Co-Mo, Tyson Foods collaborate on project

Tipton-based Co-Mo Electric Cooperative recently announced a partnership with Tyson Foods Inc. on a project that aims to improve energy and bird-production efficiencies for Tyson’s chicken farmers.

The project involves installing light-emitting diode lights, or LEDs, in two chicken barns at the farm of Danny Mazelin in Cole Camp. If successful, the project could spark a change in poultry farming nationally, according to a news release from Co-Mo.  

The LED lights being installed in the two barns are engineered for the poultry industry to promote healthy growth with less consumption of feed to get the bird into local supermarkets at a lower cost.

Emerging LED technology allows the farmer to control the light spectrum of the bulbs to benefit the chickens at each stage of their lives. LED lights also use substantially less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs, lowering the farmer’s electric bill and lessening the load on Co-Mo’s system during peak times, the release stated.

Co-Mo, through its power supplier Association Electric Cooperative Inc., is sharing in the cost of installing more than 120 of these LED bulbs in two of Mazelin’s six chicken barns. Those barns will be the experiment group, while the other four will be the control group. Mazelin sells his birds to Tyson, which purchases birds first from farmers who are able to grow them to the target weight with the lowest consumption of feed.

“Seventy percent of our expenses is feed,” Jim Williams, live production manager for Tyson’s Sedalia plant, stated in the release. “If we can grow these birds out with less feed, that has a significant effect on our costs.”

The LED lights, called AgriShift Poultry Lighting, are designed by Once Innovations, a Minnesota LED lighting design and manufacturing company.