Petaluma rancher is an expert on chickens

Bob McCoy has seen and done virtually everything poultry-wise in his 66 years as a Petaluma resident.|

Although Petaluma is no longer recognized as the World’s Egg Basket, this region is still home to a thriving chicken industry, both in egg production and in raising meat birds, or fryers as they’re commonly called. Today’s column will take a look at how the fryers make their way to the processing plant and how today’s methods of getting them there differ from those of a half-century ago.

To explain some of the intricacies of these chicken-related topics I’ve asked a knowledgeable source, 78-year-old Bob McCoy, who’s seen and done virtually everything poultry-wise in his 66 years as a Petaluma resident, to explain some of the nuances of raising chickens and later catching them for processing.

Born in the southern California town of Artesia, where his father operated a trucking business, McCoy moved to Petaluma along with his parents and brother David as a 12-year-old in 1950. Living on Upham Street, he had an Argus-Courier paper route. Among his first poultry jobs was filling feed hoppers at various ranches and building cage houses on Al Nissen’s ranch.

At Petaluma High School (class of ’57), he was raising a pig as a Future Farmers of America project when his parents decided to move back to southern California, which was unsettling to McCoy until he convinced them that he was better off staying here raising his pig. But the real reason for him wanting to stay put was because he was in love with his high school sweetheart, the smart and attractive treasurer of the Honor Society, Marye Hennes.

Bob and Marye McCoy were married at St. Vincent’s Church in 1958 and soon moved to San Jose, where he took a job working for the telephone company. They moved back after one year, to Cotati, before buying a 3 1/2-acre chicken ranch on Lau Lane for $16,000. Their son Shawn was born in 1960 and daughter Marlene in 1962.

About 1960, McCoy began raising fryers for Barlas Feed Co. and had started a chicken vaccinating and debeaking operation, which led to an opportunity to load fryers for processing.

As a former chicken catcher, I’m familiar with the old-style procedures of catching and loading fryers from the once common small-room houses. With a metal cage truck parked near a window, a crew of five or six workers would go in at night with a red lantern since bright light spooked the birds. Bending down and quickly grabbing four legs in each hand we carried eight 3 1/2 pound, 59-day-old birds to the window, where we handed them to a loader, who stuffed them into a cage. In the mid-1960s, we caught about 2,000 birds apiece in a shift.

Modern chicken houses now hold about 10,000 birds and a forklift is used to transport and place modules of cages inside of them, limiting the time and distance the workers have to carry today’s 5 1/2-pound, 49-day-old fryers, allowing each worker to catch about 4,000 chickens a night.

At his family-operated, 35-acre chicken ranch on Jewett Road, McCoy raises about 125,000 Rosie organic fryers every seven to 10 weeks. Through his McCoy Poultry Services, which employs about 30 workers, about 70,000 Rosie organic or Rocky free range fryers are sourced nightly within a 150-mile range and hauled to Petaluma Poultry Processors, where McCoy has been delivering them for 40 years.

But there’s more to the McCoys than just raising and catching chickens. The entire family also enjoys the shared hobby of auto racing at Petaluma Speedway, where Shawn McCoy, who’s never missed a race since March 27, 1980, continues to extend his record-setting mark of 796 consecutive races.

His monumental streak is just 19 races shy of tying the national record of 815 straight. At the race track, Bob McCoy coordinates the push trucks, which push disabled racers off the track and help sprint cars get started. Marye McCoy attends every race and once drove in a “powder puff” race, while daughter Marlene and grandson Steven are track photographers. Shawn’s wife Becky, a valuable pit crew member, has Enduro race experience.

“Not many people realize that while there are fewer chicken ranches around here than in the past, the current ranches are much larger than they used to be, and some people don’t realize that chicken doesn’t originate in a plastic bag,” Bob McCoy said.

(Harlan Osborne’s column Toolin’ Around Town appears every two weeks. Contact him at harlan@sonic.net.)

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