Poultry farming and production are one of the most lucrative facets of agricultural farming. The premise is basic and simple: almost every household has chicken meat and eggs as staples in their pantry. For starters, those who enter into poultry production can do without fancy and advanced equipment. However, as your poultry farm starts to grow, that’s when you need to invest in equipment to keep your poultry farm productive and efficient.
When the time comes for you to start investing in poultry equipment, you have to go through the process of choosing the best ones for your poultry farm. There are many technological innovations, but the choice always depends on what you need for your farm, be it a startup or one that has already been running for some time.
Technology paved the way for even more advanced equipment necessary for poultry farming and production. Using equipment like these can help you run your poultry farm as smoothly as possible:
- Chicken Bone X-Ray Inspection Systems
Chicken bone x ray detection systems are supposed to help prevent one of the biggest concerns in producing chicken and other poultry—the presence of bones that aren’t supposed to be there anymore. This is the reason why the chicken bone x-ray inspection system was developed in the first place. It’s supposed to help detect bone, cartilage, and other foreign materials in poultry.
A good and precise chicken bone x-ray inspection system can detect bones down to 1.5mm in size. This gives you unparalleled confidence that no bones will sneak through the chicken meat that makes it to your customer’s plate.
- Incubator
While not exactly a new type of equipment, today’s incubators are more advanced in features than they were many years ago. No poultry production will ever be complete without an incubator, given how it’s needed to hatch the bird’s egg in artificial ways.
Birds can hatch eggs naturally, but the number may only be limited. If you’re dealing with more eggs, as is the case on a poultry farm, you’ll need an incubator’s assistance. There are many types, the most popular of which are diesel and electric incubators.
- Poultry House Robots
In large-scale farms, you may need the help of robots to oversee the entire operation. This is where a poultry house robot comes in. It goes through all your poultry house floors using machine learning and imaging sensors to do functions like sensing the environmental temperatures as well as detecting and picking up floor eggs.
- Battery Chicken Cage
A battery cage is common in commercial poultry farms, saving space and feed. Most importantly, the chickens are separated from their manure. This is an important feature that helps prevent the spread and risk of infection and diseases in your poultry.
Generally, there are varying factors farmers consider when choosing a battery chicken cage. These include:
- Cage type
- Lifespan
- Price
- 3D Camera Technology
3D camera technology can be used for high-precision weighing of poultry. This type of technology can capture both the volume and shape of the birds, whether daytime or night. For the latter, the 3D camera technology uses an internal IR light source to come up with this function.
- 3D Printing Prosthetics
Prosthetics are used not just for humans but for other animals, including poultry. Injured poultry animals may negatively impact a farm’s productivity, hence the need to deal with those injuries and broken bones immediately. All thanks to 3D printing technology, prosthetics can now be speedily created.
Because 3D printing is a speedier option, the downtime of farms with injured animals is less. Moreover, 3D printing can also help farms with top-quality lineage of their poultry preserve the genetics of those high-value breeding stocks.
- Drones
Drones are must-haves for larger-scale farms. It’s faster and easier to monitor the poultry farm’s environment as well as the flock in real-time through a drone flown across the entire area. While effective in improving efficiency, drones shouldn’t be used with chickens as the sound may scare chickens.
- Air-Conditioned Bird Houses
Poultry can thrive best and stay healthy when raised in a stress-free environment. The summer heat can get too hot, depending on where you’re from or doing poultry production. Just imagine that if you’re sweating from the heat, your chickens feel the same way.
You may want to have air-conditioned birdhouses, even if it’s only to be switched on during days when it’s too hot. A good fan and air condition ventilation system can help maintain the air quality for your birds at all times.
Conclusion
If you’re trying to get into poultry farming, the equipment above is only some of the most important equipment you’ll need to invest in. As you can see, opening a poultry farm can be capital and labour-intensive, hence the coming in of equipment and technology to help you out. The list above isn’t exhaustive as there are undoubtedly so many more you’ll need to have on your poultry farm. Start with the basics, and as you expand, you’ll also have to consider investing in more advanced equipment.