National Chicken Month

The chicken industry has a huge impact on McDonald County and Missouri.

In the chicken industry there are a variety of businesses that provide support to chicken houses.

Wayne and Ronda Holly run Southwest Poultry Supply in Southwest City. They furnish a complete line of poultry feeding and watering equipment, bin storage and ventilation, some used as well as new.

The business was founded in 1980. In its busier days, Southwest Poultry Supply installed equipment in numerous areas in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri. At one time they had between 45 and 50 employees, according to Wayne Holly, but now they no longer do installations and the employee count is down to himself, Ronda and a son, Phillip.

“Most of our business now is mostly outside the area,” Holly said. “We sell quite a bit to Amish people in Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kansas and Colorado. We are also selling equipment for some of the range-free chicken operations and equipment to several of the cage-free hen growers. Ronda and I raised breeder hens and cage-free hens for 40 years.”

Southwest Poultry Supply is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Roxell in Anderson manufacturers poultry supplies.

“We supply all the product that’s necessary to raise a chicken, both in the broiler breeder application and the broiler application,” product manager Michael Osterman said. “Broiler breeders are used to make eggs that are grown into baby chicks. Broilers are what we eat.”

Roxell produces ventilation equipment, heating equipment, feeding equipment, nesting equipment, storage equipment and control systems. A control system ties all of the equipment together and runs under a program, and a computer dictates what goes on in the house, Osterman said.

“We work through distribution. We do not sell directly to the farmer; we sell to a distributor. Most manufacturers work that way,” Osterman noted.

Roxell is a owned by CTB Incorporated in Milford, Ind., which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway.

Osterman added, “The poultry business has been good to us here lately. We’re expanding. We have an addition going on to the building.”

Stephen Holly, a son of Wayne and Ronda Holly, runs Holly Farms near Grove, Okla., which serves McDonald County and surrounding areas. The company sprays chemicals and does cleanout.

Holly Farms sprays ammonia control in poultry houses.

“It lowers the pH to give the birds a healthier start. It lowers the ammonia so it won’t blind the birds,” Stephen Holly said. “It saves the farmer money by not having to run the fans all the time. It helps the chicks get a better start by lowering the bacteria level.”

The company also applies darkling beetle insecticide in the houses.

“The chicks will eat those instead of the feed, and the beetles will eat the insulation and bite the baby chicks. They cause lots of problems in poultry houses,” he said.

Additionally, the company cleans out poultry houses.

“We manage the litter. We clean out roughly 220 houses a year. We stay very busy. We try to haul the litter out of the watersheds and take it up into southeast Kansas and have it applied to the ground,” he said. “We take it out of the nutrient-limited watersheds in this area because the row crops (in Kansas) can utilize the nutrients out of the poultry litter better than we can on just grazing ground down here.”