By Matt Donald, pig & poultry farmer, north Yorkshire
The recent heatwaves are a highlight of extreme weather patterns that appear to be becoming more regular. It seems if it’s not flooding, it’s a drought. Record temperatures on farm of over 38°C, even in Yorkshire, do not make for a pleasant working environment, however it may be one that starts occurring more often.
It makes you assess the impact on the poultry units and as to whether a cooling system such as misting needs to be looked into, in order to maintain performance. On top of this we now have a hosepipe ban in place. I look at our roof space and a quick calculation on our rainfall data shows over 3,000,000 litres of water falls annually across one poultry site’s roofs.
Although I wouldn’t want to utilise this for drinking due to biosecurity, there is potential to use this for wash water across the farm and current grants out there can help offset the cost of capturing it. There is also the option to store it and use it to cool shed roofs on hot days.
The heat is resulting in a few production knocks on the breeders, however it appears that they make the numbers back up once temperatures cool off. Running the sheds at a lower summer temperature means they start the day cooler, keeping them more comfortable for longer. Time will tell if hatchability is affected; we run the egg belts as often as possible to make sure fertile eggs are not left in the shed when temperatures rise.
Ultimately it would seem warmer summers are here to stay and investment will be needed across the industry for both saving water and also cooling the shed environment. This will all be feasible if we get paid a fair price from retailers for the chicken produced.