Mark,

I would be pleased to weigh in on this, but I've pretty much forgotten anything I ever knew about either quality champange or fine cigars. I've been pinching pennies for so long that my idea of a hot night out on the town is splitting a spaghetti and meatball special with my wife at the local Italian restaurant and "splurging" on two glasses of the house wine.

As to the number of broilers....

You can look for 500,000 from one of the top 10 to finish up this week with results in a week or two. Another mega-integrator is running multiple barns with staggered starts a week apart. A broiler takes 6 weeks to grow to processing weight, so 6 weeks after the first barns started the first birds would be processed and each week thereafter.

What happens when all the barns run through their cycles on the product? Well, if they get the same results, or even close to the same results that were published in the IP trial, let's say a 3/1 return on investment (or even a 2/1 ROI), it is my opinion that they would be crazy to return to "standard industry practice".

If the first barns in the cycle using Agrastim see a 2.4% weight gain on less feed consumed AND have the benefit of many more birds making it to market because of lower disease related mortality and condemnations, how would you rate the job security of the guy in the field who decides, "Heck, let's just go back to the old way of doing this"?

It is my opinion - based only on what I read about the crisis surrounding the poultry industry - and seasoned with a portion of common sense - that sales from these 4 major players should start to trickle in as the first barns are wrapping up and the numbers confirm similar results to the published independent trials.

Now, the big decision for me is, do I have a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast or do I finish off the cold spaghetti left over from last night's hot date with Mrs. z?

Hmmmmmm.

-z