Ensuring high productive performance for our birds II

Mr. Serafín García Freire, Avi’s Technical Advisor at Boehringer Ingelheim, was in charge of the presentation on “Ensuring high productive performance for our birds II” during the LPN Congress 2018.

The 20 decisions to make when building a poultry house

The importance of management and facilities in intensive poultry farming.

As it is known, the productive result of poultry farming depends fundamentally on four factors (the 4-legged chair): nutrition, health, genetics, and management of the birds. A small deficiency in any of these factors will trigger a worse productive result and lower profitability for poultry farmers and integrations. Unfortunately, the widespread application in the poultry industry of technological advances in genetics, nutrition, and health have made possible levels of quality control and improvement in these fields unthinkable until just a few years ago.

However, currently in management, technological advances are not so widespread. That is why management is, today, one of the most determining factors; since by making small improvements, we will achieve a significant increase in productive results.

To correctly manage the birds, we must use good ventilation designs and the technological equipment available in the market. Only in this way will it be possible to provide the birds (much more “delicate” due to their high degree of genetic evolution) with the environmental comfort they need, guaranteeing good productive results and, consequently, optimal farm profitability.

With the current breeds, no matter how experienced the poultry farmer may be, if he does not have adequate facilities, the viability of his system will be compromised.

What facilities are the most appropriate?

When building or restoring a poultry house, the poultry farmer has to make numerous decisions based on circumstances such as the type of bird (chicken, hen, turkey), production model (intensive or free-range), the climate of the place where it is located the ship, final weight of the birds, etc.

Although all the decisions to be made are decisive: three of the utmost importance stand out. An incorrect choice in any of these critical decisions, in some cases, can end up compromising the viability of the exploitation:

1. Poultry house type: open or closed.
2. Environmental computer model.
3. Summer ventilation design: cross ventilation or tunnel ventilation.

We also have other decisions that we should not underestimate since they will have a significant influence on the investment of the installation and production costs, such as:

4. Winter ventilation design: cross ventilation/roof ventilation or longitudinal ventilation.
5. Hatch opening mechanism: cable or tube.
6. Recommended insulation level.
7. Type of heating: according to heat distribution and combustion mode: hoods/hot air heaters or underfloor heating.
8. Preheating of incoming air in winter by mean exchangers: no use of exchangers or use of exchangers.
9. Preheating the incoming winter air by solar action: single roof or attic.
10. Pillars on the inside or pillars on the outside.
11. Insulation from solar radiant heat (summer): compact roof or ventilated roof.
12. Inner ceiling height.
13. Lights color: white or blue + green.
14. Teat flow.
15. Forms of water disinfection: Chlorine/hydrogen peroxide or chlorine dioxide.
16. Soil waterproofing: concrete or concrete + plastic.
17. Air velocity in the tunnel: 2.5 meters/second or 3 meters/second.
18. Type of fans.
19. Evaporative cooling type: evaporative opanel nozzle.
20. Electrical saving systems: capacitor banks.