Lewis Poultry Housekeeper

[DoubleR]

I seen the picture that Destroked had with his Ford 4000 with the machine hooked to it. I haven't been around big poultry operations since the early 70's when I delivered bulk feed to a few that use to be in my neck of the woods in Mi. Never seen anything like what he had hooked to his 4000. Just curious how it worked and what it did. Is it just a fancy manure spreader? I'm sure what ever it does its allot better than the fork and loader bucket that I use on my big 75 head chicken coup.

 

[Ray IN]

It picks up the big clumps but allows the finer pieces of bedding to be reused.

 

[john in la]

Should let Destroked answer as he knows all the ins a outs about the machine.

But it basically picks up boiler house floor litter. Separates feathers and caked or clumps of litter while aerating the remaining litter so it can dry. I have only seen the dump model but assume they might have a field spreader model.

Its an alternative to removing all the litter with a bobcat between boiler batches. Saves on litter cost.

 

[Destroked 450]

John is correct
It has a blade in the front that cuts thru the litter lifting the crust off of the bedding, a beater bar breaks up the crust tossing it onto a inclined shaker chain separating the finer bedding that drops back to the floor while the clumps and cake drop into the bed of the machine. A leveling chain moves the material back until the bed is full (in that machine it s about 2 tons), the fans are on the machine in the photo for spreading in the field, but I have since removed them for unloading in the litter shed
With the fans removed you hook up the tailgate cylinder to open the tail gate and speed up the floor chain to run the material out

I have a spreader wagon now so that machine doesn t got to the field anymore

 

[DoubleR]

Thank you for the responses and explanation. I thought it looked like allot more than your normal spreader. I always figured they just went through and took everything out and replaced it all with new bedding when they changed batches of birds. I didn't realize they were able to separate the good from the bad and reuse the good.

 

[Tim in New York]

Back in the 70's our neighborhood poultry farm used a ground drive NI spreader, a MF 150, and 4 of us kids with pitch forks, scrapers, and shovels. 4 barns that held 4,000 broilers each. Birds were shipped to Livingston Manor, NY in wooden crates.

Tim

 

[Destroked 450]

We raise the small 3.7 lb rotisserie birds raising 7 flocks per year
I decade and compost between flocks and only clean out once per year
We ll raise around 640,000 birds per year

 

[Destroked 450]

If someone handed me a shovel to clean our 43x500 barns there would be a for sale sign go up pretty quick
Each barn holds 32,200 birds, 3 barns is 96,600 birds per flock raising 7 flocks per year
We run that machine thru the building between each flock but one, that s when we clean out