Poultry Industry Taking Off in Union County, 1949

By F.H. Jeter, Extension Editor, N.C. State College, Raleigh, as published in the Monroe Inquirer, Nov. 7, 1949

I was in Union County the other afternoon at the invitation of Bernard Helms of Monroe, president of the Union County Farm Bureau.

Mr. Helms is one of the leading poultrymen of this section. He is, of course, proud of his own New Hampshire birds and of the wonderful register-of-merit and record-of-performance birds that he has bred. He and C.B. Pickering run the hatchery part of his business while William I. Austin and Roe J. Deal are his two poultry breeding specialists.

There are eight chicken hatcheries in Union County. Farm Agent Marsh says the poultrymen are hatching out about four million chicks a year. This is, of course, only an estimate. The turkey hatcheries are turning out about 50,000 poults a year, and this enterprise is just getting started on a commercial basis. There were about 60,000 turkeys in the county this fall, grown largely by 24 men, but the fame of Monroe as a turkey center is spreading and the new processing plant is drawing fat turkeys from South Carolina, Georgia, and other states. Hoyle Griffin and the other men associated with him in the new plant, first thought they would be prepared to process about 1,000 birds a day, but the plant has been running only about 50 days now and is processing about 2,800 turkeys a day. The plant began operations with some 35 persons employed. Now 60 are on the job, and the season is just getting under way.

One of the smartest poultrymen in Union County is said to be John Austin of Route 6, Monroe. Mr. Austin produces white leghorn eggs for the Charlotte trade, and he keeps about 2,800 laying hens the year round. He does no breeding. There is not a rooster on the place, but Mr. Austin buys only the best laying strains of white leghorn, sexed pullet chicks; feeds them as they should be; keeps them in comfortable, well-ventilated laying houses; and the eggs and the money pour in.

J.A. Hinson of Route 2, Monroe, is another small but smart Union County poultryman. He has about 2,000 New Hampshire laying hens in his house at present. He keeps 300 to the pen and, in each pen, is what he calls a community nest. This nesting arrangement is a simple trough-like affair, covered over with entrance slats on both sides and with curtains hung down each side to give the laying hens a feeling of privacy. It is 12 feet long and about 19 inches wide, and has a nice soft litter on the bottom. The hens use it in preference to all other kinds of nests, and there are few broken or dirty eggs ever found. Mr. Hinson says it is easy to handle such a nest as this because all he has to do to keep it clean is to take it out in the yard, turn it over, and empty it of the old nesting material. Then he sweeps it out and it is then ready for fresh nesting material, and is replaced in the house.

Mr. Hinson was formerly a carpenter in Monroe but about six years ago, he decided he was tired of working for the other fellow and went to work for himself. His 42-acre farm is paid for. He has a nice well-furnished home and is equipped with a tractor and other mechanical implements to do all the farming that he wants to do. He grows some cotton, plants a bit of milo sorghum for his chickens, and has lespedeza and other grazing crops for the young pullets when they are on summer range. He sells about 15 cases of hatching eggs a week and has some to sell every week in the year. His eggs go mainly to that great broiler section of north Georgia, and he sells only the heavy, carefully graded eggs that hatch out into vigorous chicks of high livability.

There are many others in Piedmont Carolina like these poultrymen of Union County who are finding that a few chickens go along nicely with cows and hogs, cotton and corn, and a good bank account.