 My name is Kalem Hill, here in Perry County, Arkansas. I'm a broiler farmer here in central Arkansas and been raising poultry for almost 23 years. It'll be 23 years in June this year. So one of the questions that's been asked of me is about how many birds do I put in one of the poultry houses like you see here in my background? And I'll just kind of answer it like this. On across our farms, we have right at 482,000 square feet of broiler production area that we can raise birds in. One of the houses back here behind me holds 28,800 birds. We have some houses that are a little smaller. We have 12 houses that are this size. We have six others that are a little bit smaller, hold about 20,000 birds. But overall, across our farms, we raise approximately 460,000 birds every flock, which equilates to about 18 million pounds of poultry that we are able to sell back to our integrator. So another question that has to me a lot, especially by younger folks, is why are chickens, baby chickens, yellow? And I'll answer the question by asking you all a question. What color are egg yolks? They're yellow. So therefore, baby chickens have their baby feathers, which is down. And the yolk actually stains the feathers yellow in the yolk. People are asking, why is it important that we provide indoor housing? Well, I would say it's very important because it goes back to having maximum efficiency. I'll kind of give you this riddle. In the 50s, they say that a minimum wage earner it would take three quarters of their day's wage to pay for a bird to eat for their family. Now, in today's time, it takes three quarters of an hour of a minimum wage earner to pay for that same bird for their family to eat. And so how do we do that? Well, we do that by having really good indoor facilities for these birds. It starts with everything from the bedding that they get on, which we try to always use dry pond shavings in our houses. We obviously want to keep the environment inside there. We want to keep the temperature within about a five degree range. We have controllers in there that control everything from the water to the air. And so we want to control all of those elements as much as we can. And we want to keep them in a nice, tight window range. And so we keep that temperature optimal so that they're always feeling nice and healthy and wanting to be efficient in eating the food that they're eating and drinking because we want to maximize their growth rate as much as possible. So a question was asked to me about what are some of the different kinds of chickens. I'll say with the commercial industry, which is what I am here, poultry, there's not quite as many variants with the different birds here. What we typically see is ross, cob, hubbards. Right now, we are growing a ross bird at our farms. And the integrator typically works with those things scientifically to figure out what they're wanting to yield the most. For example, we just came from a bird that maybe yielded a little more breast meat. Whereas right now, we are raising a bird that will typically yield a little more thigh and leg meat right now. So that's kind of the difference. So another question asked is how long do we typically keep birds to grow up to where they're in market age, ready to go back to the processor? Now, all poultry integrators are different. However, the one that I raised for, we typically keep our birds in the field about eight weeks. And that's anywhere from 56 to 58 days right now. And our target weight right now is approximately 9 pounds, 912, I think is actually the real target weight right now. So typically, eight weeks, and we're going to raise them up to about 9 pounds before we send them back off to the integrator and they come get them. So another question posed to us many times is what do we feed our poultry? What do we feed the chickens? Well, I'll say this. There are several small ingredients that go into the process of making poultry feed. But the majority of what's put in there is corn. Corn, soy, there's some dried grains that go in there. And then my particular integrator that I raised for, they spend a lot of extra money on that high protein. They put a lot of minerals and vitamins in there. And then, of course, they put salt in there also to help things. What we find is there's a lot of people that ask about, hey, are there hormones added to your feed? Are there antibiotics added to your feed? And we do not add antibiotics to the feed. We do not add any kind of additive as far as hormones. The company that I raised for focuses hard on getting the mixture as high protein content as they can. Because what we're trying to do is we feed the world with our poultry is we're doing our best to maximize the efficiency of raising those birds as healthy as we can. But we also want to get those birds as big as we can and as fast as we can without hurting the health of those birds doing so. So the final question that I will answer today is, do hens need a rooster to lay eggs? Maybe this is something that piques your interest. I hope it does. And I will answer the question very simply, no. A hen is going to lay the amount of eggs she lays no matter what, whether there's a rooster or not. Now, if you want that egg, obviously, to become a chicken, you do need a rooster, okay? You do need a rooster to fertilize that egg. Otherwise, the egg is just an infertile egg. Now, if you do have a rooster with your hens, they're obviously going to do what God made them to do and they're going to fertilize the egg. You can even keep those eggs from hatching also if you keep them in a nice, cool environment if you were, say, to want to make scrambled eggs or fried eggs out of them before they become chickens. So that's the simple answer. You do not need a rooster in order for your hen to lay eggs. They're gonna lay eggs no matter what. I really appreciate you all hanging out with me a little while and allowing me to answer some questions about poultry and the poultry industry. And, you know, my hope is that after listening to some of the answers to these questions is the next time you're on the highway and you're driving by and you see a poultry farm out there that, you know, this really shed some light on maybe some of the questions you have about what goes on in those poultry barns. Just know that as a poultry grower out here, we're always looking out for the best interest of our poultry and what's going on in our houses so that we can give you the best product that there is.