winter.

Wallington said the less noise the chickens make, the more content they are. To his credit, the conveyor system was actually louder than the 50,000 chickens in one of the barns, because when the conveyors were turned off, the predominant sound was the pecking of thousands of beaks into food troughs.

Wallington said the chickens are fed three to four times a day, but added they have access to food whenever they want it.

With so many chickens, the amount it takes to feed them – and the amount of feed going through them – is staggering. He said the chickens eat roughly 80 to 90 tonnes of mixed and pelletized feed each week.

As a result, they produce "a dump truck load of manure a day."

Wallington showed off 400,000 eggs sitting in the plant's coolers. Those eggs, he said, would be weighed in Hay River and then shipped to breaking plants from Vancouver Island, to Winnipeg, Man., where they will be used to make industrial products such as mayonnaise.

Wallington said upgrades to the town's grading plant will soon make it possible for them to sell their eggs in supermarkets across the NWT, under the tentative brand name, Polar Eggs.

Wallington said the licence may come through by January 2012, adding it has been 10 years since eggs from a Northern producer have been sold in the North.

"A lot of people are excited about the aspect of eggs being sold in the territories," he said, with fresh eggs potentially on shelves across the territory in less than a week, and less than a day in Hay River.

Wallington performs maintenance work in the barn and admittedly does "a lot of paperwork." He said very stringent records are kept, as the chicken industry is heavily regulated.

He said staffing the facility can also be difficult due to the reputation that comes with working in a barn – namely, the smell.

While it certainly didn't smell like roses in the barn, Wallington said after a couple days, you don't notice it anymore. The facility employs between seven and 10 workers – ranging from cleaners to packers to maintenance personnel – year-round.

Wallington said the rewarding feeling he gets from the end product of a day's work keeps him at the job.

"When you see you've had a good day, that is the satisfying part," he said.

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