Spend your Focus Wisely

There are two ways to approach most endeavours

1. Have your focus on the factors you have no influence or control over.
2. Lock in on the areas you control, and trust that if you execute your required tasks then parts you don’t control will have limited impact.

One of the free range farms I work with, ran by Myles Thomas and his manager Angela follow approach two. The thinking behind prioritising hen health and welfare is that if the hen is properly immunised, free from parasitic burden and managed with close attention, then the external factors of egg price, feed costs and the market in general will be well navigated. Each hen that your place on your farm has the potential to anywhere from 300-400 eggs for a brown bird and north of 500 for one of the white birds. I remember the principle of prioritising your own world being well explained to me in the powerlifting world, the man who endlessly compares his performance to others or blames external factors, when he hasn’t executed and learnt the most important daily acts is eternally frustrated. The man who is a robot and methodically wakes, trains, eats, trains and sleeps for month after month finds that when the time comes, the monk like existence is often rewarded with success.

Therefore the ability to keep mortality very low and egg quality good sits with constant learning of anything that could optimise the performance. The bedrock of performance is to ensure the flock is free from disease, and increasingly importantly, stress. The prevalence of E.coli in laying flocks would once have a quite simple cause – water, Infectious Bronchitis or red mite. However paying close attention to the light levels, the enrichment, the conditions of the shed and what is the highly skilled act of good stockmanship can make an enormous difference. Its often said that no two flocks are the same, but the constants that do always remain the same are a tick list in effect;

1. Water quality – testing to ensure low TVC levels is essential, the acts required to achieve that are relatively straight forwards.
2. Vaccinations for relevant challenges – Infectious Bronchitis vaccination, carried out with the correct strains, in the correct manner and at the correct intervals are a foundation to prevent secondary issues with MG, MS, E.coli and egg shell quality issue. The use of Live E.coli vaccine has been a recent development that has had a very positive outcome.
3. Red Mite Monitoring and Control – Understanding how to monitor for red mite is a powerful tool, it enables the correct timing of interventions, and the understanding of hot spots, which allow for early control when Exzolt treatments are waning to allow greater gaps between treatments.
4. Biosecurity – Am I preventing the incursion of disease onto my site properly? Footdips changed daily if subject to high use, wheel cleaning used properly and the use of the correct biosecurity clothing for anyone entering the bird areas.
5. Stockmanship – How do the birds look? How do they sound? Is there a change that is stressing them? Has the water intake had any significant changes? The ability to spot the warning signs early allows for issues to be stopped before they’ve gained momentum.

I recently had the chance to present the story of the UK’s success in fighting Salmonella recently, and I felt enormously proud to state that the farms in the UK are amongst the technically aware and high performing in the world. That is because the industry has earned its stripes, been through challenges and learnt. Master the basics and the rest takes care of itself.