By Matt Donald, pig and poultry farmer, north Yorkshire
A trip around the hatchery with some of the team helps reiterate why the quality of hatching eggs that goes into the hatchery is essential. It is always good to take new and existing members of the team in, firstly for them to see further down the chain of production and broaden their knowledge of the meat side of the industry, but also to highlight why everything we do is aimed at maintaining high standards of chick quality.
Hygiene of the egg handling system on farm is critical, alongside minimising anything that may cause damage to the hatching eggs. This is from knocking nest mats to make sure they are kept clean, to ensuring any transfers of eggs between belts and conveyors are timed to minimise any damage. Two of our sites have single tier nests leading straight onto a cross conveyor in the corridor. With the older site having a double tier nest there is an egg lift to get eggs to the same level, we always feel these lead to a greater amount of hairline cracks, even with transfers set up accurately. Hence why our modern facilities we prefer to stick to a single tier nest layout.
This poses a problem as the maximum shed width for a single tier would be around 13.5m, these are not efficient buildings to build, therefore we choose to double pen in one clear span. With a dividing fence down the centre, we can have two colonies on the single tier nests within one roof space.
Off farm strong beef and pork prices would appear to help hold up the value of poultry meat, our farrow to finish pig herd produces 7,500 bacon pigs a year and is performing very well. The stronger pig price helps this side of our business, but it also makes chicken meat (which is pork’s closest competition), more likely to be taken off the shelf instead. Long may it last.