Mayo Mims doesn’t want his chickens to know about the
extremely hot weather. He
controls the lives of 100,000 chickens with his computer
keyboard
and mouse, watching the
chickens’ environment like a hawk, making sure each animal lives
the good life.

Photo: Joe Courson

Mayo Mims’ broiler farm is a far cry from the old days of raising “yard birds.”

“That’s what the whole thing’s about,” said Mims as
he looked over a graph
comparing the outside temperature with that inside one of his
houses. “If you’ve got
him comfortable and keep him fed and watered, he’ll
grow.”

Cozy Chickens Mean
Money

The faster the chickens grow, the more money his agribusiness
makes.
Mims is contented with
that arrangement. He wants his chickens to be cozy, too.

And they should be. Each chicken has all the water and feed
it
can eat and drink. And
with the click of his computer, Mims can change the room
temperature in a house of 22,500
chickens.

He watches the outside temperature closely and turns on the
special cooling system for
the chickens when it gets too hot. Fans pull outside air through
cardboard pads doused
with water. The system drops the temperature a good 20 degrees.
It feels like a gentle sea
breeze inside the chicken house.

While other farmers worry about crop losses, Mims worries
about comfort of his
chickens.

Drought-resistant
Industry

“Really, the poultry industry is somewhat
drought-resistant in that (growers) don’t
feel the effects of a drought or the effects of heat as greatly
as they would in other
industries,” said Keith Bramwell, an Extension Service
poultry expert with the
University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences.

When chickens live as well as they do at Mims’ farm, they get
to market faster.
Shoppers could save about 2 cents per pound over the old way of
cooling the houses:
dropping curtains on the sides and using natural
ventilation.

The meat may taste a little tenderer, too, because the birds
live in such a
climate-controlled house.

While Mims spends a lot of time with his computer, he stills
walks through his four
houses at least twice a day to check on each chicken. “I
think we have some mighty
contented chickens here,” he said.