Chicken Farm Creates Cover-All Composting Business

ACE Farm, a family owned chicken farm in New York State, has been in existence for more than seven decades. Their most recent expansion with a Cover-All® building enabled them to eliminate a problem and create an additional revenue generating business.

The challenge was handling the daily droppings of 200,000 chickens. ACE Farm had reached the maximum levels of soil nutrients and could no longer spread compost chicken manure on the family farm. Tyler Etzel, ACE Farm owner, had to find alternate means to safely dispose compost product. 'We began to sell our chicken manure to a company who sold it as soil amendments for fertilizer. When we worked the numbers and did some research, we realized that there was an opportunity for us to manufacture soil that can be sold to a variety of end users,' says Etzel.

ACE Farm needed a building to mix and house compost product in. 'Consistency is key. We mix leaves into our chicken manure, which creates an excellent base product. Chicken manure soaks up huge amounts of water, we needed a controlled environment to eliminate excessive moisture exposure and unwanted debris,'' says Etzel. The building had to be large enough to cover two 270' long windrow piles that are each 12' w x 5' h.

Etzel purchased a 55' w x 290' l Cover-All® Arch™ building from CNY Cover-All Buildings. 'At first I was looking for a greenhouse, but after viewing a few neighboring Cover-All buildings, the quality and durability of a Cover-All building made more sense to me,'' says Etzel. ''The Cover-All building offered a great clear-span environment to work in and the flexibility to create a well ventilated environment.''

Janet Thompson of CNY Cover-All Buildings designed the building features to create as much natural ventilation as possible. Thompson designed and installed the building to have a 3 inch low-level air intake along the base of the curb foundation to create a natural air circulation that would exhaust condensation through a 10 inch center ridge vent. 'Compost piles create a lot of heat, creating a consistent natural airflow provides a more comfortable environment to work in,'' says Thompson. ''Cover-All buildings are ideal for compost applications, the fabric is not affected by the corrosive environment and the galvanized steel tubing has an additional corrosion barrier.''

The Cover-All® Arch™ building now houses a Scat Turner that breaks up, mixes and aerates the compost product. 'Excessive moisture and unwanted debris are no longer issues,'' says Etzel. ''The building helps us to legitimize our composting business.''