GROWING AN EGG FARM
It all started with a class project. First grade teacher, Dave Thompson, wanted the class in Joliet, Illinois, to watch chicks hatch from eggs as a science project. With the approval of his wife, Terry, Thompson decided to keep the chicks at their old farmhouse outside Aurora, Illinois. A few months later, he took a position in Naperville. “When the chickens began to lay eggs, I found myself selling the eggs to other teachers,” said Thompson.
Now thirty years later, the Thompsons are still selling eggs – and a profitable fertilizer. Early on when there were only two hen houses, Dave Thompson had envisioned creating a fertilizer from composting the byproduct of the chickens. In the late 1990s, he and his brother, Andy, began a trial-and-error process to develop the compost. In a short time they moved the composting operation under roof and now Pearl Valley Organix has two large composting buildings at the farm.
The Thompson brothers developed a formula for mixing the manure with other materials including wheat straw that they grow on 80 acres of the farm. The healthy grass that resulted with the application of their fertilizer led to its trade name, Healthy Gro. Anyone who has ever stepped onto a golf course might have been standing on the thick, dark green grass of Healthy Gro. The product has a strong following with golf courses from Connecticut to California.
After the successful first experience with egg-producing chickens, Dave Thompson bought a few more chickens from DeKalb Ag Research. There someone told him that, if he liked chickens, he should consider it a career. He went to work with Jewel Food Stores on their egg farm near Lodi, Illinois. Thompson says, “I learned everything I could about the business. I found egg production not only challenging, but interesting.”
In the mid-1980s Jewel sold the egg farm and, with the support of Terry, purchased his own egg farm between Pearl City and Kent. The Thompson family moved into an old farmhouse nearby and erected two buildings to house 100,000 chickens each and farmed eggs for Mallquist Butter and Eggs out of Rockford. Eventually they bought Mallquist and expanded the operation to 1.1 million birds in order to make the equipment profitable and to be competitive. They now ship 750,000 eggs a day.
Caring for the birds is a full time job. They eat 40 tons of feed a day, all made right on the farm in Pearl Valley’s own feed mill from ingredients grown locally and in the Midwest. Thompson, who talks about caring for the birds as if he knows each one by name, says “It’s all about the chickens.”
This information is taken from an article in the 1st Farm Credit Services Country Spirit Magazine, Winter 2007.
Della Moen, Earth Team Volunteer, NRCS/Stephenson Soil and Water
Conservation District, an equal opportunity provider and employer, 11/26/08/ (for publication on 12/06/08 in the Journal-Standard, Freeport, Illinois).
Della can be reached at info@stephensonswcd.org