A Seventh-Year Return-to-Farm Farmer Achieves a Production Index of 492 at a 100,000-Bird Broiler Farm

Daegang-myeon, Namwon-si, Jeonbuk State. Lee Myung-woon’s broiler farm, “Rock and Mountain Fortress,” raises 100,000 birds in four buildings. At the same scale, a husband-and-wife team usually works together, but Lee manages this farm alone. When things are busy, borrowing a little help from people in the village is all he does.

Born in 1956, he is 70 years old this year. He worked for a major food company for twenty-nine years, retired at the end of 2019, and came to this farm in January of the following year. Now in his seventh year as a return-to-farm farmer, he said, “I have never once regretted coming down here. If anything, I wish I had come five years earlier.”

The strength to handle 100,000 birds alone comes not from physical stamina but from the system. The scale attached to the feed bin, the scale inside the poultry house, and ventilation and temperature programs set by age in days look after the chickens on Lee’s behalf. His job is to read those numbers and make judgments.

A “second career” prepared over 10 years
Lee’s return to farming was not an impulsive decision. He set his criteria while still working at the company, and the preparation period alone was 10 years.

The first criterion was that it had to be a primary industry. Lee explained, “If I wanted to keep doing what I had been doing, I would eventually end up visiting companies and asking former juniors for favors. Rather than that, I wanted to do work with my own body.” The second was that it had to be a field unrelated to his former workplace, the third was that it should be work he could do alone as much as possible, and the last was an income in the hundreds of millions of won.

After comparing high-income items in agriculture and livestock, he chose broilers. The decisive factor was that, thanks to the integrated production structure, he did not have to worry about distribution. He emphasized, “If I just build the poultry houses, the integrator supplies the feed, and once the chickens are fully grown, they take the birds away. In terms of cash turnover as well, chickens are fast.”

The third criterion, “work that can be done alone,” ultimately came back to the question of how far automation could be raised.

He began looking for a site about one year before retirement. Construction began as soon as the contract was signed, the facility was completed in August 2019, and he left the company at the end of that year. Because the entire rear side was bedrock, the livestock houses were built even with blasting work.

Doing alone what a couple would do…“I don’t leave the poultry houses unattended”
The control system initially installed was an older model. He said, “Everything did not appear on one screen, so I had to scroll through it.” For someone who goes around four buildings alone, the time spent flipping through screens to check things becomes labor itself.

The turning point came in two directions. A control-system company visited for sales, and around the same time, the National Institute of Animal Science asked for on-farm demonstration of a system it had developed itself. Lee gave the building at the far end to the institute as a test house. In effect, he directly compared the two methods by running one building on the new system and the others on the existing system. Lee smiled and said, “After using it, the new system was definitely better. Above all, everything is visible on one screen.” Afterward, through an ICT convergence support project, he replaced the other buildings sequentially as well.

Ventilation and temperature are entrusted entirely to automatic control. Lee stated, “On day 1, the fan runs for 5 seconds and rests for 5 minutes in a cycle. As the age in days increases, the operating time increases, and it is adjusted every 2–3 days.” The temperature is gradually lowered from 33 degrees Celsius at chick placement to 23 degrees around shipping. If the poultry-house temperature is higher than the set value, the number of operating fans increases, and if that still does not bring it under control, the cooling pads operate.

After the chickens arrive, the daily routine is actually simple. He enters the poultry houses once or twice a day to check the feeders and drinkers and remove dead birds. “After placement, it is comfortable. The truly busy time is when there are no chickens,” he said.

Choi Yang-sang, the Harim regional manager who oversees this farm, pointed to the reason one-person operation is possible from another angle. Choi explained, “There are not many cases where one person handles 100,000 birds alone. Usually, a couple or the farm owner and foreign workers raise them together. But Lee does not leave the poultry houses unattended. When two people usually do it, one person goes out and the other manages things, and gaps arise in that process, but he stays at the farm. Because Lee almost never goes outside the farm, his friends come to the farm to hang out.”
 

Once scales were installed, the shipping date became visible
The biggest change Lee points to is the scales. Inside the poultry houses, he installed scales capable of individual measurement, and on the feed bins, scales that measure the remaining amount. Lee said, “When feed comes in, I can check on the computer how many kg are left now. That means knowing in real time how much the chickens have eaten in a day.”

If daily intake is known, body weight can be estimated by factoring in average weight gain, and the feed conversion ratio can be calculated based on that. The system shows this separately by building. It has become possible to compare gaps between buildings with numbers rather than gut feeling. The decision on shipping also comes from here. From day 24, Lee measures body weight every day and informs the integrator. He then consults with the regional manager to decide the shipping time. However, because the automatic scale is less accurate, he measures directly the body weight used for shipping decisions.

The results are printed directly on the report card. The production index is calculated by placing average weight and livability in the numerator, placing rearing days and feed conversion ratio in the denominator, and multiplying by 100. All four values are management targets, and three of those four values come from the scales every day.
 

“Top 10%”…Even the extra chicks are kept alive
Looking at recent shipping results, the figures range from 386 to 492 by statement, and when aggregated by flock cycle, they move between 400 and 468. What level is that? Manager Choi answered clearly, “It is about the top 10%. It is not that he is merely good; he raises them extremely well.”

The particularly striking part is livability. When the statements are divided, two flock cycles were recorded at 100.82% and 100.92% respectively (including the 3% extra). This means the number of birds shipped was greater than the number of chicks placed according to the settlement standard. The integrator adds about 3% extra to the contracted number of chicks, taking into account early chick mortality. Because settlement is based on the contracted number, if even the extra chicks received are kept alive, livability exceeds 100%.

Choi explained, “Some chicks have bad joints, and some are weak, so they die during the raising process. That is why an extra 3% is supplied. Even with 3% more provided, farms that raise them well record a livability of 98–99%. But this farm exceeds 100% when conditions are good.”
 

He cites his disinfection routine as the secret. Once the chickens leave, after washing with water, he sprays disinfectant over the entire facility, including the feeders, using a fogging method. He then sprays a coccidiosis-control agent, lays down rice hulls, and sprays disinfectant again. Except for one episode of low-pathogenic avian influenza, there have been no major disease incidents.

Manager Choi pointed first to attitude rather than technology. He said, “Lee not only keeps the basics of (broiler raising) well, but also devotes a great deal of care to the chickens. And when experts give advice, he puts it into practice right away.”

The 40-day flock cycle recorded on the report card as “large chickens” also shows the nature of this farm. The whole chickens consumers commonly eat are around 1.5 kg, but 2.5 kg-class large chickens go to separate customers. Choi said, “The larger chickens grow, the higher the possibility they will die. So they require much more effort and careful management. Even among Harim’s contract farms, not many raise large chickens.”

The turnover rate is the same. According to Harim, the average for contract farms is 6.5 cycles per year, but Lee runs as many as 7 cycles. Even during the summer season, when demand is high, he takes only the minimum downtime before receiving chicks. Choi said, “That is the period when volume is needed the most. When the company asks, he quietly does it,” adding, “From the farm’s standpoint as well, the number of cycles has a major impact on income.”

Automatic body-weight measurement, the final assignment
The cost of purchasing the site and newly constructing the four buildings was 2.3 billion won, including the land price. He bought the land by using his house as collateral and borrowed construction costs by using the livestock houses as collateral. He was unable to receive around 300 million won in return-to-farming funds. Lee stated, “They told me it was not possible because I applied after building the poultry houses. I should have applied before starting construction.” He is now repaying principal and interest at a level of 40 million won per year. Running 7 cycles a year, the amount deposited into his account is around 350 million won. Lee explains that he has achieved the criterion he initially set of income in the hundreds of millions of won.

His recent concern is that the number of heat-wave days is increasing due to abnormal climate conditions. During this summer’s heat wave, even while the cooling pads were running, the poultry-house temperature rose to 32 degrees Celsius. Because the chickens did not eat feed, daily weight gain was limited to 70 g, and the rearing period lengthened. Starting next year, he is considering reducing the number of chicks placed by 7,000 to 10,000 birds. He said, “Summers will get even hotter going forward, and I think reducing the number of birds is the right thing to do.”

When asked about future plans, there was no talk of expanding the scale. His wish is, “I want to invest in the smarter side.” What he wants most is automatic average body-weight measurement. Although his farm sends body-weight data to the integrator every day, producing the original numbers is still a human task. He takes a net into the poultry house, blocks off a certain space, puts all the chickens inside it on a scale, and then divides by the number of birds to calculate the average. When they are chicks, one net holds 200 birds, and at shipping time, 45–50 birds fit in. He measures two spots in each building. It is the most physically demanding task on a farm run by one person.
 

It is not that there have been no attempts at automation. Together with a domestic company, he attempted development using camera-based image recognition, but it did not reach a level usable on-site. Recently, the company explained that it would be possible using a thermal-imaging camera. So he asked that company to develop the technology. 

This is a farm where ventilation, temperature, and feed have all been made visible through systems instead of people. Only one of the most basic indicators still depends on the strength of a person’s arms. That is also why Lee says he will continue investing in smart livestock farming.

Finally, Lee advised, “If you are thinking about returning to farming, you should not listen too much to what people around you say; you need to investigate and prepare yourself. It took me 10 years too. You have to start in advance.”