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Over the last several years hundreds of farmers in Kentucky have gone to contract broiler farming as an alternative to the fading income opportunities from tobacco. According to the encouragement given by the integrators the annual income from raising poultry could easily replace tobacco if the farmer was willing to make substantial investments in capital.

There are over 2000 broiler houses in Kentucky now. When mild weather permits production schedules near the theoretical optimum, the profits from poultry are acceptable. Nothing is what it is expected to be, but poultry has been far less than expected in many cases.

Sever weather is the death of the poultry industry since, under the Hudson/Tyson program; the farmer must pay the cost of heating and cooling the huge broiler houses. These structures are 20,000 sq ft each and many farms have 8 and as many as 16 houses to heat and cool.

The winter of 1999-2000 cost an average poultry farmer with 8 houses $60,000 to heat the buildings. In the summer of 2000, on July 4, the temperature and humidity both reached 95 simultaneously. One Kentucky farmer lost 62 tons of chickens to heat stress in one hour. His neighbor lost 70 tons.

Since the revenue received from Tyson is out of the hands of the farmer, for the most part, he must concentrate on reducing his expenses to stay in business. Another winter like the 1999-2000 would bankrupt most of the broiler operators in Kentucky and perhaps take their bankers with them. If the banks end up with the broiler houses from one failed farmer, what would give them any confidence that a new inexperienced farmer could take them over and do any better?

Yet, as the poet said, out of adversity comes opportunity. The Kentucky Center for Cooperative Development worked with a group of poultry farmers interested in taking their fate into their own hands. The Kentucky Poultry Growers Cooperative was formed in 2001. They immediately hired an engineering firm to explore options for cutting the costs of heating and cooling these huge broiler houses.

Kentucky Enrichment Inc wrote a program to analyze the heat loss from a typical poultry building. From that analytical software came a cost/benefit analysis which allowed each farmer to see the payback period for various insulation options. Most farmers in the area are eager to install the insulation packages with pay backs of 4 years and less.

The typical insulation package could save the farmers up to 50% off of their annual heating bill through conservation.

By changing from the gas or propane open flame heaters now used inside the poultry buildings the farmers can gain additional advantages. Hot water heat from a biomass fueled boiler system could save an additional 15% to 25% off the heating cost.

Three test flocks of the new hot water heating system have shown additional unexpected benefits in the reduction of mortalities in the test flocks of 10% and an almost 10% increase in individual bird weights as compared to the control buildings.

Providing hot water heat to an environment heavy with dust and rich in corrosive ammonia is not a simple matter. The poultry cooperative contracted with Kentucky Enrichment Inc to engineer a new radiator system which can operate efficiently under such conditions. This new radiator system also encourages the young birds to stay near the feed and water lines rather than clustering around the old open flame heaters.

By heating the water for this new radiator system with biomass fuel in a central boiler on the farm, the growers can convert a waste product from the local sawmills into a usable fuel. Green sawdust is readily available and a troublesome byproduct of the timber industry locally. The Kentucky Wood Waste Alliance and the Kentucky Foresters have worked with the cooperative to locate available supplies and to plan distribution systems.

Rather than have huge piles of rotting sawdust at each sawmill and risking tannic acid contamination of groundwater and the aquifer, this plentiful waste is to be a fuel.

With these innovations the poultry grower could see his heating bill go from $60,000 for 8 houses in 1999-2000 to $22,000 in the next cold winter. The savings realized in the reduction of the heating cost might be the only profit these growers see.

The ability to run cool ground water through these same radiator systems gives the farmers a way to beat the summer heat waves which are so destructive to their flocks. Well water, pond water, or even recirculated water chilled via lithium-bromide coolers, can bring critical relief from the summer temperatures which can kill most of a 300,000 head flock in a few minutes.

The solution to the poultry heating problems can also be an aid to the economic problems of the grain farmers in the state. The economic devastation faced by the poultry farmers recently was brought on by the cold and heat. The corn growers in the state face economic devastation from the drought. Yet this disaster of failed crops can be remediated somewhat by the harvesting of the dried corn stover as fuel for the biomass furnaces this application proposes.

Field corn, which has had had the ears harvested, leaves behind a large volume of stover (stalks, leaves and cob) is excellent fuel for these biomass heating units. The heaters selected by the engineering study are computer controlled to accept a variety of fuels into the combustion chamber. Green sawdust is the primary fuel of choice locally but baled corn stover, as well as other farm byproducts, is just as viable.

A typical corn field would produce about 2.5 tons of corn stover per acre. At a heating value of $30 per ton a farmer could gross about $75 per acre for his corn waste. If all 200 Kentucky poultry farmers were to install similar biomass fuel heating systems the local farm community could sell the waste from 48,000 acres of corn per year. This would return $3,000,000 per year back to the farm community.

In a good year, a corn farmer can realize additional revenues from selling his corn waste as fuel. In a bad year it may be his only revenue. The expense involved in making this into a boiler fuel is simply baling and delivering it.

All federal and state air quality standards are easily met with the selected combustion units. There is no environmental issue unattended to in this project.

We can safely, economically and efficiently convert very large quantities of unused biomass into inexpensive and safe fuel for farm and industry. Not only will we wean a portion of our farm economy from the volatile pricing of natural gas and propane, but we will open large markets for the byproduct fuel produced annually in Kentucky.