Sand Mountain Reporter

Over the past few weeks people have seemed to enjoy pointing out that I am a “city boy.”

Well, I can’t really deny it, but for the record it’s not like I came from some major metropolis like New York, Los Angeles, or even Atlanta for that matter.

Nevertheless, there are times when it is quite apparent like when I’m standing in the middle of a chicken house in the middle of Marshall County.

There is something a little unnerving about standing in the middle of thousands of birds.

Honestly, I had no idea what they were going to do when I started to take their picture with a flash.

Apparently, the birds do not like light.

Typically, my experience with anything related to poultry went like this:

1. Park at Popeye’s Chicken.

2. Order buffet.

3. Eat buffet until every item has to be refilled.

4. Go back and get some pudding.

5. Wipe mouth and leave.

But, after working on The Reporter’s Poultry section for Horizons I have a better understanding of what it takes to get the chicken from the egg to my belly.

Really, that’s what it’s all about — making food.

Like most people who come to Albertville, I noticed the chicken processing plants throughout the area.

I associated the plants as making up the entire poultry industry, but really that is just a small part of it.

What I failed to realize was the number of farmers it took to produce the chickens to be processed.

According to the USDA, Marshall County ranks third in the state in broiler chicken production.

Broilers are typically the smaller chickens you buy in the store and weigh between three to nine pounds.

Marshall County also ranks fifth in the production of eggs in the state.

Just in case you were wondering, there are 67 counties in Alabama.

Unless you spend countless hours driving down all of the county roads throughout Marshall County, you would never know how many of these farms exist.

They don’t have the big buildings with a company name and logo plastered on the side.

They don’t have hundreds of workers filing in and out of their buildings.

Most of them are family-run operations that put food on their tables and ours.

After looking at the poultry industry from the beginning, the egg, all the way to my freezer, it has a new set of faces associated with it.

Jonathan Stinson is a staff writer for The Sand Mountain Reporter. His e-mail address is county(at)sandmountainreporter.com.

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Serving Albertville and the Sand Mountain region

Publisher: Ben Shurett

1603 Progress Drive
Albertville, Alabama 35950

Tel: 256-840-3000 | Email

A Southern Newspapers publication.