They walked across the hall. Matthew's room was filled with trophies and pennants and team pictures. "He must play a lot of sports," Jenn said.
'Yes. He's on the school football team and in the winter he plays in a local hockey league. He rides motor bikes with his friends, too." Wow! He's cute, too," Jenn said.
"Jenn! Yuck!" They both laughed. "We better let Dad show you the rest of the farm. It's his pride and joy. Don't be surprised if he makes you take a shower before the tour. Everything has to be so clean around here. You wouldn't believe it," Joelle said.
"I won't really have to, will I?" Jenn asked. "Well, he's very fussy about his chicken barn. The chickens can catch a cold or even diseases from visitors, but we won't be going right in where the chickens are anyway," Joelle said.
They went downstairs and found Dad, who took them out to start the tour. "Our chicken farm is a specialized operation, Jennifer," Dad explained. "We have about 40,000 chickens.
"That's nearly the population of the city of Chatham where we do our shopping," said Joelle. Dad laughed. 'Well chickens don't take up quite as much space as people," he said. 'We have two barns with 20,000 birds in each.
"Don't the chickens get cold in the winter?" Jenn asked.
"They would, but the barn is heated," Dad replied. "When the newborn chicks arrive from the hatchery, we keep the temperature around 32 degrees Celsius, It is gradually lowered until it reaches 23 degrees Celsius when the birds are about five weeks old and completely feathered. As far as the chickens are concerned it's always summer."
Dad took the girls into a small service room in one of the barns. Jenn was surprised to see a wall covered with controls, switches and lights. "You need all this stuff to run a chicken barn?" she asked.
"Sure do," Dad said. "This is our Environmental Control System, which is run by the farm computer. It controls the heaters, fans, air flow and lights. I could call from your house in Toronto and ask my computer to tell me the exact temperature in the barn and it would do it!"
"That's amazing!" Jenn said.
"Look through that window, Jenn," Dad said.
Wow!" There were chickens as far as she could see. The floor was covered with straw bedding.
Next, Dad showed Jenn the feed bin. "We store 18 tonnes of feed in there," he said. "But it has to be refilled several times before the crop is mature." "What do chickens eat?" Jenn asked.
"It's a mixture of corn, soyabean, canola meal, and wheat." he replied. "The chicks eat a fine crumb meal, which we make coarser as they get older. By the time my 20,000 chickens in this barn have reached maturity, they'll have eaten 78 tonnes of feed in total. That's almost four kilograms for each bird. Yet a mature bird will weigh about two kilograms."
"Now you know why Matthew wants help clearing manure!" Joelle joked.
"Who feeds the chickens?" Jenn asked.
"Actually the feeding and watering is done automatically so that there is food and water available to the birds 24 hours a day." Dad replied. "Three mature broiler chickens will drink about one litre of water in a day."
