Troy, Director of Production here at MacFarlanes, revealed some great news about egg collection at MacFarlane Pheasants’ facilities during the 2021 season. We collected 2.2 million eggs between January 25, 2021, and July 15, 2021, from the 17,600 breeders located at our Missouri sites and the 9,000 breeders that we kept in flight pens in Janesville, Wisconsin.
Macfarlane's Missouri Barns Egg Production Process
Our production barns in Missouri are called MOMac, MOArk, and MOPhe. We have a total of 12 barns at these three sites. We ship breeder hens from our Janesville site to Missouri between September and December. To produce the number of eggs we need in Missouri, it takes 137 roosters per 2,200 hens. Hens are stimulated for production by programmable lights, starting with 12 hours of light when they arrive and adding 15 minutes per week, until they are in light for 13 hours per day. All the barns have Smart Barn Monitoring that sends out alarms for power, water, and lights. Roosters are shipped to Missouri from our Wisconsin farm at the end of January.
Once our hens start laying, two employees collect eggs at each farm daily. The eggs are washed on-site and stored in egg coolers. They are shipped back to Wisconsin two times per week. During production Shane, our Missouri Manager, along with Sheldon, four egg washers, six egg pickers and one egg delivery driver are kept very busy!
Our Local Egg Production Process in Our Wisconsin Barns
The Wisconsin breeders will be light stimulated in the middle of January. Roosters are placed with them the second week of February, and egg production begins toward the end of February. Collecting and caring for the eggs in Wisconsin is the same process we follow at our Missouri facilities; except we don’t have to ship our eggs to Wisconsin since they are already there!
Our 2022 egg production plans include having 28,200 breeders in Missouri and 1000 breeders in Wisconsin. That is 2,600 more breeders than we had during the 2021 season. MacFarlane Pheasants ships at least one million chicks each season and raises 400,000 mature birds for delivery around the United States, and Canada. Our egg production is an integral part of our business, and we are so appreciative of our employees’ dedication to quality. They are the backbone of our business.