CHICKEN BENEFITS DEXTER ECONOMY

DEXTER -- Tyson. We're chicken.

That's easy to believe. With 83 plants in 20 states, Tyson has become the world's largest single producer of chicken products.

Besides its production of fresh chicken, Tyson Foods also produces Cornish game hens, chicken patties and full dinners. And that's just the poultry division. The company also produces pork and seafood products, as well as Mexican flour and corn tortillas, taco shells and chips. High-protein animal feed also is listed among its products.

Locally, Tyson does its bird business in Dexter, where some 800 employees process whole and de-boned poultry. Local operations include a hatchery and feed mill as well as the processing plant.

The operation is one of the largest employers in the region and one of four Tyson complexes in the state.

Prior to 1998, the Dexter plant was owned by Hudson Foods. Ironically, Tyson sold the Dexter plant to Hudson some 12 years earlier.

"Believe it or not, we actually owned this facility for about two months back in 1986," said company chairman John Tyson of Springdale, Ark. "We bought it and then sold it to Hudson Foods because it did not fit what we needed at that time. And when we bought the Hudson facility in January of 1998, this facility had made a lot of changes."

In 1996, Hudson Foods doubled its employment to 800 as part of an expansion project to increase capacity at the plant. Currently, Tyson processes locally 650,000 birds per week, a lesser amount than the 1.3 million average at other plants but a respectable amount nonetheless, John Tyson said.

In all, the company produces more than 6.4 million pounds of chicken with the help of some 7,400 contract growers.

Tyson Foods boasts that its chickens aren't like the chickens of years past. As demand for breast meat and processed products has grown in recent years, breeders have worked to select traits that genetically relate to customer needs.

The breeder birds produce eggs collected by hand or conveyor belts. The eggs are placed in trays and taken to a Tyson hatchery.

At the hatchery, eggs are placed in temperature-controlled incubator. Just over two weeks later, eggs are placed in a hatcher for three days, after which eggs begin to hatch "like cluckwork." The chicks are then separated, treated with medicine to prevent respiratory problems and taken to farms where they will live until ready for processing.

The company has considered further expansion of the Dexter plant recently. Last summer, Tyson said a move toward processing more of the de-boned meat would take place within the next three years.

"Some of the de-boned meat we now ship off to other locations," he said. "And if we can process that here -- the patties for key customers, chicken nuggets or fajita meat for our commercial customers -- we might do more of that here versus shipping it off to another location."