Talking Turkey with Butterball

For cooling, the pellets move to the Bliss Counterflow Coolers; Mercer notes that the round Bliss coolers make it easier to manage the consistency of the product because you’re “not fighting the corners.” One of the pellet lines has a Bliss Crumbler; the other is a straight line. Downstream fat application is provided by a Hayes & Stolz fat coater. The finished pellets are then delivered to feed storage or to the 18 truck load-out bins.

Butterball delivers 20 different formulations — feeding toms from the brooder house to the finishing floor — to the 130 turkey producers it serves within a 50-mile radius of the facility. It contracts its feed hauling through Penske Logistics, and utilizes 17 drivers and eight delivery units. By contracting its trucking services, the mill saves on equipment and upkeep.

Being very concerned with bio-security, Goldsboro and Butterball take every precaution to keep its birds healthy. The Turkey facility installed a truck disinfectant station in an effort to keep disease out of the turkeys and allows Butterball to avoid using expensive medicines to treat the birds.

“The system is custom-designed by Goldsboro so we have standardized equipment and use,” he says. “Our veterinarian was instrumental in choosing the products and application in the disinfectant process; we used that design to put our system together.”

Operating at full capacity it will produce 7,500 tons a week, 390,000 tons annually.

“This mill is a culmination of all we have learned to date about processes and equipment from our other mills, but we are always looking to improve what we’re doing,” Falls says. “We are very pleased to note that live performance on feed from this mill is outstanding at this time.”