HOOPER - Lincoln Premium Poultry held an open house on Thursday evening to celebrate the completion of three band new chicken barns at a site just outside of Hooper.
It's the first of over 100 similar sites that Lincoln Premium Poultry, in partnership with Costco, is planning to construct across the state of Nebraska, as well as some in Iowa. The sites will be built within a 60 mile radius of Fremont, and will be constructed on the lands of local farmers.
Each site will consist of three or four barns, and farmers will raise the chickens before sending them to a processing plant in Fremont. From there, the chickens will be transported to Costco stores across the country.
The open house gave local farmers the opportunity to see the completed barns, and learn more about Lincoln Premium Poultry's plans for all of their sites across Nebraska. The event also provided informational booths from the various partners who helped in the construction of the barns.
Jessica Kolterman of Lincoln Premium Poultry says that the goal is to have all of the sites up and running within the next two years. Kolterman also says that this is a brand new concept in the retail industry, where a major retailer is connecting itself to local farmers at a mass production level.
An average four-barn set from Lincoln Premium Poultry will have two 80-gallon/minute wells, and will have an average of 10 trucks per week during a six-week flock cycle. The barns will also cycle six flocks per year with two week breaks between flocks, and will have an average eight-hour work day for the farmer to manage the flock.
The barns in Hooper will officially go online at the end of December, and other barns in the region will follow after that point. Kolterman says that there are roughly 40 barns currently under construction, with completion varying from site-to-site.
Lincoln Premium Poultry Open House
