FARM REPORT ▶▶▶
Producing broilers under quota regulations
Giving broilers a good start in their first ten days of life is one of the main goals of a major poultry producer in Ontario, Canada. Investing time and money at the start makes all the difference in the end at Prinzen Poultry Farm.
BY CHRIS MCCULLOUGH B Profile
Name: Prinzen family Residence: Prince Edward County (Canada) Enterprise: The Prinzen farm has two locations where 445,000 birds in total are raised per year. Average bird weight at slaughter is about 2.2 kgs.
ased in Prince Edward County, Prinzen Poultry Farm produces around half a million chickens per year under regulation to the strict, but fair, supply man- agement quota system they have there. Jeremy
Prinzen runs the farm together with his wife Jennifer and their three children, after they took it over in 2006. Over the years the Prinzens have modernised some of the chicken houses on the farm and built a new production unit off site. Jeremy explains how the expansions took shape over the years. “We purchased the farm from my wife’s parents who had owned it since 1989. They purchased the farm from my wife’s grandparents who had bought the farm in 1979. Our home farm had three barns, two of which had three stories,
and the other two stories. Since April of 2019 we no longer use one of the three-storey barns”. He continues: “We built a new chicken barn at a different location and moved some of the production there. The barns on the home farm were built in the 1950s and are really showing their age. However, two and three-storey barns are a thing of the past. The industry is moving to all single-storey houses for ease of catching and to increase animal welfare while handling birds”.
Focus on farm management All the broilers grown at Prinzen Poultry are caught and trans- ported for slaughter by outside contractors leaving Jeremy and Jennifer more time to run the business side of the farm. “At the home farm there are 60 acres and the new location has 104 acres. We raise approximately 245,000 chickens per year at the home farm and approximately 200,000 at the new location,” says Jeremy. “We do not have any outside growers and do not process any of our own birds.” He explains how he tries to focus on farm management as much as possible. “Our processing is all contracted out, which includes the catching of the birds, so the people handling the day-to-day operations are Jennifer and myself. The kids help out as needed. All broilers get shipped live to either Maple Lodge Farms or Maple Leaf Farms.”
Strict routine Jeremy and his family follow a strict routine when it comes to preparing the houses to ensure they are clean and dry for the next flock of chicks. “After the barns are all cleaned and disin- fected following the previous flock, it’s time to get ready for the next,” says Jeremy Prinzen. “We use large square bales measur- ing three by three by six feet for bedding which go through a large chopper and we blow the straw into the barns. The next task would be to drop all the feeders and water lines, place feed into the lines and heat the barn to 32°
Celsius,” he says.
Chicks arrive on the Prinzen farm usually less than 12 hours post hatch. From there placement to the processing stage takes around 33 to 38 days depending on the processor re- quirements for size. On average the bird weight is around 2.2 kgs. The temperature in the barn at shipping is near 22°
Jeremy Prinzen and his family run Prinzen Poultry.
24 ▶ POULTRY WORLD | No. 5, 2020
C.
“We are constantly monitoring the barn environment: check- ing the temperature, feed availability, water availability, litter quality, bird uniformity, air quality in terms of CO2
nia levels. Adjustments are made as required to airflow,” he explains.
and ammo-
PHOTO: PRINZEN
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