‘Egg-citing’ venture — Enve Ag LLC opens chicken farming operation north of Greenwood

On Sept. 10, Enve Ag LLC held an open house at its new poultry barn located at the Kenneth Martin farm at N10637 Madison Avenue in Greenwood. The new barn houses the first VDL Jansen aviary system in the state of Wisconsin, marking a shift in the poultry industry in the state as the comfort of the chicken takes a higher priority.

The new poultry barn, owned by Martin, who operates the farm with his sons Darvin and Keith, is a big change for them as they transition out of the dairy industry into raising poultry in this new facility.

“It’s all going to the birds,” he said. “I was a dairy farmer for 18 years. I’m done with that and moving from cows to raising chickens.”

The barn, which was built in approximately four months, has a VDL Jansen aviary system installed in which to house the 20,000 chickens that will be living and laying eggs in the facility. The equipment, said VDL Jansen U.S. national sales manager Todd Heimler, has been used in Europe as a modern system to house laying hens in. “This system comes from the Netherlands,” he said. “This is the type of system they use over there for almost all poultry farms. This has been the type of system that has been in use for about 20 years and they have still been making improvements on it.” The system that was installed in the barn, the Comfort 2.0 Aviary System, has two rows of nests for the birds, with roosts and walking planks that allow the chickens to have freedom of movement throughout the barn. They will also have access to approximately 50 acres outside to roam about as well. “It’s built for the birds,” he said. “They have approaches and roosts that they can be on. The birds are all raised in similar environments as chicks so they recognize the roosts as something they can use instead of just staying on the floor. And the younger birds will learn from the older birds as they live in the system.”

Heimler said that all of the egg-collecting work will be automatically handled by machines which have been custom-made for not only efficiency, but also with the comfort of the chicken in mind. An automatic feeder system provides the chickens with food and water on a consistent basis, while nests are built on a slight tilt to allow any eggs laid to roll onto an automatic conveyor belt, which then takes the freshly laid eggs to be packaged for shipment.

“With this system, there is a 98% to 99% production from the chickens,” he said. “And with 20,000 chickens, that adds up to be a lot of eggs.”

With the way the eggs are laid, Heimler said they are clean when they are put through the system and packaged. They are then stored in a large freezer at the end of the building where a semi picks up the eggs weekly to be taken to California, where they are sanitized, repackaged, and then shipped to Hidden Villa and Costco stores.

Besides the eggs, Heimler said there is another side to the poultry business that also generates revenue: chicken manure. Automatic scrapers beneath the nests will keep the barn clean, and as the manure is taken away, it is dried and put into storage to be sold. Chicken manure is rich in nitrogen, he said, which makes it a very valuable fertilizer for farmers, especially those who raise fruit trees. Sometimes, the manure itself can be more valuable than the eggs that are produced.

“Nothing is wasted here,” he said. After the open house, there won’t be any public access to the facility to prevent any spread of disease to the flock. The birds were delivered on Sept. 22, with production to begin before the end of the year.