The Year Round: A major spring clean in the poultry houses

Most of our livestock is housed, and substantial numbers of poultry and pigs are kept on our 74 acres.

We took advantage of the dry ground to spread more slurry from the pig unit tank. A tractor and pump send the slurry to a tractor in the field with four trailing shoes, via an umbilical cord.

It is being spread on spring barley, which is nicely emerging after five weeks since drilling.

Pig trade is reasonably good and we carry our baconers to slightly bigger weights.

That means more output per sow and the regular demand from the factory is easing. When stocks are held over for additional periods it becomes rather worrying.

British pork is in good demand, and consumers are taking more notice of the source of their food.

This pork is a prime example of home grown products.

Our poultry are layers of hatching eggs for meat production. We have just completed a change of 30,000 birds, a job that spreads over three days in storing 10,000 birds per day.

To reduce disease risks, this change is done on an all-out and all-in basis. We ourselves removed all fittings and nest boxes from the poultry houses, with a contract loader filling our own trailers.

Then shed doors are all closed and the interiors all fumigated. Formalin is pumped in to make everything completely clean for the new birds.

They arrive at 19 weeks old which allows them three or four weeks to settle before the first eggs are produced. This is a very busy time for us for we must then encourage the birds to lay in the nest boxes rather than on the floor.

Any eggs dropped away from the nests are picked up immediately.