Meet the new neighbors: 7.5 million chickens and their mountains of manure

Meet the new neighbors: 7.5 million chickens and their mountains of manure

MALCOM, IOWA — When Carolyn Bittner moved to Malcom, Iowa, in 2008 to serve as a pastor at two churches, she had no idea the town was also home to millions of egg-laying chickens. Three miles from her home, those chickens — which now total around 7.5 million — are raised in massive warehouses on a sprawling complex run by Fremont Farms, which from the outside looks more like a maximum security prison than an egg farm. “Fremont is an egg factory,…