New hatchery line at Ular Farming

Ukraine - In 2023, Ular Farming Group in Ukraine introduced their new hatchery line. Peter Kozemko, the Hatchery Manager of UkrProm Incubation Hatchery, which is part of Ular Farming Group, shares his insights.

Tell us more about hatchery capacity of your enterprise. How many chicken eggs do you hatch and how does hatchery operate?

In the structure of our enterprise, we have a hatchery with a capacity of 67 million eggs per year. In 2023, we increased our production capacity, opened new operations and started to sell day-old chicks throughout Ukraine. Thus now we not only provide ourselves with day-old chicks of Cobb-500 and Ross-308 cross, but sell the rest to our customers. We work mainly with imported from Germany and the Czech Republic incubation eggs. If we talk about hatchery structure, then it includes: a room for receiving and processing trays with eggs; areas for storing eggs in paper trays; space for transferring and sorting eggs; fumigation room; storage for eggs in setter trolleys and trays; setter rooms, hatcher rooms; washing areas for setter trays and trolleys; room for taking off of day old chicks; areas for vaccination and storage of day old chicks.

What equipment is installed in your hatchery?

We installed the following incubation equipment: setters, hatchers and ventilation system from "Jamesway" company; lines for transferring eggs and taking off, sorting and vaccinating of day old chicks from "Ecat-iD Campus" company; line for sorting and setting eggs from "Prinzen". The capacity of this line is 30 thousand eggs per hour.

Until we installed this modern equipment, on egg setting line we had 24 people performing the same work. Now only 6 people operate the line.

If we talk about this line in more detail, then I should explaine that operators put six trays (it is convenient because two stacks of 6 trays are placed in one box) with eggs on input conveyor, after that destacker unloads stack (one by one tray) and they are transported to transfer section, where the eggs are transferred from trays to rollers by means of vacuum suction cups. Empty trays are transported to empty trays stacker, where they are stacked in a programmed number in separate stack and operator puts the stack in box. The eggs are coming on rollers to the Ovograder - where eggs are weighed and eggs having less or more weight than was programmed are selected, and eggs having programmed weight (weight of 55-65 grams can be programmed) are coming to the Ovoset Pro. Ovoset Pro places the eggs into cells with the sharp end down and with the help of vacuum suction cups transfers them to setter trays (after that operator puts them on conveyor). Setter trays are transported to trolley loader where they are loaded into setter trolleys, and as soon as setter trolley is loaded, operator receives command to replaces the full setter trolley with an empty one. If you noticed, operators do not contact eggs at any stage of the process, and besides we have 99% of uniform and correctly positioned eggs.

Tell us about the most important factors of successful incubation. What does impact incubation process and quality of the products?

A high level of biosecurity at the enterprise is critically important. It is impossible to obtain good hatching results if infected eggs are set on the trays. It is important to have eggs disinfected before set into setters in order to exclude bacteria, microbes, etc. remained on their surface. This is critically important both for hatching process itself and for the health of future day old chicks, because as soon as an infected chicks are placed in poultry house, you will have high mortality, poor growth results, high feed conversion, and quite high production costs. Accordingly, by installing “Prinzen” egg sorting and setting line, we completely minimized human factor and any negative impact on eggs. When received eggs are disinfected in a transport containers by aerosol method, sorted and transferred to setter trays, they are disinfected in a disinfection room with formalin vapors. After that completely disinfected eggs are set into setters. The capacity of one setter is 130 thousand eggs. After a stage of incubation, all eggs are transferred from setters to hatchers.

After chicks are taken from hatchers, they are placed on the selection and vaccination line. We immediately vaccinate the chicks in the neck against Mareks and Gumboro disease. 

Next step is to distribute day old chicks in boxes of 80, 90, 100 heads, depending on client wishes. After that chicks are vaccinated against Newcastle disease and infectious bronchitis using a spray device. In the end we send already formed and vaccinated batch of day old chicks to client by our special transport.

How do you receive hatching eggs? Where do you import it from?

We import hatching eggs from several European countries. Each hatching egg has a special label that indicates all the information about it: country of origin, poultry farm number, egg collection date. During unloading process, eggs from paper boxes and trays are transferred into incubation trays. During transfer process, thanks to “Prinzen” egg sorting and setting line, substandard eggs are selected i.e. eggs with microcracks, too small or too large.

Thus we program mechanism and specify parameters we need, for example, if we need eggs weighing 50-70 grams, it means that all eggs weighing more or less than specified in this range will be automatically sorted out. Accordingly, we put only uniform eggs in setters, that helps us to get a uniform flock of chicks.

Tell us more about incubators you purchased. Were these investments profitable and how did they affect overall efficiency of hatching?

We have several setters installed: 60 thousand eggs and 130 thousand eggs capacity. In setters, temperature, humidity and CO2 are set and controlled. The equipment provides automatic turning of eggs by 45 degrees in setters for proper embryo development.

The technology of eggs incubating is such that from the first day of eggs setting to the eleventh day (close of allantois) we need to heat them. From the eleventh to the twenty-first day we need to cool eggs, so setters and hatchers are equipped with heating and cooling system filled in by propylene glycol 10⁰С. Thanks to this, we maintain a stable temperature necessary for high quality incubation. 

Thanks to equipment of "Prinzen" we managed to automate production process, that, as I already said, allowed us to position eggs in setter trays correctly, i.e. with sharp end down. This is very important, because if eggs are not placed with the sharp end down, chick will not be able to hatch from it. Operator setting eggs can make a mistake, but thanks to this equipment, we can be sure that all eggs will be set correctly by 99%.

Plus, thanks to this line, we managed to sort a homogeneous eggs, set homogeneous eggs in separate trolleys and, accordingly, get homogeneous day old chicks of the same weight.