Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Earl Ray Zimmerman, Organic Chicken Farm, Ephrata, PA - Tuesday, May 13th, 2014

Earl Ray showing use his new and unique furnace for burning chicken manure
to create hot water to heat the chicken barns. 

One of Earl Ray's 25,000 capacity organic broiler (meat chickens) barns. Earl owns two barns.
View is of the area required for the chickens to have access to the outside.
Door on Earl's chicken barn to allow access to the outside for the chickens. Access to the outside
is required to meet the standards for organic chicken production. 
Earl Ray Zimmerman is a Mennonite farmer also based out of Lancaster County, PA. Earl raises organic chickens and beef cattle as well as 65 acres of production land, which he uses to feed all 60 of his cows. Earl has two chicken houses that hold 25,000 birds each. He receives an order of 25,000 chicks and feeds them organic corn and soybean meal for 45-47 days before they are large enough to be sold. He has a furnace where he burns his chicken litter to produce hot water, which is then used to heat his 2 chicken houses to their appropriate temperatures. Bags of phosphorus rich ash is stored in wait as Earl searches to find farms that have soils deficient in phosphorus so that it could be used as fertilizer. Earl also goes to farm machinery auctions to buy machinery and sell them at higher prices. The hot water from the furnace is also used to clean the machinery he buys; he is one of only a few other people in Pennsylvania that uses this water heating technology.
- Joey

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