Bad by association.

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ptonsparky

ptonsparky

Tom
Location
NE (9.06 miles @5.9 Degrees from Winged Horses)
Occupation
EC - retired
We had a Farm Management Company call us to do a fault locate for one of their clients. I had a guy within a couple miles this morning so I called to get specific location. Turned out the gates were locked so the owner was called for keys to the gate. The owner was told we were in the area doing work at the "Dairy" and that was the end of the service call. He would not associate with anyone that worked with the "Dairy". Never lost a project in such a way before, at least not to my knowledge.


His normal electrician calls us to do locates for them. Most everyone has done work at some time or another for the Dairy. O well.
 
What kind of place were you going to be working at?

Sometimes livestock producers are particular about where visitors have been for the sake of disease control.

Right now the biggest current issue I am aware of is bird flu and poultry producers.

I just finished converting a turkey facility into a brooder house - all was done mostly because of losses in Iowa and Minnesota, now there has been disease creeping into the northeast corner of NE to a couple chicken facilities. They just put new birds into the brooder house I was working on last Saturday - we will see if that brood makes it or not I guess. If they get it they have been gassing the entire facility to try to keep disease under control.

Surprisingly I thought owner would be picky about who or what came into the facility, but was never given any restriction information, and had even walked through the building with the owner the day the birds arrived. I do know they made any employees (even those not directly working at the poultry facilities, this owner has grain operations as well as poultry and swine operations) that have birds at home get rid of them as a precaution.
 
kwired said:
What kind of place were you going to be working at?

Sometimes livestock producers are particular about where visitors have been for the sake of disease control.

Right now the biggest current issue I am aware of is bird flu and poultry producers.

I just finished converting a turkey facility into a brooder house - all was done mostly because of losses in Iowa and Minnesota, now there has been disease creeping into the northeast corner of NE to a couple chicken facilities. They just put new birds into the brooder house I was working on last Saturday - we will see if that brood makes it or not I guess. If they get it they have been gassing the entire facility to try to keep disease under control.

Surprisingly I thought owner would be picky about who or what came into the facility, but was never given any restriction information, and had even walked through the building with the owner the day the birds arrived. I do know they made any employees (even those not directly working at the poultry facilities, this owner has grain operations as well as poultry and swine operations) that have birds at home get rid of them as a precaution.
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One of our customers that deals in Hay meal and pellets started washing tires of incoming vehicles and issuing booties to everyone coming onto the premises.
 
One of the best electricians I ever supervised listed as his resume' prime experience "chicken house electrician". He gained the nickname "cluck-cluck" and was a fabulous electrician (RIP).
Years later I was involved in wiring at some large commercial chicken houses and gained respect.
Some times our perception leads us astray.:D
 
augie47 said:
One of the best electricians I ever supervised listed as his resume' prime experience "chicken house electrician". He gained the nickname "cluck-cluck" and was a fabulous electrician (RIP).
Years later I was involved in wiring at some large commercial chicken houses and gained respect.
Some times our perception leads us astray.:D
Click to expand...
most livestock production these days is at the very least a mini industrial plant and no longer a shed out back on ma and pa's farm. Some are equipped with pretty sophisticated equipment.

A dairy farm I do some work for has a RFID bracelet on every cow, this tells the milking machines which cow is connected so it can track how much milk she produced, tells the operator if she needs special attention while at the milking station, etc. If her ID is in a database for performing a particular action - other equipment will also respond accordingly when she is present. - In particular a sort gate the cows must pass through after being milked. Cows that need special attention are programmed in the system and when they approach the sort gate it opens to let them in a work area, for others not flagged it opens another direction to let them back out to where they are normally housed. I believe they also have hand held devices for data entry when doing certain tasks - the device reads the ID automatically, they enter whatever data they need to manually.
 
kwired said:
What kind of place were you going to be working at?

Sometimes livestock producers are particular about where visitors have been for the sake of disease control.

Right now the biggest current issue I am aware of is bird flu and poultry producers.

I just finished converting a turkey facility into a brooder house - all was done mostly because of losses in Iowa and Minnesota, now there has been disease creeping into the northeast corner of NE to a couple chicken facilities. They just put new birds into the brooder house I was working on last Saturday - we will see if that brood makes it or not I guess. If they get it they have been gassing the entire facility to try to keep disease under control.

Surprisingly I thought owner would be picky about who or what came into the facility, but was never given any restriction information, and had even walked through the building with the owner the day the birds arrived. I do know they made any employees (even those not directly working at the poultry facilities, this owner has grain operations as well as poultry and swine operations) that have birds at home get rid of them as a precaution.
Click to expand...

I was just back home to western IA last weekend and read where they have destroyed something like 15 million birds. Obviously disposal is a huge issue. There are two egg facilities near where I grew up, both thus far unaffected by disease. They have both begun cleaning all incoming vehicles with an anti-(something), I can't remember exactly what.
 
sii said:
I was just back home to western IA last weekend and read where they have destroyed something like 15 million birds. Obviously disposal is a huge issue. There are two egg facilities near where I grew up, both thus far unaffected by disease. They have both begun cleaning all incoming vehicles with an anti-(something), I can't remember exactly what.
Click to expand...
What part of western Iowa SII? My family is from the Estherville Spirit Lake area of NW Iowa.
 
sii said:
I was just back home to western IA last weekend and read where they have destroyed something like 15 million birds. Obviously disposal is a huge issue. There are two egg facilities near where I grew up, both thus far unaffected by disease. They have both begun cleaning all incoming vehicles with an anti-(something), I can't remember exactly what.
Click to expand...


yes disposal is a big issue, recently a NE Neb landfill rejected accepting Iowa birds to be buried, and was probably a wise decision. Why drag the disease to other areas - AFAIK the NE sites that have been infected the plan was burial on the site they came from.

Just heard yesterday there will be no poultry showing at any of the county fairs or the state fair this year.

Was told the egg laying facilities effected will take at least two years to get production back to where it was before this happened.
 
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