Chicken Snippets

With so much said about feed conversion and poultry farming profits, it could almost be forgiven that we downplay the crucial role of water intake.

Yes, whilst feed conversion is the bedrock of poultry meat or egg production – it must be remembered that there are contributors.

And for turning grains into broiler meat or layer eggs, water is the most influential contributor to the process.

Water is a powerful regulator of appetite and a crucial chemical substrate for metabolism. An essential ingredient for the thriving of all flocks.

Simple as this may sound, the practical delivery of water can present challenges that affect uptake by birds.

And if such kinks or creases are not ironed out of the rearing process, adverse outcomes in feed conversion can be witnessed.

And unless a robust approach to root cause analysis is taken, this failure in achieving genetic potential can be wrongly attributed to other factors…perhaps, feed formulation or even feed quantity.

However, the key to successful water delivery is an effective drinker system.

In poultry farming, 2 predominant drinker systems exist:

• Bell drinkers
• Nipple drinkers

Both systems have their given pros and cons – but equally, either can be deployed successfully where the prerequisite conditions for optimal use are met.

Each format of water delivery system has its own related best practices. If they are followed, this should yield optimal results and support feed conversion – for reaching the peak genetic potential.

Each drinker system requires maintenance and adjustments that mirror physiological changes in the flock.

This means you and your stockmen must be sensitive to flock changes and reactive to meet their needs.

Staying ahead of the change curve and upholding optimal water delivery, helps to keep your farm in peak performance.

In fact, aside from feed consumption, monitoring water consumption will also help you benchmark against the standard.

Water levels are a giveaway. Regular readings will show you if your flock is on target for feed conversion, or not.

Also, flock observation will indicate how easily birds are able to drink water.

Bottom line – water is a very necessary and key determinant of the feed conversion equation (although we might not think it).

How’s your flock water consumption going? And how does it line up with your flock’s feed conversion ration?

Broiler thinning involves performing a partial depopulation of the flock approximately one week prior (@ ~35 days) to the end-stage processing date ( @~42 days). There are 2 economic benefits experienced: (1) Optimisation of kg of meat per sq.ft of floor space, (2) Reaching a wider customer base by diversifying the product.

It’s a creative response to dealing with regulatory constraints x heterogeneous customer base.

As you can probably tell, I like thinning. Or rather, I like the idea of where it comes from.

As an independent business professional, this kind of thinking stimulates me. It’s the kind of innovation that is readily witnessed amongst entrepreneurial circles and contrastingly, rarely glimpsed within corporate corridors.

As entrepreneurs, we have our back up against it often. Sure, we have all to gain if things go right, but unlike having a guaranteed salary safety net, entrepreneurs also have all to lose if things go wrong.

And that kind of pressure can often extend the ingenuity of mankind into unexpected realms of remarkable problem-solving. This is the beauty of entrepreneurship…leaving yourself without excuse, and therefore, “…you just gotta make a way!”

And it’s through this lens that I stare admirably at thinning (and such like practices) that “make the most of what you do have” and find a way around the obstacle.

Here are two common problems facing broiler farmers in today’s marketplace:

1. Local authorities apply ‘hard stop’ legal limits on stocking density in broiler farming to promote animal welfare.
2. Demand for carcass weight is variable – buyers prefer varying sizes of carcasses.

At the same time, your profit margins are constantly under pressure from rising feed costs, cheaper imports etc. (…and the list goes on…)

And so, what’s a broiler farmer supposed to do?

Fold?

Or, get inventive?

Enter thinning.

Using a tunnel-ventilated poultry house environment with cooling pads? You might have a maximum stocking density of, say, 42 kg/m² (8.6 lb/ft²).

Along with this, you have cost constraints and price ceiling that demands another 15-20% profitability out of your flocks.

Thinking bigger doesn’t actually solve your problem.

You’ve got to think smarter.

Segment your customer base & your broiler flocks.

Find demand for broilers grown only to 35 days old – say 25% of your flock.

And then, with the remaining 75% of your flock meet the demand of customers wanting 42-day-old/size broilers.

This way, by head count, you pack more birds into the same space, thus raising your $/sq. ft…

…but you don’t breach regulatory limits, nor impair animal welfare – yet overall you increase profit by 10-20%.

And all without having to increase your infrastructural footprint a single inch.

The beauty of thinning. The principle for winning.

Poultry farming KPIs give you constant visibility of performance.  And poultry keywords provide leverage for results. Without KPIs our efforts become aimless and we’re prone to going off track and falling into the trap of “…doing it, just for doing it sake.” And without keywords, we get lost and become immobilised with the weight and inertia of indecision.

(How crippling this can be…)

When the fog obscurity sets in, fear to act takes hold – then all sorts of problems begin to dominate the operation. And all because we lost sight of the goal, then lost heart. And this…we cannot afford.

So, a very simple yet effective visual hack (much in the same way that blinkers on horses work to good effect) is to keep your KPIs and keywords in constant view…perhaps using a sticky note memo on your desk.

The idea being that as you administer the managerial functions within the business, your eyes and mind are continually trained on “what matters”.

And this is critical because one thing is for sure, both in life and business, “…things that don’t matter have an uncanny knack of dressing up rather well as things that do!”

Speaking of “what matters”, here’s a quick shortlist of KPIs you might want to keep close-by:

• FCR – feed conversion ratio (minimum & optimal)
• Cumulative mortality
• Milestone weights & production targets

Now, with firm numbers against these, you should also support them with qualitative keywords that help you gain cognitive leverage.

Examples might be:

• FCR < 1.9 (…feed availability & uptake, feed quality, supply chain)
• Cumulative mortality rate < 0.5% (…1st 7 days – if reared from day 1, late stage, in-transit, pattern, postmortem)
• Rejected carcasses < 0.5% -> (…handling, transport)
• Milestone weights  -> (…uniformity, root cause)

The combination of KPIs and keywords in sight will naturally keep you ‘considerate and inquisitive’ concerning the key measures and levers that support your business results. It’s kind of like setting your thoughts on tracks.

At the start of every day, revise your KPIs and keywords – adding to, highlighting or annotating the list as your private study & strategic analysis leads you to fine-tune and prioritise.

Call it a memo, cheat sheet or study notes, whatever you prefer…the result?

To keep the drivers and signs of poultry success or failure “top of mind” always.

Do this and you’ll find that you’re thinking more analytically, with deeper understanding of operational nuance and able to navigate critical poultry decision-making with greater confidence.

Jot down your poultry KPIs and keywords today.

Just-in-time is arguably one of the most transformational, yet mysterious and (consequently) misquoted business management philosophies in today’s industrial economy.

Rooted in the arrival of the Japanese car industry, JIT (as it is known for short) quickly became infamous as a method of operational workflow innovation that enabled minnows to fearlessly swim with sharks.

And today, I share the unique advantage JIT offers to your poultry business.

In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that Just-In-Time as an operational philosophy has the potential to completely revolutionise the way you think about and profit from your poultry enterprise – permanently…for life.

Now, if you’ve never studied postgraduate business, then this is probably the first you’ve heard of ‘Just In Time’ management.

But like so many academic theories…’Just-In-Time’ didn’t start as a doctrine.

It’s far more organic. It’s a fruit. A natural phenomenon.

The result of what happens when you put a team of committed people under considerable constraint, challenge and prompt their overcoming. Total obscurity gradually becomes flawless, multifacted clarity.

(…just think lumps of coal into diamonds and such like)

In post-war Japan (circa 1946), the Toyoda Motor Company (…no typo, the family from which the now Toyota car manufacturer orginates is indeed…Toyoda) faced an almost insurmountable challenge…

…nearing bankruptcy and being dwarfed competitively by the US car giants, who had much larger cash piles and colossal inventories…

Toyoda sought to carve out a means of survival.

With very little access to competitive resources (financial and material), their President issued a directive to explore how ‘greater efficiency’ might give them an edge.

In fact, he decreed to his staff:

“Catch up with America in three years. Otherwise, the automobile industry of Japan will not survive.”

Enter Taiichi Ohno, a mechanical engineer and Nagoya Technical High School grad – who rose through the Toyoda ranks and become elected as the key ‘problem solver’ in this internal transformation process.

Taiichi immediately made his mark as protagonist and lead tactician for steering this turnaround.

His viewpoint was that although Toyoda were smaller in size, compared to US manufacturers, the only excuses they had for producing less than the competition were wastefulness and inefficiency.

Remove inefficiency and you gain productivity. And greater productivity equals greater potential for sales and profit = survival.

But perhaps this was easier said than done?

…Or not (as the case may be):

The birth of Just In Time management…

“Through necessity, Ohno had developed a contrasting approach to the mass production of the US firms. Competitive advantage could not be won by Toyota through taking on the American giants at their own game – by competing to achieve economies of scale.

Through experimenting firstly with simple die-change techniques (ways of stamping metal sheets), Ohno was able to perfect the whole process until it could be reduced from taking one day down to 3 minutes.

In doing so, he made the first of a series of counter-intuitive discoveries: it cost less per part to make small batches of stampings than to produce in large batches.

Ohno sought to understand more as to why fewer units and greater variety actually meant lower costs. He found that true costs of production were end-to-end, and that more variation in his line left fewer parts tied up in inventories and work in progress.

Whilst the unit cost for each product was higher, the total production costs were considerably lower (Womack et al 2007 p52). As Ohno said,

To think that mass-produced items are cheaper per unit is understandable, but wrong.

Ohno was able to realise over time that economy of flow was superior to economy of scale, and to see this flow, he needed to understand his organisation as a system.”

Interestingly (and ironically) enough, this very Japanese innovation arose from a very American inspiration (and one far closer to our poultry passion than the car industry)…

The Just In Time lightbulb moment

“Ohno was famous for experimenting with various ways of setting up equipment to produce items in a timely manner. But he got a whole new perspective on ‘just-in-time’ production when he visited the US in 1956.

Ohno went to the US to visit automobile plants, but he was most impressed by the US supermarkets that he had been researching since the late 1940s (Ohno 1988 p26). Japan did not have many self-service stores yet, so Ohno marvelled at the way customers chose exactly what they wanted and in the quantities that they wanted.”

And then the penny dropped…

…nothing more, yet nothing less.

Precision.

Zero-wasted and consistent satisfaction.

Taking an order and delivering with exactness and speed.

The secret to optimising productivity, nullifying waste and maximising profit in business.

This applies to ANY industry – including our beloved poultry.

In fact, many expert contributors in Master Poultry Passes reveal how a just-in-time approach to poultry production can completely turn around a failing poultry enterprise and even further excel profitable ones.

• Feed milling: rather than stockpiling feed supplies, run batch production to preserve freshness and nutritional potency for optimising FCR (feed conversion ratio).
• Flock rearing: multiflock rearing programs enable a multilayered approach to production, smoothing the output and enabling a more varied schedule of delivery and regulation of cash flow.
• Catch and processing: tighter coordination of catch, transport and processing preparation to minimise injuries, mortalities and costly end-stage losses.
• Customer segmentation: discern the individual preferences and requirements of each customer and align production to deliver individualised results for maximum satisfaction.

More feed conversion, smoother cash flow, fewer lost birds & more satisfied customers…

…did this email arrive ‘just in time’ for your poultry turn around?

Want to implement the ‘Just-In-Time’ methodology within your poultry business?

Here’s how JIT is practically achieved, in the words of Taiichi Ohno:

1. Mentally force yourself into tight spots (something like a weapon held to the head concentrates the mind).
2. Think hard; systematically observe reality.
3. Generate ideas; find and implement wise, ingenious, low-cost solutions.
4. Derive personal pleasure from accomplishing kaizen
5. Develop all peoples’ capabilities to accomplish steps 1-4.

Get started today.

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