iGallus Limited

What now? Establishing the layout of the poultry breeding farm

To run is not necessarily to arrive. ~ Swahili proverb.

We have found enough land to be able to establish both rearing and production farms. For example the farm above has 3 quarantine rearing houses on the right hand side and 6 production houses on the left.

Total land size over 200 hectares. Spacing between rearing and production sites over 500 meters and spacing between houses or sites over 200 meters.

Notice the house orientation of the production houses on the right. They are orientated east to west using a compass on my Pajero. No GPS was used only a compass and a very long tape measure.

The farm has a main road access that needed to be widened and some swampy areas filled or culverts added. The internal roads needed to be made from scratch. The farm was forested and we needed to first mark out the main access roads into the site (White in color on photo) We then sent in a rather large bulldozer to knock down any trees in the road way and clean up the grass and bush. The soil type is sandy so after the bull dozer we sent in a road grader.

Once we had cleaned an access road we measured the site entrances outwards off this access road. We had to site four of the sites to one side of the farm as the other gets very water logged in the wet season.

This is something to be very aware of when planning, as a stuck truck with a load of feed or fertile eggs on a remote part of the farm can cause some unforeseen problems! The Main 33 kva power supply to the farm and then the internal power supply must also run along one side of the road. This will make it easier at some stage when fault finding at 12 o clock at night in a thunderstorm.

Main water supply should also follow road networks for the same reason of being able to spot leaks easier.

Do not take out all the bush and trees on the entire farm or even site. Only take out tree's that will be in the way of the road or buildings. Having trees close to the poultry houses has some advantages in hot or stormy weather.

Power supply to a farm or site always takes longer than expected, So make sure your project plans incorporate the use of a back up power system not only for the building period but also the start of production. In most cases production and normal farm activities will commence while construction is carrying on.

Make sure the two activities can be separated in terms of access, bio-security and your time. At any one stage a large project like this might have upwards of 100+ people working on the site.

Temporary site establishment and accommodation for the project or farm manager must be set up. Be prepared with temporary power and water supply for this camp. Try to start construction of the managers housing, office and storage first.

There are many more aspects that I have not covered here.

If you would like further information. Please contact me on jeremy@igallus.com

Thanks again for reading!