Saving Effort Aim On Poultry Farm

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29820, 12 May 1962, Page 6

Saving Effort Aim On Poultry Farm

The production of the maximum number of eggs with the least possible effort is the underlying objective of operations on the poultry farm of Bower Egg Farm, Ltd., at 467 Bower Avenue, North Beach. The proprietor of the farm, Mr C. J. De La Mare, said this to members of the ninth South Island poultryfarmers’ refresher course who visited his property this week. The visitors were intrigued by the labour saving devices which are in use on the farm.

Pullets are reared under controlled conditions of light and ventilation and subsequently lay under these conditions. There are between 15 000 and 16,000 layers in two sheds and in each shed there is a complete change of birds after they have been laying for 11 to 12 months. In practice this means that there is a complete replacement of stock in one of the sheds following a month for depopulation and cleaning down every six months with young stock being drawn from the brooder house where 10,000 day-old pullets are introduced to its six compartments twice a year.

When the day-old chicks go into the brooder house in

groups of 1600 to 1800 they are enclosed with hardboard to keep them under the heat from the infra red lamps suspended from the roof and their feed is at first spread on paper, but in a matter of days the circle is widened as the birds become familiar with the area of heat and in about a week they have access to the whole 1350 square feet area of each compartment with its hanging feeders and water troughs. Mr De La Mare, said that outlets in the present intake in the brooder house had all been debeaked as they were out in, but in the past there had only been an odd case of feather picking or canabalism so it seemed to be questionable whether the time spent on debeaking was worthwhile.

In the brooder house birds are at first in full light for 24 hours a day. This is reduced progressively by 45 minutes a week until when at five months they are ready to go into the wire laying cages, their daily light -ration is about nine hours. As soon as they go into the cages the light period is extended by 20 minutes a week so that at about 11 months they have again returned to 24 hours of light. This means that the birds are receiving a consistent stimulus during their laying year. Layers at the farm have so far been under controlled light and ventilation for six months and the full impact of these conditions is not yet known, but Mr De La Mare said that one of the main

advantages was expected to show up in the winter when it was reckoned that under normal conditions there was a one per cent, drop in production for a one degree drop in the temperature below freezing point It was not now necessary to spray for flies and droppings were also drier.

Mr De La Mare said that whereas under ordinary conditions after 12 months production of layers dropped to 40 per cent or less, one group on the property after this period had produced at the 54 per cent, level under controlled environmental conditions and it seemed that it might be possible to hold birds in laying for 15 months instead of replacing them every 12 months. Birds which had now been laying for four c. five months were producing at about the 60 per cent, mark and it was expected that they would hold to about this level consistently without reaching a peak. The extra cost per head for controlled light and ventilation for a year was Is 6d which meant that a bird had to produce an extra five or six eggs. The expectation was that they would produce an extra one or two dozen eggs a year. Machines Visitors were particularly impressed with the mechanical aids used in the two laying sheds with a total of 15.000 to 16.000 birds producing about 8000 eggs a day The mechanical feeding machine designed for use in the sheds is a motorised hopper or bin carrying 5 cwt of feed which it automatically feeds into troughs in front of the wire cages on either side of a central concrete pathway that it straddles. It takes only about 1 minute 20 seconds to be driven down a 100-yard pathway feeding as it goes 1200 to 1300 birds at the rate of about 1000 a minute. The machine will feed out to all birds in the shed travelling one and a third “feed” miles in six separate trips from the bulk supply bin in only 20 minutes

Eggs are collected and placed in fillers on hand-pro-pelled trolleys with a brush attached to clean wires on which the eggs rest as the

trolleys move along. Damaged and dirty eggs are kept separate as far w possible. The time taken in this process is about two and a half hours daily. Mr De La Mare said that total man hours taken to care for the birds in the ordinary course of events on the farm was six a day. A recent sur. vey made of 100 commercial farms in the United States with from 2000 to 20,000 birds showed that the amount of time involved in caring for a laying bird annually was one hour on average and 45 minutes under the fastest conditions, whereas on Bower farm the corresponding time was reckoned to be 20 minutes.

Manure Disposal Much interest was also shown in a novel manure collector. The machine which is also motorised has a plunger on either side which scoops up the manure under the set of cages on either side of the concrete pathway and then carries it up a concrete ram, which it straddles, releasing the plungers and dropping the manure in heaps which are subsequently mixed with sawdust with the help of a front-end loader to provide a saleable compost. The machine will clear the manure from under the cages on either side of a 100-yard pathway in up to about three hours. The intention is to clear manure from the sheds two or three times a year. Feed is loaded from a supply truck into a hopper then elevated into an eight ton bulk supply hopper. Mr De La Mare said that the cost of feeding a layer was about 8d a week. Facilities at Bower Farm include an abbatoir where birds that are culled daily are slaughtered in prepara, tion for sale, but this facility is not able to cope with the big outturn of birds when whole houses are cleared.

Later in the day the course visited the poultry division at Paparua prison where the poultry instructor, Mr R. F. Robertson, explained that in contrast to the property seen earlier the objective was not to save labour. He said that the unit had been established mainly to help rehabilitate inmates. It was not in competition with commercial producers in that it was supplying the prison and other institutions of the Justice Department. Mr Robertson drew attention to the new progeny testing house which was built by prison labour with concrete blocks made on the place and to a new block building to hold bulk wheat in four 20-ton bins which is now in course of construction. He said that some workers on these buildings had never driven a nail before.