By Matt Donald, pig & poultry farmer, north Yorkshire
As part of my work on the NFU poultry board, alongside other members we have recently released a shed age survey for broilers. This was completed 10 years ago now and back then showed that the average UK poultry house stood at 32 years old, with over 25% of sheds being more than 40 years old.
We decided it was time to renew this survey for numerous reasons, the broiler sector has gone through its fair share of turmoil in recent years and although things are looking slightly better now, what does the furture hold? At a time when the NFU are lobbying the government to take food security seriously, modern infrastructure is crucial.
We all know there are plenty of old sheds out there, but there is also some fantastic high tech modern facilities too. You don’t need me to tell you how difficult planning for new sites can be now! The survey can be used to assess the age of our infrastructure and what has happened to it in the last 10 years since it was last completed.
We can then use the results to lobby policy makers to take it into account when looking at planning legislation, enabling agriculture to modernise, thus improving performance will be the only way to produce more from less. As supermarkets move more to 30kg chicken, space is going to be needed to keep the same amount of birds on the floor. We know there are plenty of old sheds out there, so it is possible if there were to be any grant schemes come out for poultry, money towards re insulating/ refurbishing sheds could be an ask, if we find to still have 25% over 40 years old.
In order to gather as much information as possible I urge you please to fill it out either online, or using the spreadsheets available for multiple sites.