PETERSBURG - Sonny Taylor has everything the well-equipped poultry farmer needs: a 40-by-80-foot shed to shield manure from rain and keep it out of streams and a smaller shed where dead chickens can rot into fertilizer.Taylor's farm, on a gravel road off U.S. 220, so perfectly meets recommen…
ANTIOCH - Paul Homan is a poultry farmer, but he doesn't own any birds.About six times a year, WLR Foods in Moorefield delivers truckloads of chicks to Homan's six chicken houses off Knobley Road in Mineral County. The company brings him the feed, too. And WLR agents stop by regularly to che…
In October 1996, Mark Scott and Barb Taylor toured the Potomac Valley to look at poultry farms.The pair, deputy director and water resources chief for the state Division of Environmental Protection, saw hundreds of new chicken houses, each containing 20,000 or 30,000 birds. Uncovered piles o…
MOOREFIELD - The South Branch of the Potomac River winds slowly from the Potomac Highlands through the rolling hills and farmlands of Hardy and Hampshire counties.Residents of Moorefield and Petersburg drink South Branch water. Farmers irrigate their fields with river water. Their kids swim …
