contract chicken farming

[kickstart]

Interesting thread, what I am going to ask what do you do with your dead stock, 1% losses seems to be a ballpark figure on a 20 000 bird shed that is still quite a few.

As I said this area has a lot of chickens, before bird flu hit the headlines you use to see pickups loaded with dead chickens most went  up Nakhonsawan  to the crocodile farms, then bird flu arrived and ,so I was told no dead chickens are to leave the farms, deadstock where to be put in well's or deep pits?

Now, I know of 3 farms, probably more that get the dead stock and put them through a large mincer, some are driven by old pick up engines, and it is then fed to catfish ,one place was cutting out the breast meat before mincing the carcases  (do not ask what they do with the meat, one day I will ask).

I would have thought this would go against biosecurity and all other laws, is it another case of This Is Thailand.

[grollies]

24 minutes ago, kickstart said:

Interesting thread, what I am going to ask what do you do with your dead stock, 1% losses seems to be a ballpark figure on a 20 000 bird shed that is still quite a few.

As I said this area has a lot of chickens, before bird flu hit the headlines you use to see pickups loaded with dead chickens most went  up Nakhonsawan  to the crocodile farms, then bird flu arrived and ,so I was told no dead chickens are to leave the farms, deadstock where to be put in well's or deep pits?

Now, I know of 3 farms, probably more that get the dead stock and put them through a large mincer, some are driven by old pick up engines, and it is then fed to catfish ,one place was cutting out the breast meat before mincing the carcases  (do not ask what they do with the meat, one day I will ask).

I would have thought this would go against biosecurity and all other laws, is it another case of This Is Thailand.

It's all ball park at the moment.

 

Dead birds are incinerated, at last a use for all the waste oil. You can dump them in pits but since we drink our borehole water......

 

Bird flu, yep, one of the many risks.

[grollies]

6 hours ago, thoongfoned said:

talking electric, have you upgraded your meter? told the pea you have chicken farm? why i say is we get cheaper electric then say the people next door and we use loads of electric compared to them. meter we have max out at 100amp, we use 3000/4000 units every month price per unit 4.5 baht (4.47)..... price per unit goes up with usage...

along the pvc windows do you use the shade netting? alot of heat comes through the "windows", all of the wifes farm has shade netting x3 along both sides, plus at the farrow end we use the paper foil (stuff you lay under the tiles on the roof) inside to block all light heat coming in, the paper foil works well. some farms that i have seen have blocked all the windows up with block work.... but then you need more lights....

All good on the electric with PEA, 3 phase posts and cable up, transformer waiting to go in. Just got notice today PEA have agreed to upgrade the HV limes and are renewing 7km of cable next month.

[thoongfoned]

38 minutes ago, grollies said:

All good on the electric with PEA, 3 phase posts and cable up, transformer waiting to go in. Just got notice today PEA have agreed to upgrade the HV limes and are renewing 7km of cable next month.

all i can say is lucky you! i have had the wife asking about up grades for years... since we built we have attracted new home builds around us like flies.. every year our available electric goes down.  if i want an up grade at the mo or in the near future im told i have to pay for it myself....

[thoongfoned]

1 hour ago, kickstart said:

Interesting thread, what I am going to ask what do you do with your dead stock, 1% losses seems to be a ballpark figure on a 20 000 bird shed that is still quite a few.

As I said this area has a lot of chickens, before bird flu hit the headlines you use to see pickups loaded with dead chickens most went  up Nakhonsawan  to the crocodile farms, then bird flu arrived and ,so I was told no dead chickens are to leave the farms, deadstock where to be put in well's or deep pits?

Now, I know of 3 farms, probably more that get the dead stock and put them through a large mincer, some are driven by old pick up engines, and it is then fed to catfish ,one place was cutting out the breast meat before mincing the carcases  (do not ask what they do with the meat, one day I will ask).

I would have thought this would go against biosecurity and all other laws, is it another case of This Is Thailand.

what we have to do with afterbirth and dead piglet is put in the ground, we have 3 different pits dug like the toilet septic with the cement rings, 5 rings or so deep, rotate the ones you use... works well. the larger animals we take away to the old rubber farm, have a large pit dug out by the macro some years ago, there is talk about a local incinerator being installed by thecompany soon ishhhhh

there are standards that have to be met if the company you work for exports the meat, independant checks once a year for us now, when they do some special farm inspection. last time they came they went to where we said the dead sows where and had a dig around for bones. all sows/gilts that die have to have photos of them going in the hole in stages, then we have to store said photo id for 2 years...... 

[grollies]

19 hours ago, grollies said:

along the pvc windows do you use the shade netting? alot of heat comes through the "windows", all of the wifes farm has shade netting x3 along both sides

Not putting in the pvc windows, seem a waste of time and money. When the sides are up there's only usually about a 20cm gap and after about 6 months the pvc is pretty much opaque. We've one light per 4 x 5m bay and for 96 bays we can switch 12 at a time. Looking for low lumen bulbs at the moment.

[grollies]

Well chaps, just finished our first flight of chickens and things went quite well.

 

We made a mistake with too high water pressure on the drip lines to start and had to replace some wet rice husk.

 

Took a while to get used to the autofeeders, B300k and no instructions....

 

We kept the chicks half house for 10 days and the heating on for 7 days.

 

Mortality was really good at 230 out of 23,256  1%.

 

Final weight at slaughter day 42 was 2.6kg average.

 

Big big learning curve and now fixing some construction problems.

 

Second flight should be easier.

 

Kept a day and night shift going with simple but strict biosecurity.

[thoongfoned]

14 hours ago, grollies said:

Well chaps, just finished our first flight of chickens and things went quite well.

 

We made a mistake with too high water pressure on the drip lines to start and had to replace some wet rice husk.

 

Took a while to get used to the autofeeders, B300k and no instructions....

 

We kept the chicks half house for 10 days and the heating on for 7 days.

 

Mortality was really good at 230 out of 23,256  1%.

 

Final weight at slaughter day 42 was 2.6kg average.

 

Big big learning curve and now fixing some construction problems.

 

Second flight should be easier.

 

Kept a day and night shift going with simple but strict biosecurity.

thats some good growth over the 42 days..... bet you will be happy once the money is in the bank.

talking of having the heating on, how did you go with the electric useage, use more or less than you thought? at the mo we are using more heat lamps for the new borns but when  jan comes and it gets colder the watts will have to be upped, spin that meter that bit more. most months we use 3000 units of electric plus desiel, but with the extra lamps on the electric can get to around 4000 per month. i find its cheaper trying to cool the farm rather then heat small areas when the weather is cooler..

[grollies]

3 minutes ago, thoongfoned said:

thats some good growth over the 42 days..... bet you will be happy once the money is in the bank.

talking of having the heating on, how did you go with the electric useage, use more or less than you thought? at the mo we are using more heat lamps for the new borns but when  jan comes and it gets colder the watts will have to be upped, spin that meter that bit more. most months we use 3000 units of electric plus desiel, but with the extra lamps on the electric can get to around 4000 per month. i find its cheaper trying to cool the farm rather then heat small areas when the weather is cooler..

Heating - we use two gas-fired hot airblowers. Gas consumption for 1000m2 x 2m high ceiling was 4 x 48kg gas bottles for 7 nights. Other farmers round here think we're crazy using that much, most will use one quarter of that. We put our low mortality down to keeping them warm at night, 33 degC.

 

Wifey told me just this morning that our electric bill will be around B30,000 for the 42 days which is under our initial estimate. We have 12 x 1kW fans. The last week all 12 are on during the day.

 

We never did open the side curtains for ventilation as the evap cooling worked really well. This came on around day 15, up till then the heat/cooling kind of balanced out. Be different in the hot season.

 

We've also green shade netting either side of the shed (N/S orientation) which when we installed dropped the inside temperature by 1.5 deg C.