The facility operates with a two-zone biosecurity plan. The outer zone, the fenced off perimeter of the facility, is only accessible after showering and decontamination. All 137 staff members of the hatchery only enter this zone, which also incorporates a housing unit and canteen, once every 24 days – after which they are allowed six days to spend with their family. Contact with non-commercial poultry in backyard farms is kept to a minimum. The inner zone is the hatchery building itself, also only accessible after showering. On top of that, personnel are assigned to a certain zone within the building and not allowed to leave their designated zone, thus preventing cross contamination. Mr Chongkol explains: “Crossing zones is only allowed if there is an actual reason for it and not without decontaminating boots and hands.”
Next step
In building a brand-new hatchery instead of expanding one of the three existing facilities, Betagro was able to set the next step in efficiency. The new hatchery has taken full advantage of Pas Reform’s position as a single-source, fully integrated supplier of incubation, climate control and hatchery automation. The fifty-four SmartSetPro™ setters with a maximum setting capacity of more than six million hen eggs incorporate modular design. The setters are complemented by 54 SmartHatchPro™ hatchers. Hatchery operations are fully supported by Pas Reform’s SmartCenterPro™ hatchery information system at every level, providing end-to-end, real-time monitoring, control and reporting, to enhance workflow efficiencies and quality control and deliver complete traceability for every hatch. Mr Chongkol explained Betagro’s reason for investing in Pas Reform technologies. “Our company invested in an extension of one of our existing hatcheries with SmartPro™ in 2014. That was our first step in moving from multi-stage to single-stage incubation. When we saw the improvements in efficiency, the new hatchery was planned accordingly.”
Full integration
The new hatchery is the first of the Betagro facilities to pay special attention to egg handling. It chose the fully integrated Prinzen Ovoset Pro machine for setting the eggs point down and the Prinzen trolley loader to lighten the workload of the personnel. Mr Chongkol said: “We hatch six days a week, handling more than 300,000 eggs a day. Automation is key, because personnel cannot keep up with those numbers and stay on top of their game at the same time.” In the end, it is all about accuracy and better results. Point setting is extremely important to get the most out of the hatching process. The Chaibadan hatchery is supplied by six breeder farms with 128,000 birds in 16 houses each. About 50% has Cobb birds and the other half are Hubbard flex. The farms are all managed from the hatchery, making sure that there is a 13-week difference in bird age between the farms. Parent stock produce until 66 weeks. “This way we guarantee a year-round continuous supply of eggs to the hatchery,” says Mr Chongkol. The eggs are collected by hand, graded and fumigated on farm. After that they are delivered on plastic trays in batches of 30 to the hatchery.
“In the old days we would transfer and set the eggs by hand, managing about 3,500 eggs per person per hour,” says Mr Chongkol. “With two Ovoset machines we manage 60,000 eggs per hour. On top of that there is more quality too.” Data shows that setting by hand has a failure percentage of 5%, opposed to 0.3% by the machine. About 20% of the wrongly set eggs will not hatch, 80% will result in less vital chicks. “It is all about the numbers, with over 100,000,000 eggs a year, the difference between the machine and by hand is 3.7%, of which 20% is a loss. Small percentages add up to 740,000 chicks as a potential loss/win. On top of that we keep our staff happy too.” The current hatching percentage is 84%.
Labour intensive
Automation in egg setting and also in the transfer room, where candling and selection is also automated, keep the number of people involved in the hatchery low. Mr Chongkol: “That said, the work in the chick room is still pretty labour intensive. About 60% of all our staff is employed there. That is mainly due to the fact that we separate the male and female birds and vaccinate every chick by hand as well as with spray vaccination. On top of that, all our birds are re-checked as a matter of quality control before they leave to the broiler farms. Vaccination failure is not an option and if we see mistakes, the quality control station will evaluate the individual person at the vaccination station.”
Chick sexing is done on the broiler farm level for better results. Female chicks grow to 2.2 kilo’s in 42 days, male chicks to 2.8 kilo’s in 48 days. That gives better uniformity at the processing facility and thus better processing efficiency. With Betagro being a fully integrated company, from parent stock until finished products under its own brand name in the supermarket, every step in the production process is important. Mr Chongkol: “Our hatchery process is probably the most critical step in the whole production process, but in the end it is all about all links in the supply chain working together.”
Photo: The brand new Betagro hatchery came into operation in July 2018 and was built as a greenfield project.