Tech advantages for poultry farming

Malaysian poultry farmers are overcoming production challenges by automating processes and improving traceability through data collection and analyses.

Coen Boonstra, Sales Director of Business Unit Poultry at Big Dutchman told Asian Poultry Magazine that the sector implemented new technologies to meet the challenges of lower demand, high feed prices, diseases outbreaks, and labor shortages last year.

But automation is nothing new in the industry. In the past decade, farmers invested in closed house ventilation systems that improved FCR and uniformity, building bigger poultry sheds, that required more automation.

“Automatic feed distribution and silo weighing systems played an important role in this change and are now widely used in the industry,” Mr Boonstra said.

Newer closed house farms require minimum ventilation and have more advanced climate controllers with extra sensors for humidity, CO2, and ammonia.

“Poultry farmers are also focusing more on durability and energy efficiency, which makes solid PU panel building structures, plastic cooling pads, and variable speed fans more popular,” he said.

Automatic laying nests as well as feed weighing and distribution systems are also becoming more popular while better control over feed intake and cleaner eggs improved production results. The current labor shortage and recent mycoplasma outbreak also drove more farmers to adopt technologies to reduce the need for workers.

Layer farms made improvements in cage heights and space per bird, implemented better ways to dispose of waste such as drying and composting systems or biogas plants to turn manure into electricity, he observed.

Productivity, profitability, sustainability

A major benefit of automation is that farms become less reliant on workers.

“Being reliant on unskilled workers makes a farm vulnerable to staff leaving, spread of diseases and compromised performance”.

Similarly, the use of sensors/climate controllers have made operations more efficient.

Why invest and why now?

The easy answer would be for growth, business continuity, and profitability.

“A producer planning to build a second or third farm may consider automatic data collection, allowing him to travel less and improve performance. For new technologies to become accepted, it needs to be accepted by integrators who advise their contract farmers on what systems to install. This is crucial in technology adoption,” Mr Boonstra said.

“A number of new technologies have already been implemented elsewhere in Asia, allowing technology providers to present a relevant business case based on actual results.”

The industry is still reeling from the pandemic, which reduced demand, caused higher freight rates and production costs, and spiked raw material prices, making it difficult for farmers to invest in new technology.

However, it also paved the way for technological innovations, increasing competition and ultimately, reducing costs – a win for the industry, said Mr Boonstra. costs.

Tech to watch out for

Cutting-edge technology that will soon be accessible to smaller farmers include innovations that will make operations more efficient such as data-driven decision making and production; robotics, camera. And new sensors with advanced controllers; data platforms to review analyze, and predict production results.

Apart from optimizing production, innovations that help reduce the industry’s environmental footprint will be popular, such as tech that can further develop by-products like poultry manure and a more efficient energy supply to cut power consumption.