010235 Chicken Growers Face Challenges

Idabel, OK - This has not been an easy winter for Terry Gates as he tries to keep thousands of baby chickens warm despite skyrocketing costs for heating fuel and one of the coldest seasons in recent memory.

Gates paid $11,200 for the propane to heat his barns for three weeks. That's as much as he paid all of last year.

“It's been a tough couple of months,” Gates said, surveying 30,000 chirping, bouncing yellow chicks.

Over six weeks, the chicks puff out like popcorn kernels to fluffy white broilers fattened to 3.8 pounds apiece.

They will be trucked from the farm near Idabel in southeast Oklahoma to a nearby Tyson Foods plant at Broken Bow to be slaughtered, packaged and shipped to grocers.

The process of satisfying America's appetite for chicken is swift and efficient. But things aren't getting any easier for Gates and others holding contracts to raise chickens for the country's largest poultry companies.

Besides the high cost of fuel, chicken farmers say stricter environmental regulations have put the brakes on expansion. They also say they have no control over contract terms dictated by processors, including chicken giant Tyson of Springdale, Ark., and Dallas-based Pilgrim's Pride.

But perhaps the biggest problem is self-inflicted: There are just too many chickens for the market.

Falling demand internationally has helped produce a glut of poultry, says Don Barrett, a grower and publisher of the Poultry Farm Outlook newsletter.

The country's chicken production chain, spread across half the nation, cranks out over 30 billion pounds a year.

There are 926 registered chicken farms with 2,765 barns in Oklahoma. Most produce chicken for meat, but some are large farms with laying hens.

Oklahoma growers produce more than 200 million broilers, or young chickens named for the method many are cooked. They are worth $377 million, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Across the Red River, Texas growers fatten twice as many chickens. Arkansas farmers just down the road produce six times more, raising more than 1 billion birds worth more than $2 billion.

Under their contracts, the chicken processing companies provide each farmer with hundreds of thousands of chicks and feed; growers must provide the barns, utilities and water.

Growers are rewarded for growing bigger chickens at a lower expense for the company.

“Whoever grows the best chickens gets the most money and I like that,” says Tom McCain, who raises chickens for Tyson west of Idabel.

But growers have little negotiating power for contracts let on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. McCain and Gates said they have good relations with Tyson. But some growers have complained to lawmakers that the companies change the terms and provide fewer birds after earlier agreeing to more.

Chicken raisers must test soil and keep records after Oklahoma passed tighter environmental regulations for the industry. Runoff over watersheds where chicken waste was used as fertilizer was blamed for excess nutrients that caused odor and taste problems in Tulsa's water supply.

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com