Approximately 23 millon hens lay eggs in Indiana, and 40,000 of those hens lay eggs at Tony Guyas' 175-acre Center Creek Farm, northwest of Ligonier.

It's a 365-days-a-year job for Guyas, who has to walk through several inches of chicken manure every day to perform chores he says he loves to do.

He's been farming his own land since he was 20 years old, growing mostly grains. He bought the farm in 1985 and went to work at a local factory to help make payments.

In 2006, Guyas was offered a chance to go into the egg-producing business, and he jumped at the opportunity.

"I love doing this," Guyas said with a smile. "If I didn't love it, I wouldn't have built a second barn. This farm gives our family a chance to work together."

Guyas also grows corn, soybeans and hay on his farm, but the pride and joy of his operation are two barns, each nearly as long as two football fields, that house 20,000 chickens each.

Guyas' birds are cage-free, and they produce organic, brown eggs. He has a contract with an egg distributor who picks up the eggs about twice a week. Most of the eggs hit shelves in stores such as Meier and Costco.

Guyas works hard to keep his operation organic. Sanitary conditions are of the utmost importance. His operation is certified as a "humane" egg production system, which is different than some egg farms where the hens are kept in cages.

Guyas' hens are supplied and owned by a chicken contractor. They are rotated out about once a year. They arrive in Ligonier as pullets - 16 to 18 weeks old - and stay until they are about 66 weeks old, when their egg production starts to fall. As they reach that age, they are "spent hens" and sent to a processing plant where they turned into all types of food products.

Monitoring chickens

Technology ensures the chickens are kept safe, disease-free and regularly producing eggs. A wall of monitoring equipment keeps track of the amount of water and feed consumed by the birds. The barns are heated in the winter at a constant 74.1 degrees, and air-cooled in the summer. Other variables, such as humidity and ammonia levels, are also closely watched.

Everyone entering and exiting the barns steps on a large floormat soaked in iodine that helps keep germs at bay. Moisture is kept to a minimum in the barn. Even a drop or two can cause problems.

His farm is closely monitored by the Indiana Department of Environment Management (IDEM) and the state department of agriculture, which issues him a special license certifying his eggs as organic.

Electronic monitoring stations for food and water consumption alert Guyas to any problems the birds may have.

To keep his birds happy, healthy and producing, Guyas goes through 30 tons of chicken feed a year. And naturally, that means the chickens produce a lot of manure.

"It's a real dry manure," Guyas said as he picked up a handful of the droppings, without hesitation, and let it fall through his fingers to show its texture. The manure resembles sawdust.

It falls to the floor where it accumulates. About once a year, a team of workers comes in and clears out the mess. Some of the manure is kept on the farm to use for fertilizer, but most is sold to other farmers.

The chickens drink about 2,000 gallons of water a day from wells on his farm, and those wells are also closely watched by Guyas and IDEM. Even the tons of chicken feed he uses are certified as organic from an outfit in Pierceton that produces it for him.

"If there's something wrong with them, I'll see a drop in food and water usage," he said.

Funny bunch

The birds are a funny bunch, Guyas has learned over the years.

"They like a routine, and they don't like change. They are particular," he said. "But you take care of the birds, and they will perform."

He keeps the same routine every day and has to make adjustments for daylight-saving time. When he first started taking care of the hens, Guyas came into the barns wearing a ballcap. One day he entered without the hat, and the chickens got all flustered and upset. He put the cap back on.

He also discovered that the birds can't see the red or blue light from a flashlight, but the white light from a regular flashlight really gets their attention.

Egg production can be affected by several factors including lighting. Artificial lights go off and on as needed to keep the birds in their routine.

Operation

Guyas' hens produce about 31,000 eggs a day - or 12 million eggs a year. And that translates into a successful, family-run operation for Guyas, his wife, Vicki, and their three sons.

The eggs are collected about twice a day using a conveyor belt that runs under the chickens. The belt takes the brown eggs to a loading area where Guyas and his three sons, Jonathan, Jack and Daniel, load them onto trays, which hold 30 eggs each.

The trays are stacked onto a pallets, which are kept in a large, refrigerated room until his contractor comes to pick them up. Then, the eggs are taken to a plant to be cleaned and graded, according to size.

Young chickens produce smaller eggs, most of which are sent to a California food-processing plant and used to make mayonnaise or other food products.

"I'm proud of what we do here," Guyas said with a smile that never seems to go away. "This is a true family operation. Our farm contributes a lot in the way of taxes. We take good care of our birds and produce a lot of eggs. I couldn't be happier.

"Some people might think we'd be sick of eating eggs, but we're not," he said. "We eat a whole lot of scrambled eggs, fried eggs, almost every day. They're great."