Agriculture Tech - Poultry

Overview

Performs farm related or agricultural essential technical tasks at an agriculture research/teaching facility.

Responsibilities

• Animal husbandry: Bird checks three times a day minimum, assessing drinker lines and feed quality for production animals in various research studies including feed additive, viral or bacterial inoculations, and behavioral/breeding trials.
• Animal husbandry: Determining, with guidance, when animals need to be euthanized and performing that activity on one to hundreds of birds at a time depending on need and occasion
• Grounds maintenance: Keeping the study areas free of hazards for people and livestock. Building waterlines, fixing broken feeders, fences, troubleshooting technology including barn security and environmental controls.
• Assisting procedures: This includes processing birds at the onsite processing plant ranging in positions and biosecurity; live hang, hock cutting, and evisceration. Helping lab staff and research professors with capturing, weighing birds and feed, euthanizing and identifying birds. Occasionally helping labs with organ and tissue harvesting.
• Biosecurity Dry clean: entire barn cleanup between poultry trials including; shoveling out individual bird pens then sweeping to remove as much debris as possible, then dry cleaning the rest of the house including sweeping, blowing out barns with leaf blowers and vacuuming aisles and sides of pens to remove dust and left over shavings.
• Biosecurity Wet clean: entire barn cleanup after a full dry clean, including industrial degreasing with a corrosive cleaning agent to break down stuck on debris and waste followed by; pressure washing all surfaces in and out of pens as well as walls, ceilings, floors, fans and ventilation systems. Ending with industrial disinfectant to remove left over impurities and traces of the previous trials to reduce possible contamination.
• Composting: I and one other Miller center staff member are trained on the functions and technology of the FOR Solutions rotary drum composter for food and bird waste. This includes calculation input and output needs, loading and unloading organic matter to then remove compost. Daily compost health checks involving temperature records, smell and visual checks and cleaning any runoff from rotations.
• Composting: Troubleshooting computer failures including drum rotation alarms, overflow faults, setting the composter in loading, digestion and unloading mode. Communicating with the computer on how to operate the rotary drum on manual mode in a way to not be hazardous to other workers or detrimental to the composter's mechanics.
• Composting: Safely unloading compost with forklifts and wearing proper PPE
• General work: Stocking houses with proper PPE, assisting in hatchery work and picking up chicks for trials from industry hatcheries. Cleaning facilities and washing staff and farm visitor laundry.

Qualifications

Level I:

• High School coursework
• Driver License

Level II:

• High School coursework and 1 year of experience in farming practices. A degree can substitute for experience.
• Driver License

Level III:

• High School coursework and 4 years of experience in farming practices. A degree can substitute for experience.
• Driver License

Level IV:

• High School coursework
• 6 years of experience in farming practices. A degree can substitute for experience.
• Driver License

Contract Type

Continuing
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Equal Opportunity Compliance Statement

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