ST. HENRY — A new poultry facility may be coming to St. Henry.
WDC Eggs is submitting a Permit to Install and Permit to Operate, which must be approved by the Ohio Department of Agriculture before construction can begin. Permit to Install details plans for the building itself, while Permit to Operate encompasses all operations that will occur at the facility.
If the permits are approved, the WDC Eggs Layer Facility will be located at 3193 Fleetfoot Road. It would be situated in Mercer County in the Upper Wabash River Watershed. The facility will be owned and operated by WDC Eggs, which consists of Cooper Farms, Weaver Bros., and Division Farms.
The proposed facility would have 16 layer housing barns, each capable of housing 106,000 layers, for a total capacity of 1.7 million layers.
As part of the permit process, WDC Eggs must provide manure management, rodent control, mortality management and emergency response plans. According to a news release, the facility would generate some 48,000 tons of poultry manure per year. The release states manure storage barns would provide for 160 days of manure storage.
All of the solid manure will be distributed off the farm to manure brokers and crop producers that will use the manure as a replacement for commercial fertilizers. Liquid manure will be used on 17 acres of crops on the farmland where the facility would be located.
The ODA will hold an open house and public meeting to discuss the proposed facility April 19 at the Mercer County Soil and Water Conservation District office, 220 W. Livingston St., Suite 1, Celina. The open house will begin at 6:30 p.m., and the public meeting will be held at 7 p.m.
Interested parties may submit oral or written comments concerning the facility during this meeting. Written comments may also be sent to the ODA Division of Livestock Environmental Permitting, 8995 E. Main St., Reynoldsburg, OH 43068. Comments must be received by April 26.
