LINCOLN COUNTY - In the Northwoods, plenty of families sell organic eggs from their small farms. But a new chicken farm near Gleason takes production to a different level.
Andrew Headings takes care of 25,000 chickens and all of their eggs. With that comes a lot of record keeping.
"Their body weight every day, how much they ate, I can figure that out," said Headings.
Headings started the Headings Family Farm in August. He says he is looking to make the birds even happier this week.
"I'm going to be free range humane certified. I have a big fence out here that fences in about 16 acres. On a nice day, my chickens are going to be allowed to go out and be able to scratch around in this grass and Pasteur," said Headings.
All of his eggs go to Heading's parent farm in Illinois before being sold around the country.
"He's a specialty egg company. We're into organic, non-GMO, omega eggs, double omega, cage free, all of his barns are cage free," said Headings.
There's a good reason you don't see many chicken farms in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.
"I didn't look around the country and say 'let's put a barn here because it's ideal', the more ideal would be down south because the cold makes it to where we have to heat so we can't ventilate as much," said Headings.
Even with the cold temperatures, Headings has an eco-friendly plan for heating.
"We have a heater, an 800,000btu heater sitting by the center and we'll have a 10-ton bin sitting there and I'll buy conventional corn, put it in the bin and the stove will burn the corn," said Headings.
That's not the only thing that's eco-friendly on the farm. Headings has tried cutting down on the smell, too.
"The amount of smell we put off in this neighborhood is very minimal. If you get 300 feet away from here, you probably can't smell this thing," said Headings.
You might not smell it, but you sure can appreciate all the hard work.
"Compared to just driving by and saying, 'there's a chicken barn', there's a lot that's involved," said Headings.
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