Case Study: West Liberty Foods

Overview

The Eagle Ridge Farm and the Liberty Farm have been growing commercial turkeys for 25 years and are members of the West Liberty Foods Cooperative, the 8th largest USA turkey processing company. Their largest customer is Subway with 40,000+ stores in the USA.

Challenges

With a flock of 19,000 poults (baby turkeys), 1,700 nipple drinkers are part of the watering system. These drinkers include valve mechanisms and injection molded water cups which scale significantly after just six weeks of use. To clean the drinkers between flocks, each drinker had to be disconnected from the watering system and cleaned with muriatic acid & then reassembled. At six weeks, the birds are transferred to a grow out barn for 12 ½ weeks where they have a larger bell system to drink out of. Those needed nasty muriatic cleaning also.

Solution

An AG-100 was installed on the main drinker water line to each of the farms.

Installed

April and May of 2014

Outcome

The ScaleBlaster performed as advertised, but really took the farm management by surprise “the drinker units look new!”. The 1,700 drinker units no longer require disassembly for cleaning. Acids are no longer used in the cleaning cycle. The larger turkey drinking bells experienced the same results.   ScaleBlaster significantly reduced cleaning times between flocks due to the elimination of limescale, allowing for more flocks to be produced yearly.