Modernizing Poultry Processing In Chatham County, 1945

By F.H. Jeter, Extension Editor, N.C. State College, Raleigh, as published in the Wilmington Star, June 23, 1945

Just outside of Siler City, in Chatham County, is a modern brick structure which is a monument to the faith of Chatham County farmers in the future of poultry.

This modern brick structure is a poultry processing plant, 60 by 170 feet in size, with additional sheds covering the boiler rooms, the carpenter shop, and other auxiliary needs. Poultry farmers and truckers bring in their poultry at the upper end of the plant, the birds are removed from the coops, their feet placed in wire holders which run on a continuous chain belt, and, when the birds emerge at the other end, they have been dressed and are ready to be placed in the ice cold vats which await them.

Broilers, hens, roosters, all, are handled by this modern assembly line method—a product of American ingenuity. The birds are killed as they pass one operator, then they are dipped into boiling water, and pass through this into an automatic machine which strips them almost clean of feathers. Those features that remain are removed as the birds pass through another machine equipped with rotary rubber fingers which are almost human in their ability to remove the last clinking feather.

Should any be left, women operators along the line clean the last pin feather and in normal times, the birds are then dressed for the table with each operator doing one particular job. The plant is now processing poultry for the War Shipping Administration which has first call on all the poultry in the 10-county area in which Chatham is included and the birds are simply cleaned of their feathers and packed in ice for shipment.

The plant has a capacity for dressing nearly 1,800 birds an hour or about 28 a minute. Last week, for instance, the plant bought 122,738 birds and put them through within four days. When I visited the plant last Friday afternoon, every bird had been processed and the plant had been cleaned and made spic and span for the next week’s operations.

J.B. Wood of Siler City is president of the company which owns and operates the processing plant; H.M. Singletary, former county farm agent of Chatham County, is the field man; and L.D. Goodwin is the plant foreman. The company pays out an average of $50,000 a week to poultry producers of Chatham with some portion of the money going into Randolph and Moore counties. There are 61 laborers on the payroll, two-thirds being women and one-third men. Seven truck routes operate out from Siler City gathering up the birds from the various farms. It takes about 15 tons of ice a day to chill the birds or 80 tons a week to keep them in shape before they are stored in the zero chilling rooms awaiting shipments.

The dressed birds are iced and packed in neat, clean wooden boxes and stored in a large refrigerating room until they can be hauled away on government order. Ordinarily they are hauled each day or as fast as they can be processed.

Mr. Wood said that the plant finished processing its millionth pound of poultry on Wednesday, July 11, since the government freezing or set-aside order went into effect in this 10-county area on May 14. Out of the 400,000 pounds of dressed poultry being furnished each week to the War Shipping Administration by the 14-odd dressing and processing plants in this 10-county area, the Siler City plant is furnished one-fourth of the total, or about 125,000 pounds per week.

H.M. Singletary has watched this tremendous production of poultry in Chatham County since it began in a small way in 1925. When he went into Chatham, he saw that something was needed by which the small farm operator could make some money and make it in a hurry. The county was depending almost entirely on cotton for its cash income, although there was some tobacco, and nearly every farm had its small flock of chickens. They were handled just as most farm poultry flocks were handled in those days and very few people were making any real money out of their birds.

During the next six or seven years, Mr. Singletary worked hard to create an interest in poultry and finally the feed mills began to get interested. They aided those who would use their feed in growing the birds. New poultry houses began to appear. Brooder houses were equipped; baby chicks shipped in; a hatchery organized; and finally the Chatham County poultry business started to grow.

Mr. Singletary says as late as 1931, seed loans by the hundreds had to be made so that they farmers would have enough money to start their crops each spring. There were 1,000 such loans placed in one year but last year, 1944, the local Production Credit Association had to almost bed the less than 75 farmers to borrow money for 1944. The poultry has helped the farm operators to get on a cash basis and they do not need the loans as they did a few years ago. The county has three new money crops in dairying, poultry, and tobacco, and they are cashing in on all three.

Of course, the dairy and livestock business is founded on the basis of local feed production. Chatham has always produced feed crops and now farmers are growing more than ever.

Back in 1931-32, the Federal Land Bank had 900 loans on as many farms in the county. Some of them had to be foreclosed because the owners were unable to make enough cash money on their farms to keep the loans solvent. Between one-third to one-half of these loans have now been liquidated because the money needed for expansion into the dairy cattle and poultry business and almost all accounts are current. In fact, the Land Bank would like to have some more loans in that county.

I would not have anyone believe that this has been an easy sort of progress or that Chatham has been transformed overnight into a wealthy county. Nothing of the sort has happened but things are much better than they have been. Chatham people are hard workers. The farmers are almost all small landowners but for years they have been growing feed crops and have grown most of their own food at home. Some people have been amazed to find out, for instance, that though the county had not advertised the fact, Chatham farms were leading the state in producing turkeys. Milk flow goes out of the county in a steady flow. The people know how to grow alfalfa and other hay crops, and so their venture into modern poultry and dairy production has been based on a solid foundation. Both poultry and dairy cows require lots of attention. Growing chickens and milking cows is a seven-day-a-week job. It is confining and it takes the care of intelligent farm owners. Chatham people are willing to give this attention and it is paying them excellent dividends. If they continue to progress as they have been in the past three or four years, Chatham is going to become one of the leading agricultural sections of this state.