By Matt Donald, pig and poultry producer
Summer holidays meant we gained extra pairs of hands for some weeks, due to a few vet students fulfilling their placements. It is always great to show them about poultry farming and what is involved, they also get to spend time on the pig aspect too, so hopefully we can convince them to join one sector or the other. It still amazes me that as an industry we are short of vets, yet students can sometimes struggle to find placements, we need more farms to open doors to prospective vets if we want to secure future vet support.
As heatwaves have made a come back numerous times over summer it gets us talking about misting systems again. Fortunately being in the North we haven’t seen the extremes the southern regions have, the modern infrastructure also means we can keep shed temperatures only a couple of degrees above external temperature, so we didn’t get much of a drop in production this time, however that isn’t to say it will always be the case.
These extremes will become more regular going forwards if science is to be believed and I’ll be interested to see how misters improve conditions in breeders, before considering them ourselves, I have reservations over running them in Winter to keep systems clean, due to the idea of putting extra water into the atmosphere when we are trying to protect the quality of the litter. All our sites have goosewing grey roofs and I’m a believer this helps to reflect some of the extreme heat.
The current salmonella outbreak in eggs is a huge concern, is it the start of more issues with imported products? Will it be the wake up call this government needs? Surely now, it will further defend our resilient, audited, high standards of health and welfare of British eggs and meat. It is just another blow to all the farmers doing everything they can to produce a safe product for the consumer, yet the doors to imported substandard food are open wider than they ever have been before – we need action, fast!