Poultry industry study

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32459, 20 November 1970, Page 10

Poultry industry study

Big outlays, large turnovers, and good margins—these were the major points which impressed members of the Canterbury section of the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural Science, who spent a field afternoon this week looking at developments in the poultry industry.

Three properties were visited in the Weedons, Templeton and Broadfield areas. Each was engaged in different aspects of poultry production. The tour began with a visit to the breeding centre and hatchery run by Hybrid Chicks at Weedons. This property is equipped to raise chicks for broiler producers on a huge scale. It has an Australian-built and ' installed incubator capable of holding 154,000 eggs. Explaining the system used, the manager, Mr Owen Bright, said the hatchery was programmed to the

broiler growers’ requirements. Ten thousand to 11,000 chicks were required as sheds on growers’ properties became vacant Two settings, each of 26,000 eggs, are put down each week. At each setting, four trolleys, each with 6500 eggs, are wheeled in. The incubators are kept at 99.5 deg, with humidity at 82deg. Asked how sales of broiler chickens ran out over a year, Mr Bright said January and February were poor months, and the market was again weak about midwinter. By September, the market began to grow, with sales running at strong levels by Christmas. Stocks, he said, tended to build up over the slower periods to cope with the increased demand at Christmas. At certain times of the year the chickens were processed at 57 days of age; at other times they would be kept on to 63 days to gain, say, an extra soz of meat. To obtain the eggs required for its hatchery, Hybrid Chicks has seven houses, each accommodating about 2700 pullets. Each house is divided into six pens with a capacity of 450 laying birds. Roosters are used at the rate of one to every 10 hens. The pullets come into production at 24 to 26 weeks of age, and are kept for nine to 10 months. To ensure a continuity of eggs, replacement pullets are added every eight weekis. Those taken out of production are processed. Mr G. Hammond, who is the livestock supervisor for Hybrid Chicks, gave an outline of costs and profitability -when the party called at the meat chicken establishment owned by Mrs N. B. Anderson, of Templeton. This unit has four houses, each with a capacity of 10,000 broiler chicks. According to Mr Hammond, feed is costing $Bl.lO a ton. Wastage runs at anything from 3 per cent to 25 per cent, according to the age of the birds. A 10,000-bird shed required 42 tons of feed to raise a batch. Food conversion rates ranged from 2.3 to 2.9. For the grower, there was a margin of 20c to 22c per bird which, with all costs deducted, produced a net sc. A unit like that on Mrs Anderson’s property was worth $BO,OOO, but .

it gave a 15 to 20 per cent return on invest* ment. “It sort of puts sheep in the shade,’* commented a member of the group. Mortality on this meat chicken unit has averaged 2 per cent, which is considered to be exceptional. A separate firm, under contract, supplies and takes away .litter. A house can be cleaned out and refilled within two days. Despatching chickens to the processing factory is quite a task. Three men, with the help of the owner, can clear a house of 10,000 birds, working from 6 am. to 10.30 a.m. As indicated earlier, meat chicken houses represent a substantial outlay. A 10,000bird shed, without any equipment, costs up to $12,000. The most recent shed built on Mrs Anderson's property is fully automatic, and worth $16,000. Large-scale egg production was seen on the Broadfield property of Mr C. J. Aitken. Known as the Big Dutchman Egg Farm, it has 15,000 layers under one roof. They produce between 10,000 and 11,000 eggs a day. The unit is fully automatic. The labour input, apart from the packing unit, is infinitesimal. Mr Aitken estimates that half an hour a day would be all that is required to look after the hens. The capital outlay required for a unit of this type is very high, although Mr Aitken did not specify a figure/To his knowledge, it is the only one of its kind in this country. There are eight like it in Australia. Sorting and packing of eggs is the only manual labour that has to be done. This occupies up to six hours a day. The eggs are brought through to the packing unit on a conveyer belt. It takes 25 minutes for an egg from the furthest point of the shed to reach the packer. Mr Aitken said that as at March 2, egg producers were affected by the Poultry Board’s entitlement scheme. This restricted any further expansion. If Mr Aitken wanted to build another laying unit, he could go into production only by purchasing the entitlement of a grower going out of production. This would cost $1.40 a bird, so another 15,000-bird unit would cost more than $20,000 for a start: Mr Aitken said that as from last Monday, feed went up $3.40 a ton. On his other property, where he raised chickens as well as having an egg unit, this would cost another $2OOO a year. “The small man couldn’t stand this: he must go out,” Mr Aitken said. ,