Dirty Jobs

Mike starts out his day at the McMurray Hatchery in Webster City, Iowa where he's counting baby chickens with Kurt. He says they have 110 different breeds of chicks at this hatchery out of about 400 total types of chickens. The chicks are counted by grabbing them four at a time. Mike also needs to separate between combed and non-combed (smooth-headed) chicks as he's counting. Eggs are hatched here once a week on Fridays. All the hatchlings need to be sorted, packed and shipped out by the end of the day. In a typical week they produce over 80,000 chicks. After sorting, they need separate the boys from the girls.

Mike goes into the back room to learn the art of chick sexing. Hatcheries can charge more for a box of female chicks since they produce eggs. He meets Tom who shows Mike how it's done. Males are called cockerels and females are called pullets. Tom can tell the difference by looking closely at their wing feathers.

Tom knows of four ways to sex a chick. There's two ways by checking the vent (the anal opening), plus feather sexing and color sexing. Mike notices that many chick sexers are Asian. That's because the practice of chick sexing started in Japan. People went to Japan to learn or the Japanese came to the US already knowing how to do it. Tom says he can do 20,000 chicks in a shift. They work until they're done.

Not all species are easy to differentiate by just looking at the feathers. Most of them have to be done by vent sexing. Mike is shown how to vent sex by Steve. First they need to squirt the poo out of the chick (so it doesn't get on you) then feel for a bump. The bump is where the sex organs are located. If the chick has a bump, it's a male. Mike's still not clear on the bump thing. He's a bit scared to give it a try and over squeeze the chick. He has trouble finding the bump, but eventually gets the hang of it.

Next he gets to pack up and ship some chicks. They are shipped by air through the US mail and should get to their new home in three days. They can endure the trip since they don't need food or water for the first 72 hours of life.

Before shipping, they need to vaccinate the chicks. Vaccinations need to be given during their first day of life. At the hatchery, they have an air controlled pressure needle to do this. Mike only has to grab a chick, press the back of the neck against the valve and the needle pops right out. The chicks are then ready to be sent to their new home.

Next Mike visits the Long Trail brewery in Vermont to learn how to make beer. The first step is mixing malt and barley with hot water in a large stainless steel tank called a lauter ton. After the malt starches turn into sugar, the rich sugar water is strained out of the bottom of the tank. This water will be used to make the beer. Left behind is a pile of used wet grain that looks a lot like poo which needs to be removed. An auger forces the grain through a tube where it's loaded into a truck and taken to a local dairy farm to be fed to the cows.

Mike then has to go inside the lauder ton to clean it out. He's given a ladder and a squeegee (which he breaks as he throws it into the tank). It's important to keep the factory tanks clean and sanitized so the beer does not get contaminated with bacteria. All he really needs to do is push the leftover grain toward the hole. It's about 110 degrees inside. When he finishes, the tank is then flushed with a cleaning agent that kills any bacteria that Mike left behind.

After cleaning, Mike gets back to making beer. Hops is added to the sugar water. It's basically a flower and is what gives beer it's flavor and aroma. Anti-foam agent is added so the mixture doesn't boil over. After the hops are boiled, the mix is quickly cooled and pumped into tanks where brewers yeast is added and fermentation begins.

Eight days later, alcohol and carbon dioxides form and the old yeast settles to the bottom of the tanks. The yeast is pumped out to a holding tank. Dan shows Mike a spent yeast tank. The used yeast will be sent to a wastewater treatment plant and processed. Mike is given hot caustic to clean out the yeast tank. Again Mike has to hop inside a tank. It's slippery and stinky and is cleaned once a week. Instead of a squeegee, he uses a tool that looks like a large toilet brush.

Joe then shows Mike how to scrape out the plates of the yeast press. The press squeezes every drop of beer out of the spent yeast. What is left is a chunky glop which can be sold as a base for animal feed or human food supplements. It is rich in protein and looks a bit like peanut butter. Joe tells Mike he can eat it, but he chooses not to.

There are also filter plates that need to be hosed down to remove excess yeast. The filter looks like a car mat. Mike pokes a hole through one. The metal plates hold the filter. Tom explains that they filter the beer when it's cold so the liquid comes out clear. It won't be clear if it's filtered when the temperature is hot.

Jim shows Mike how to test the CO2 carbonation tank. The temperature has to be at 35 degrees and the test involves shaking a sample. Once the results are marked on a chart, Mike gets to fill kegs. It takes four minutes to fill a 13.2 gallon keg. Hoses are attached to eight kegs for filling. Mike squirts beer all over the place. He then loads the kegs onto a pallet (knocking one over) where they are wrapped and loaded onto a truck.

Finally, Mike heads to Charleston, SC to learn about harvesting oyster beds. He meets Ed who has been gathering oysters for forty years. They are on the banks of Folly Creek. Ed tries to show Mike how to properly walk through the mud. Mike doesn't understand how to not get stuck. He also looses his boot. It doesn't help that the oyster shells are very sharp.

They harvest the oysters when the tide is out. They break off dead shell and leave it behind so it can reproduce the next year. Mike eats some oysters straight out of the shell. On a good day, Ed harvests thirty bushels of oysters at 25 dollars a bushel. He makes about $750 a day. Restaurants then sell the oysters for about 75 dollars a bushel.

After the oysters are eaten, the shells are recycled. Mike meets Andy from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources oyster recycling program. He takes Mike to a huge pile of stinky oyster shells. They are in a quarantine period before they replant to make sure there's no foreign pathogens or exotic species there that they don't want to introduce into the environment. They also need to take any foreign debris and trash out before they're planted.

The South Carolina oyster shell recycling program was started in 2000. They have sixteen bins in the coastal areas where people can drop off bushels of used shells. They get a lot of shells from restaurants and caterers. The shells are being recycled into making more oysters.

Once sorted, the shells are loaded onto a barge. They pick up about 800 bushels of shells to be planted on state shellfish ground. In the spring the oysters are spawning and the free swimming larvae are looking for a place to live. The shells are there for the oysters to latch onto and grow. About 18,000 pounds are loaded onto the barge today.

The oyster season is closed in the summer. Oysters can live for about 3-5 years. They are hermaphrodites meaning both sexes can occur in the same animal, although during spawning they're usually one sex or the other. Eating oysters can be dangerous if they are from polluted water. They are filter feeders and they can accumulate colonies of coliforms (bacteria) from sewage in bad water.

The oysters are loaded onto the barge. Mike is told he has the job of loadmeister where he stands with a shovel and makes sure no oysters fall off the side of the barge. He believes this is a made up job. They head off toward the planting area. They have PVC pipe sticking up to show them exactly where to plant. Using a high powered water hose, Mike sprays the oysters off the barge into the water. The last bits are shoveled off by hand. The day ends with Mike eating oysters and a beautiful sunset.