The Poultry Leadership Podcast

Before the Burnout: Electrical Wisdom from Interstates Superintendent Cody Pommer

• Brandon Mulnix • Season 2 • Episode 38

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Power problems don’t announce themselves—they show up as dead fans, stressed birds, and energy bills that creep higher every month. We invited superintendent electrician Cody Pommer of Interstates to walk through the electrical decisions that quietly decide whether a poultry site runs smooth for years or limps from fix to fix. Together, we unpack where farms get into trouble—moisture, dust, untrained panel work—and the simple, proven steps that keep people safe and equipment alive: correct NEMA ratings, low-point drains, GFCI protection, better cable selection, and a disciplined maintenance plan.

Cody breaks down why electrical rooms pay back in longevity and safety, and why grounding and bonding are non-negotiable in wet, high-dust environments. We dig into smart controls and VFDs that fine-tune ventilation and lighting, explore modern fire detection with aspirating systems, and call out the shortcuts that cost the most—skipping VFD-rated cable, ignoring voltage drop on long runs, and leaving new equipment to soak in the weather. We also talk resilience: generator strategies that share load across houses, peak-shaving to tame demand charges, and design choices that make future add-ons cheap rather than painful.

Looking ahead, we connect the dots between reliable power and better data. AI is accelerating everything from egg counting accuracy to anomaly detection and design workflows, but it needs clean signals and thoughtful integration to shine. For smaller and mid-size barns, we highlight accessible control options that unify ventilation, feed, and lighting with mobile monitoring—practical tools that deliver immediate clarity and long-term savings.

If you care about flock health, uptime, and a utility bill that doesn’t spike when the weather does, this conversation is your blueprint. Subscribe, share with a producer who needs a safer setup, and leave a review with your top electrical headache—we’ll tackle it in a future show.

Hosted by Brandon Mulnix - Director of Commercial Accounts - Prism Controls
The Poultry Leadership Podcast is only possible because of its sponsor, Prism Controls
Find out more about them at www.prismcontrols.com

Brandon Mulnix:

Welcome to the Poultry Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Brandon Mulnix. And today, I believe I have a shocking episode. I am going to do my best to interview this guest in a way that really connects the dots on a lot of things, including it may turn the light on in areas in your world that you never expected. Because on the podcast today, I have Cody Pommer from Interstate Electrical. And I'm super excited. I've worked with Cody a lot over the years on different projects. And when it comes to electrical safety, this is the guy. So Cody, welcome to the show. Hey, hi, Brandon. Thanks for having me here. Hey, Cody, can you introduce yourself to the audience? Tell them a little bit about your background and kind of just who Cody is.

Cody Pommer:

Yeah. As Brandon said, I'm a superintendent for interstates. I worked here for a little over 12 years now. So my roles as a superintendent, I get to oversee the electrical installations on projects and just make sure that the safety, quality, and productivity fits and aligns with interstate standards. I kind of help with some of the initial design on projects and that layout and what that really is, is what the installation means and methods, what's it look like, you know, as a finished project when we start envisioning that stuff. Um I also work hand in hand with owners, general contractors, other trades, um, people such as yourself, just uh remove obstacles and make sure that the the projects are done on time and as smoothly as possible, I guess.

Brandon Mulnix:

Well, like any good project manager, it's got to be on time and on budget, right? That's right. We do our best. So it always happens that way. On time, on budget. Those are great things. So who's Cody when you're not working?

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, so uh I got a wife and four kids, got one left in high school, so we spent a lot of time either at sporting events or last weekend we were hunting down homecoming dresses, and yeah, we just enjoy the outdoors. We kids like boating, and my wife and I enjoy it and do some camping and yeah, some stuff like that.

Brandon Mulnix:

Well, we're at similar points in life because I have one more left. He's senior year. You don't want to miss any of those activities for sure. So as we get going, I need to ask: are there any disclaimers about anything that we're gonna share today coming from interstates or anything like that?

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, I'm an electrician by trade, not an electrical engineer, so I'll do my best to answer any questions or topics that we want to cover.

Brandon Mulnix:

So all right. From the legal side, I'll say anything you hear on this podcast, please seek out the professional assistance and electrician. We don't want you to get shocked or hurt if we say anything that could lead you to encourage you to do something silly like that. So I just want to put that out there so nobody gets hurt. So, Cody, what's the number one reason that somebody's gonna call you?

Cody Pommer:

I would say just uh getting a professional opinion, right? I mean, we're talking about other farms or people starting up a farm, it's working through that design phase, getting input on what what's worked in the past, what hasn't worked, the do's and don'ts, uh just getting a feel for for what you need as a farm, I guess, you know, and the size and what we can do to help bring that imagination to fruition, you know.

Brandon Mulnix:

Yeah, it's interesting as I've been able to experience a number of years in the industry to see the the sizes of these farms, barns, whatever you want to call them, houses, continually grow, take shape. They're not your average backyard barn anymore. And so as you do this, I want to talk about if I'm a farmer and I say, hey, you know, I hear about this interstates thing, but I I think I can do the electrical myself. What's a piece of advice you're gonna give me as I'm the farmer and I'm trying to do the electrical myself? Absolutely not.

Cody Pommer:

Um if you if you want a site that's gonna have some longevity, right? And and fit code and um it's gonna be safe and and run well, I I would suggest that you do not do that.

Brandon Mulnix:

Well, let's talk about safety. As you look across everything that's going on in in the barnyard, the projects you've worked on, what are the most common electrical hazards that you've encountered on poultry farms?

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, that's a good question. There are a few different things. I'd say one of them is probably untrained staff trying to fix electrical equipment or work in panels, and some of them guys are just there, it might be overnight or whatever, trying to make sure stuff's running correctly and something breaks down. But what you'll tend to see sometimes, guys that aren't qualified doing that, is maybe they leave some loose connections or not getting a relay put back in where it needs to get put back into, or searching through some wiring and cut some zip ties, and then the zip ties don't get put back in there, and then it looks less desirable, I guess. Why do looks matter when it comes to electrical panels? Well, the looks are important to me for sure, but I'd say the the safety side of it, right, is when we start getting wiring hanging out of wireways and panduits and places that are supposed to contain the wire, right? It just creates another hazard with stuff hanging out there. Probably another one of these facilities is just water or moisture. You know, the water is usually part of their cleaning, you know, of the facility, trying to keep that clean, or with keeping airflow in the barns in the winter times, you'll see a lot of that warm air meeting the cold air outside, yeah, a lot of freezing and rethawing at times. I mean, just dust and debris. It's these birds, they create a lot of dust and debris, and even the best maintained sites, you're still gonna see a lot of that.

Brandon Mulnix:

You mean not everybody's vacuuming out their electrical panels, their motor panels, their control panels?

Cody Pommer:

I would say most are trying to keep up with it, but even that, you know, like I said, even some of the best ones, it's just hard to keep up with that amount of dust.

Brandon Mulnix:

Okay, you mentioned a number of different hazards. What are some of the things that you know you've seen or done to help mitigate some of those issues?

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, so like the water, we're gonna use watertight fittings, making sure we're using the correct NEMA ratings on panels and equipment. So it's seal, you know, it's gonna be gasketed and seal out that that water and moisture. Interstates has a standard of making sure we put in low point drains so that we put a drain at the lowest point, say in the conduit system or the wiring to make sure that if there is moisture gets in the conduit system, it's gonna drain away from the electrical components and some of that stuff. Another way is making sure that we're using GFCI protection, which is a ground fault circuit interrupter. Basically, this is gonna protect against electric shock, you know, and that compares the current flowing in and the current current flowing out. As soon as that detects a loss of that current, which would be through either a ground fault or through a person, it's gonna trip that circuit, you know. So that's a big, big help in the industry. Talking about dust and debris, I'd just say just regular preventative maintenance and cleaning and just having that scheduled sealing of electric rooms the best you can. If we got wall penetrations or anything like that, sealing that with fire pillows or fire culk, and you know, you seal those up the best you can, it's gonna help a ton, but you're still gonna get some dust in there.

Brandon Mulnix:

So as these barns have continued to evolve, a lot of times you'll get into a remodel where they didn't have an electrical room, they didn't have their equipment protected. Speak to the value proposition of an electrical room or somewhere where that electrical equipment is not out in the day-to-day.

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, I mean, there's still occasionally panels that need to go out within the space that contain the birds. If you look at those in comparison to somewhere, you know, where it's contained in an electrical room, it's a night and day difference. There's it's gonna affect, I think in the end, it's gonna affect the longevity of it, right? If especially if you're talking about like VFDs, you know, they need air flow, it's gonna pull in dust as the fans kick on there. Yeah, I'd say the longevity of your electrical equipment is really the biggest effector. And then not to mention the risk of fire, right? If you're piling up dust on electrical components, stuff gets hotter, risk of explosions, that type of stuff.

Brandon Mulnix:

It's interesting because as houses continue to, I'm gonna say, age, there's certain things that don't particularly age well in houses, and it seems to be the forgotten thing of grounding. Can you talk a little bit about what proper grounding looks like and why that's a major issue in, I'm gonna say more aged houses?

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, and and yeah, grounding is gonna be a big deal in any facility, but I would also say especially important in these poultry facilities due to the amount of water and moisture, right, that we talked about a little bit ago. What this is gonna do, it's gonna prevent shock to people and and the birds themselves, or I guess you know, whatever type of ag facility you're at. It's gonna make sure that normally non-energized metal parts don't become energized if they would inadvertently become come in contact with an energized wire, right? It's gonna trip that overcurrent protection and open that circuit so it protects the animals and people, right? Um couple other things it can help prevent stray voltages, right? So it'll safely drain these stray voltages to ground. Um I'd say birds or any animals can be sensitive to those really small leakage voltage or currents, and proper grounding and bonding is gonna just take that stuff to ground. If they're if they're sensing them stray voltages and currents, it could affect, I would say, productivity or um just the way they're behaving, clearing those short circuits or ground faults. Yeah, grounding is gonna be very big, like I said, in any facility, but especially these poultry facilities.

Brandon Mulnix:

One thing that we found I get to help with the tech support and watching all the calls come in, grounding seems to be one of the number one culprits of a lot of the technology, such as controllers, VS drives, uh, any type of artifact. It seems to be the factor that ends up being the solution because over time, just the the corrosion that happens, um something gets bumped, and oh, that's just a ground wire, no big deal. And it came to find out that was preventing noise coming back through or way for the noise to get out. Whatever reason, things are designed with grounding for a reason. In fact, just this week on a low voltage system, we realized, hey, you know what, let's try grounding some things to see um how that makes a big difference in the system. Just because we assume that the electrical is going to work as designed, but over time, yeah, those are just some of the problems that we we see in the the high-tech stuff, I guess.

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, that's what I was just gonna say. It seems like too, as a technology advances, right, these things are becoming more sensitive to that noise and and them type of things we're talking about.

Brandon Mulnix:

Yeah, things aren't just motor starter switches, maybe a few pot switches, maybe if you know whether it's all literally computers, even a VS drive has a you know logic and and smarts in it that need that needs to be treated like a computer. Yep. Speaking of like VS drives and things like that, from your perspective, how are smart control systems being used to manage ventilation, temperature, and lighting? And what electrical considerations do these systems require?

Cody Pommer:

In my opinion, they're being used to provide, you know, these optimal type of growing conditions, right? They're able to fine-tune each each barn or each floor based off of the data that they're getting, or compared to um, I feel like in the past, you know, these systems just energy consumption regulation now at this point, you know, like now they're they're running at lower or higher RPMs, say fans are based off the temperature with within certain locations within each floor, you know, rather than fans running at full voltage all the time, even accurately counting eggs, right? Like Prism's new egg counting system is getting more uh technological and able to do better counts on that. Considerations, I would say, is um just integration. Can this technology easily be modified to the current system that that they have? Proper training of their staff on the control systems, you know, especially if you're adding something new, making sure that your staffing understands how this stuff operates and works and is supposed to work. Reliability, right? Is it gonna stand up to the harsh environments of the of some of these barns? And then is the technology gonna be there in five years? You know, we see some of that too, where the technology just isn't there five years later.

Brandon Mulnix:

So thankfully, our company is still supporting 40-year-old product. Absolutely. And it's not easy, but when you buy a chicken barn, the last thing you want to do is five years in, have to start replacing the technology piece of it. You kind of want it future-proofed, and and that's that's a big deal, big deal for any type of business because technology does change, it does evolve. You mentioned a couple of really big factors like electrical consumption, energy usage. If you can save just a little bit every day at these farms, it's a big deal at the end of the year on the bottom line for these farmers. And so that's a that's a huge thing. So some of the advancements that you've seen just in your your career when it comes to you know, electrical components and wiring, you know, code. What are some of the newer things that have come out that you really said, hey, this was a real win for electricians or real win for farmers?

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, uh just kind of new technology you're saying wise.

Brandon Mulnix:

Yeah, just just even within the electrical industry, you know, you don't think that copper wire changes much, but you know, there's code that has come out and it changed from white 13 1430 to or 14.2 to yellow 14.2, and I don't even know why, but technology has evolved in the wire, evolved in what you do. What are some of the wins for the electricians out there?

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, if you don't talk specifically for electricians, probably won't be too interesting to your audience. But like Southwire products, they come out with a new simple wire that their claim to fame is um no lubrication is needed, and they actually recommend that you don't put lubrication on the wire because of this new technology and the slick coating that they use on the outer jacket of their wiring. That's relatively new, pretty cool. I'd say in the industry, I'd say one thing we're seeing that's getting to be big is fire detection, right? Within within these barns. Um I know Prism themselves offers an awesome product with their um Vesda units and therm system, and we're also seeing uh we're monitoring for fire detection and then triggering doors to keep stuff from spreading into other parts of the facility or other buildings. Lighting systems, I would say, is one. You know, some of the older older barns is almost just a plain Jane incandescent lighting, and it's getting to be LED systems where we're changing, changing the color and the hue of the light, and the tensity, and monitoring that density, and able to do some pretty cool things there and see how these birds are reacting to that and adjusting that light and getting more product, you know. And another thing, I guess I haven't really been around it yet, but been hearing about is uh an additional lighting system. It works off of ionization and it's supposed to like clean the air, the air quality. So that's pretty cool. I'd like to see see some more of that or hear more about that in the future.

Brandon Mulnix:

Yeah, we've been introduced to a lot of air scrubbers this year, a lot of folks that are re-capturing the heat, like heat exchangers, but also in that heat exchange is filtering the air, bringing it back in, um, using it, you know, filtering it for the out, but also filtering it to come back in. And that helps remove the dust, remove the some pneumonia, capture that, especially as regulations. You know, they change a lot with administrations in the White House. Right now, some of those have not moved forward. Some of the threats of having to monitor your air coming out of your barns, but we've seen a lot of that and a lot of conversations around that. Yeah, recapturing that energy too, that heat. So in the wintertime, you're not your birds aren't having to work as hard to keep warm because the air's coming back in already warm. It's kind of cool, right? All right, because you're an electrician, because you've been in the barns, I kind of came up with this section as we're not going to believe that this actually happened section. And I gave you some time to kind of think about these, you know, what are some of the things that you've seen? But I want to ask this question what's some of the most ridiculous electrical setups and shortcuts that you've seen on the poultry farm? It's probably the shortcut side.

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, and I'll go through them and what it is, it's just it's not good for for the consumer or the farms, right? The owners, it's not good for the longevity of the equipment. And it's also hard for us as an electrical contractor, right? If we're taking these extra steps to do it right, and other people are not, and then you're not really comparing apples to apples in a bid either, right? So if the owner's looking at our bid compared to another person's bid, it's like, well, why are you so much higher? You know, and where where that comes into play is we're seeing when we have a lot of VFD loads, other contractors are not using VFD cable, and that's definitely something that we want to be doing. This could cause problems with uh premature wire insulation breakdown, uh, motor and cable failure, harmonics like we were talking about earlier, voltage spike issues. The other thing I'd say is pretty common, it's tough uh all the way around again. Same kind of issues is not doing voltage drop calculations. They might be running 12 and 14 gauge wire to stuff that for doing the proper voltage drop calculations should be like a number eight wire. Yeah, if it was 50 feet away, you know, it might be able to be that 12 or 14 gauge wire. But when you're talking about some of these barns that are getting to be three, four, five hundred feet long, we really need to pay attention to those voltage drop calcs, and it's gonna change that sizing of wire. And when you're talking about the amount of wire that goes into these barns, that that changes pricing dramatically, right? But then also the longevity of equipment as well, you know, and risk of wire heating up and that type of stuff.

Brandon Mulnix:

Oh, I'm sure that stuff can really add up. And I say that just based on you know understanding of the DC side of things a little bit more of the low voltage stuff. And hey, we can run this cat five cable 600 feet. No, you can't, it's not gonna work. And we're I mean, we're our own worst enemy at times where left hand doesn't talk to the right hand, and we're like, hmm, maybe we should upsize that wire a little bit for that direct current thing, because I think that's the problem. So it definitely costs money at the end. It might work at the beginning, but eventually that wire's gonna wear out, and or you know, if you saw an undersized wire and there might be a fire, of course, the mice love to chew on that stuff, and any additional resistance that comes from their effort is gonna cause problems, I'm sure. Yeah. Can you share a story of something that when it first came in, you thought it was a pretty minor issue, but it led to something really bad.

Cody Pommer:

I wouldn't say like catastrophic in the fact that like started a fire or anything like that, but I've seen definitely seen some issue in the past where the storage of material before it gets actually installed, or it's not getting, you know, electrical equipment's not getting installed under a roof or a dry place, and you start getting some moisture and wetness inside of stuff that shouldn't have it in there before it's even been installed or commissioned. You may have brand new motors that just aren't working. And then that gets into the battle of you know, is this uh turning this to the vendor? What do you what do you do? That I would say yes, that's that's probably one big thing that might seem pretty minor, but when you're talking about hundreds and hundreds of fans or hundreds of whatever feed motors, whatever it may be, just if we're gonna store it outside, uh not in a dry place, yeah, make sure it's rated for that, I guess.

Brandon Mulnix:

You are speaking to one of the biggest challenges I had when I first got into this industry is finding pallets worth of control equipment out in the middle of a field completely during a monsoon. And it's like, yep, I betcha the life of this product is not gonna last very long. Sure enough, it didn't.

Cody Pommer:

So it definitely creates a problem.

Brandon Mulnix:

What's the most common do-it-yourself fix that you see on the farm?

Cody Pommer:

My biggest pet peeve is wire nuts, like wire nuts and like raceway, like panduat panels or anything like that. Whether a wire got either damaged or something changed within the control system and it doesn't go to a relay anymore or something, but somebody will just take two wires and pop a wire nut on it. That drives me nuts. You're just creating a point where something could easily come apart and and cause problems for everybody, a huge headache that could easily be avoided. I'd say if if you run in those situations, either A, re-pull it, and if you can't re-pull it, use an irreversible crimp. So, like interstates will use uh what's called a Buchanan crimp. You cannot undo it without physically cutting it apart.

Brandon Mulnix:

So you're going so much deeper than I thought you'd go. I figured you'd see a lot of black tape on instead of wire nuts on those on those wires. I'm glad that you don't I don't really see that. So you haven't done enough remodel work. Even at my house, I found that 100-year-old house, and that's what I found for for wire nuts in most of the out most of the boxes. Oh wow. I have seen that in residential uh yeah, black tape wire nuts. All right, future of poultry electrical. How can farmers today prepare themselves for future technology advancements?

Cody Pommer:

I would say getting to the professionals, right? Talking with the prisms and talking with the interstates and getting them involved and and figuring out how to evolve their systems and work as a team to to get those advanced and as they feel necessary, right? What do we want to do here and and work together? How can we make this happen, right? So the other thing I would say is just discussing potential changes early on in a project. Say we're starting to build a new facility, and you think maybe two years down the road you might make this change or you or might want to add this. There's stuff that we can do early on that be little to no cost or much easier, you know, plan for that ahead of time during the design phase to reduce rework and cost of escalation.

Brandon Mulnix:

You know, I'm in complete agreement. As the guy who usually gets called last on the project, very little opportunity even to say, hey, what's the future? How many houses are you gonna do? What's the site hold? All these questions, and then go, yeah, we we designed exactly what you asked for. Yeah, then the next quote comes in, and the next quote comes in and the next quote, and you're like, Yeah, we would have probably designed a little different than that.

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, absolutely. And it like I said, if we know up front, it'd be very little to know. Sometimes I'm out in might not even be any cost difference, you know, being prepared for stuff in the future.

Brandon Mulnix:

Oh, yeah. I mean, that that's a big one. So I'm new to farming industry. I'm new, I want to I want to build a farm. You've already talked about a few things. Is there anything else that you would share with me if you were the first person I called after I was able to um lock up my contract and get some birds, birds on order and said, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna get into this whole poultry thing. Cody, what what advice would you have for me?

Cody Pommer:

I would absolutely get a hold of me and uh we'd talk with our engineering, but probably one of the biggest things we haven't discussed, right, is redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. Like what happens if we lose power, you know, utility power. You know, we're talking backup generators, we're talking any of that type of stuff. The better we can be prepared for the unexpected, the better off we're gonna be if if something does happen that's not planned. Just ensuring, we talked about it, touched on a little bit, ensuring that we have a good maintenance schedule. If you're unsure what a good maintenance schedule looks like or what that should entail, contact the prisms, contact the interstates, lean on your electrical contractor to help you come up with that if you're having trouble with that. Electrical safety-wise, staying current on your arc flash studies and labeling as you add new loads and stuff like that. I want to make sure that we're keeping up with that. For one, we need to do that by by NFPA, right? Just have that labeling on there. But that's gonna ensure that your staff knows the proper PPE when they're getting inside this equipment, their safe working distances and boundaries and incident available energy that's available at each piece of equipment. Another thing that's gonna save you is peak demand, right? Uh farms can see big issues during the summertime with their power consumption when everybody's trying to run their air conditioners and and all that at the same time. They could hit you at a peak demand charge, the utility company could. And there's ways to combat that that we can work through at engineering, and you know, whether it's something simple like peak shaving, we call peak shaving, but essentially it's just turning off non-critical loads during those when it might be five-hour windows during the day where they're gonna hit you with that extra cost for those over peak demand charges, running on generator power, maybe during those times, or they're starting to get into even systems of solar and battery bank options and stuff like that. There's solar there's some things that it could do that, yes, there's some cost involved there, but over time it's gonna save you money with those peak demand charges with the utility company.

Brandon Mulnix:

That's a lot of good information. That is a lot of good information for a new farmer. In fact, I I learned something there new myself about a lot of that peak energy stuff and the technology around automating that. It's not like you want to go out and flip the peak energy switch, and you know, that's what you pay somebody to do every day. But having the system that's smart enough to be able to go, hey, you know, this is what we can do. I know on one of the projects that we worked on, it was shared generators. Instead of having one generator per house, you guys were able to kind of put that load over a number of houses. Can you speak to that at all?

Cody Pommer:

Yeah, so the idea is to more redundancy, like we talked about. So rather than relying on one generator or two generators, we got four or five generators per you know, four four buildings. You got more redundancy there, you got uh less wear and tear on each generator, right? And then yeah, so like basically every one would have an extra generator. So even if one broke down, you could still run. And then it did have the smart capabilities to to switch between them and try to keep the hours even on those, and that was a cat product, so so far, so good.

Brandon Mulnix:

It's amazing how many other industries have provided really good ideas and technology for the poultry industry, whether it's egg production, broilers, turkeys, a lot of good, good information coming from those other industrial complexes, so to speak, because you're wiring more towards what I'm gonna call industrial standards versus farm standards, if I'm not mistaken. Is that correct?

Cody Pommer:

Yep, I would say interstates uh probably more more heavy in the the industrial and have our heavy commercial side. No pun intended, but not to put all of our eggs in one basket, you know, trying to be a little more diverse and diversifying some in what we do.

Brandon Mulnix:

So any last advice for the poultry industry?

Cody Pommer:

I guess I had a question for for you. I want to pick your brain a little bit, yeah, no problem. Um, so like one hot topic, it seems like lately is AI, right? And I think it's gonna change every industry, but I also see this being uh part of ag, right? And you're kind of seeing that like we talked about earlier in Prism's egg counting system and how it's seeing and monitoring eggs, and it might have an empty shell go by or a bolt go by on the on the egg belt, and it's starting to recognize that and notice what's an egg and what's not. How do you see AI affecting the ag industry? You is there anything else that you see coming down the pipeline where that could be advantageous for us?

Brandon Mulnix:

Oh, AI is absolutely going to change this industry. The way producers raise their birds by the data that's produced currently in the barns and being able to take systems that don't currently talk to each other, bring them together to see events, to see weather patterns, to see feed. Like, hey, we had this vendor a feed, and here's the flock of the birds, and just being able to pull that data and really Look at it in ways that you or I could never see. But then to be able to take that and start to really dive into those energy topics, dive into what's taking my people the most time and really starting to understand business cases of different things that they're doing. And that's just on the easy side. As you start to really get into automation and be able to run your chicken house with much better egg flow, I know our next product is built with AI in mind. And we're talking about artificial intelligence in this industry. A lot of people, when they talk about AI in this industry, it's about, you know, high path AI. For this one, I have to be very clear. As the products get built, they have to engage this future-proof mentality of information and data because that business intelligence is moving so fast. Your team has to be aware of it. If they're not using it every day already, whether it's in their emails, whether it's in summarizing things, reviewing contracts, whether it's um just looking and using the tools that are available out there now to grasp that future-proof mentality of AI, it's it's it's going to take you a little bit to catch up. And there are a lot, I'm seeing it all over the industry. From the Poultry Tech Summit coming up here in a couple of weeks, they have this huge push about AI and how it's working on genetics, feed, and being able to process things that you or I, I mean, we're we're not in that realm, anyways, but humans just can't process enough. It's also coming in vision systems that are pigs are able to weigh their pigs via cameras. What's that look like for birds? Cattle, they're able to identify diseases in cattle from the way the cattle are acting with air sampling and their movements and what they're doing. The technology is so far advancing so fast. And in an industry that loves to get the most out of their capital investments, it's hard to make that change, but you have to make that change where you can, whether that's in the control systems, whether that's in the business practices, whether that's in HR, wherever, you have to get the efficiencies you can get out of it. Um, and there's a balance. There's always the human need to process the information that it's giving you because it can give you some not so good information, but the more you use it, the more comfortable you get with it, and the more you're able to start envisioning how it can change what you're doing today. And so, really, uh it's exciting times. It's cool to see the producers out there that are engaged fully in it and actually have chief technical officers or chief um AI officers or data officers. And typically it isn't that next generation of folks coming through because you know they don't want to necessarily work in the barn anymore, they want to evolve their business or their family farm a little bit. And so that's where we're getting to see it in the different generations of the families. And it even got brought up at the North Central Poultry Association this week. Um, there was a couple questions to the senior leader group, is what I'm gonna call them. And they talked about using AI um even at the retirement age and how important that is to grasp that. So it was cool, and I think it's it's really gonna it's gonna affect you and I a lot more.

Cody Pommer:

Absolutely. I'm excited to see what the next 10 years looks like. You know, it's just gonna make us, I think, leaner and more efficient and better, and hopefully make our lives easier and just yeah, all around make everything.

Brandon Mulnix:

I was introduced to an MIT study, and I don't have the exact article in front of me, but it talked about this engineering firm that had this building they were gonna have to build, and they estimated it was gonna take like 800 man days to be able to engineer this, and they ended up engineering it in hours via AI, and all they did was take all their current designs and stuff they had and fed it into their their machine, and and then it it popped out this drawing, and then all they did was have to critique it, and it was pretty darn accurate. But those are the kind of things that it makes sense for. Like I've got all of these designs that are known, they're factual, these are the things that make it happen. Now respit that out with this design and this features. Man, for electrical engineering drawings, especially you're talking your panel drawings. You know, I know you guys do some really good work there, but it's like it's gonna, those are the things that are gonna be the engineer's gonna be spending more time on actually solving some other problems than doing the day-to-day kind of work.

Cody Pommer:

Yep.

Brandon Mulnix:

So absolutely less data entry, hopefully. So hopefully. All right. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap this thing up. I'm gonna pop the breaker on this show. And I can't go, we've talked a little bit about prism controls throughout, but I really have to talk a little bit more about them today. As the industry continues to evolve, they've evolved. With this, they've got a product that they offer called ECO. It is designed for these small and medium barns, these pasture free-range barns that don't require the I'm gonna say customization of a control three, but they really want the optimal controls for its ventilation, feed, lighting, and also they want a place that they can monitor their data and be able to change their lighting, and they want all that at the touch of their phone. So Eco is a product that we have been excited to roll out this last year, and we want to make sure that you're all aware of it. So if you are a small to medium barn, and I'm gonna say where you're gonna probably be out there looking for an automated controller instead of just a thermostat on the wall or a few switches, and you want that to know what's going on in your barn day to day, hour by hour, reach out to PrismControls at PrismControls.com, connect with a sales um member on there, and they will be more than happy to help you out. So, Cody, thank you for being a guest on the show. I look forward to future conversations about AI and electrical and all of that. Thank you.

Cody Pommer:

Awesome. Thanks for having me, Brandon. Yeah.

Brandon Mulnix:

All right, listeners, have a great day.

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Brandon Mulnix

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Cody Pommer

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