Best practice recommendations regarding entrance control

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Every person entering the farm, including the farmer and his/her staff, should take precautionary measures, as they can carry pathogens onto the farm. All unnecessary visitors should be kept out of the stables and away from the animals. Visitors should adhere to the following measures: 

  1. Park your vehicle as far as possible from the animal housing facilities, on the dedicated parking area. When there is no parking area, leave your vehicle on the public road. 
  2. Never enter the animal housing facilities without informing the farmer/responsible person. 
  3. Before entering the animal facilities:
    • Sign the visitors’ register.  
    • Remove your footwear and overclothing.  
    • Wash and disinfect your hands and/or wear disposable gloves.  
    • Proceed to the clean zone of the hygiene lock (the side where the animals are present). Showering may be obligatory.  
    • Put on farm-specific and clean coveralls/clothing and footwear. Whenever a farm does not have specific clothing or footwear, put on a disposable coverall and overshoes.  
  1. While being in the animal housing facilities, do not touch animals unless necessary.
  2. Ideally, between different houses or animal groups, you should change clothing and footwear andwash and disinfect your hands.
  3. At the end of your farm visit: 
    • Remove farm-specific footwear and clean it before placing it back.  
    • Remove farm-specific clothing and put it into a laundry bin. 
    • Enter the dirty part of the hygiene lock (you may have to shower first).  
    • Wash and disinfect your hands.  
    • Put your own clothes and shoes back on.  

Whenever these measures are followed thoroughly, no additional animal-free contact period is required. However, this can still be imposed by the farmer/government. 

Automatic spray system of Animal Life Plus

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Between rounds, pollution accumulates in stables, with lots of dust, odor and ammonia. Something that is bad for animals, people and the environment. Animal Life Plus delivers an innovative automated barn cleaning system to improve the barn climate.

The automatic spray system is an easy to install system that works from an installation unit containing the spray. This spray is a biological cleaning agent that consists of a wide range of selected micro-organisms. These micro-organisms attach themselves to the core of the contamination, which can be seen as a layer of bonded dust on surfaces. The air remains and is considerably fresh.

The spraying system can be applied in all kinds of sectors, including piglets, sows, laying hens, broilers, calves and dairy goats. The system can be built into new and existing houses.

Prior to spraying, the starter is used to speed up microbiological cleaning, and the cleaner is used to clean between rounds with biological softener. By using these coordinated cleaners, the effect of the spray is optimally highlighted.

The automated microbiological cleaning concept of Animal Life Plus offers many advantages. For this pig farmer, the system has led to better animal health, less use of antibiotics, increased job satisfaction and an improved technical result. This means that the system pays for itself in a short period of time.

 

Webinar DISARM (ZLTO), Animal Life Plus and Gezondheidsdienst voor Dieren:

Carcass disposal using an exchangeable storage system

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Disease Prevention > Biosecurity > Resource > Carcass disposal

 

Carcass disposal is an important aspect of external biosecurity. A way to achieve strong external biosecurity is by using the ‘clean-dirty area’ principle (clean area: farm buildings and zone in between; dirty area ‘outside’). Another division into zones consists of a green zone (low risk: the farm buildings), an orange zone (medium risk: the area directly around the farm buildings) and a red zone (high risk: public road, land which is not under own management).

The correct procedure for carcass disposal should avoid contaminating the clean area of farm buildings. For example, the carcass collection service must remain in the red zone and not enter the farm site. This can be achieved by placing the collection point for the carcass container next to the public road. Storing carcasses before collection at a point near the farm buildings means the red zone doesn’t have to be entered when a cadaver has to be stored. Furthermore, the collection frequency can be reduced by storing carcasses refrigerated.

By creating a double storage, the full container can be exchanged with the empty container. In this system, the storage next to the farm buildings has a cooling system; the storage next to the public roads has not. The day the carcass collection service arrives, the full (cooled) container is exchanged with the empty container next to the public road.

A strict separation between the clean and dirty road can be maintained, considerably reducing the risk pathogens being introduced. The refrigerated storage is also hygienic and the reduced odor emissions from cadavers is public-friendly.

Slower growing broiler crosses for reduced antibiotic use

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Disease Prevention > Breeding for Resilience > Resource > Slower growing broiler crosses

In Europe, the demand for high-quality poultry meat is rising. This tendency goes hand in hand with understanding and implementation of animal welfare and activation of organic farming. There are points in the organic farming format which conventional farmers can use to reduce the frequency of diseases and antibiotic usage. One of these points is to use slower growing broiler crosses and another is lower stocking densities.

The classic conventional broiler crosses are fast growing and kept in high densities so they are more susceptible to heath disorders including bacterial and protozoa diseases which are usually treated with antibiotics.

Today there are a lot of offers in Europe for various farming systems. The slow growing broiler crosses are more suitable for organic farming, but there are also offers for differentiated growing broiler crosses which are more robust and less sensitive to heath disorders. These can be used in conventional farms and can be realized from day 48. There are also possibilities to choose specific dwarf breeds for parent stock to reduce feed costs but at the same time maintain high productivity levels.

Stocking density also influences animal health and spread of disease. Reductions in bird count or bird live weight mass per m2 play an important role in both productivity (better weight gain) and disease incidence.

In conclusion, animal welfare, vaccination programs and biosecurity programs will play an important role in overall flock health level, but in combination with differentiated and slower growing broiler crosses, it is more feasible to keep broilers healthy, reduce antibiotic usage and offer high quality poultry meet to consumers.

 

The 7 important and individual steps in the optimal cleaning and disinfection protocol for livestock barns 

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Cleaning and disinfection (C&D) of livestock barns between production cycles is crucial in achieving a good farm biosecurity. Optimal C&D takes 7 individual steps that need to be executed chronologically!

  1. Start with dry cleaning the barn to remove coarse manure, emptying feeders and waterlines, and removing finer dirt . The less organic material remains, the more efficient the C&D will be, saving product, water and time.
  2. In step 2 the barn is soaked first only with water and next with water and detergent for better dissolving of fats and dirt. Foam is to be preferred for its longer contact time, better visibility and effectiveness. Foam the barn from floor to ceiling upwards for longer contact time. Leave enough time for the foam to work on the dirt before the next step of rinsing with a high pressure washer between 50 and 120 bar.
  3. Rinse the barn from ceiling to floor downwards to prevent recontamination of the cleaned upper surfaces.
  4. Next, very important is step 4: drying before disinfection. Make sure to clear feeders and drinking cups from rinsing water and dry the floor. It is crucial to prevent dissolution of the disinfection product to ensure its efficacy!
  5. Disinfection in step 5 can be done in various ways: wet, thermal disinfection, foam, fumigation or combinations. Also all loose material, central corridors, technical and office rooms, clothing and footwear need C&D.
  6. Step 6 is drying of the disinfection solution. Rinse the animal feeders and drinkers to prevent the incoming animals to ingest any disinfection product.
  7. The last step, whilst very important is often overlooked: testing the efficacy of your C&D protocol which should not be limited to visual inspection but ideally involves taking bacteriological swabs to assess the pathogen load in the barn.

On farm hatching of broiler chicks to improve broiler welfare, health and performance and lower the need for antibiotics in broiler production. 

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Conventional broiler chicks that are transported to the broiler farm shortly after birth can suffer from the stress of handling in the hatchery, feed and water deprivation, and during the transport. This stress is detrimental for the birds’ immunological and physiological development resulting in less resilient birds.

On-farm hatching is an innovative concept preventing the burden of this stress because eggs which have been incubated for 18 days are being hatched directly on the broiler farm. The hatched chicks have instant access to water and feed, allowing for better development of their intestines and organs. This concept results in healthier and more robust animals that are more resilient to disease pressure. The concept is available through different suppliers offering specific systems (Nestborn®, One2Born® and X-treck (Vencomatic)), varying in labour requirements, ease of use and investment.

Depending on the farm-specific availability of labour, capital and desired production scheme different solutions can be interesting. On-farm hatching needs to fit in the production schedule since you need extra time to prepare your shed for the next cycle which can create a peak in labour requirements. Additionally, some extra costs for heating the shed three days earlier will be incurred. Still, savings on medicine use are possible as well as improvements to the technical performance of the birds which may help to offset additional costs. Field trials in Flanders on two farms transitioning from conventionally hatched broilers to the NestBorn concept have shown a reduction in their antibiotic usage for the NestBorn chicks compared to conventional broiler chicks. Antibiotic use measured as mg active substance per stocked chicken decreased by 62.76% on average and on 18 out of 27 production cycles no antibiotics were used in the NestBorn system.

Breeding for resilience in poultry: dual purpose chickens  

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Resilience is the capacity of an animal to be minimally affected by external or internal negative agents or to rapidly recover from it. By choosing a more resilient breed of poultry, farmers can also reduce antimicrobial usage, obtaining both healthy and easier-to-manage flocks.

Improvement of resilience can be accomplished by different strategies. One strategy is to increase resilience by genetic selection in breeding programs. The advantage of genetic selection, in contrast to management improvements, is that it can be a longer-lasting solution. Furthermore, it can be done through adequate resilience-improving breeding programs. For example, dual-purpose breeds or local (traditional) breeds have shown to be more resilient than more conventional breeds.

Dual-purpose chickens can be used for the production of eggs and the cockerels for meat production, and like local (traditional) breeds they may be less susceptible to clinical disease and may recover from illness faster. On the production side, it is true that dual-purpose chickens tend to lay fewer eggs per year than the highly-selected breeds. However, there seems to be an increasing number of initiatives, including organic production, which allow farmers to market these differentiated quality products and provide them with added value.

In conclusion, choosing the right breed for resilience is a matter of good research and the choice should be fit for the particular production system. Nevertheless, it must be also considered that indicators for general resilience for poultry have not yet been defined clearly by researchers.

Handling of dead animals: Hydrolysis

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One of the problems that can break the biosecurity of a farm is the system for collecting dead animals. There is a great risk of spreading disease on the farm via carcass collection vehicles which travel from one farm to another. In addition, because they are fresh carcasses, the risk of being potential disease carriers is high.

A very effective alternative is the hydrolysis of carcasses on the farm. The carcass hydrolysis system provides temporary storage of carcasses and byproducts where the spontaneous phenomena of self-hydrolysis occur. The hydrolysis that takes place in carcass is similar to that which occurs in other organic materials that are susceptible to self-destruction.

With these systems, authorized by the EU (Regulation 749/2011 of 29 July 2011), a specific container is required to perform hydrolysis and store the dead animals for 6 months.

With this system the following is achieved:

  • Limits the microbiological load to inside the hydrolyser on the farm, reducing the potential contamination that this product has to other farms.
  • Decrease the number of collections per year. Going from 100-150 times to 4-6 times.
  • Direct transport is made from the farm to the authorized processing plant. The truck arrives at the farm clean from the processing plant and returns without passing through any other farm.
  • The same hydrolyser container is returned empty, clean and disinfected to the farm of origin, reducing the risk of spreading pathogens.

Role of biosecurity in small-scale broiler chicken production

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There are many infectious diseases that can cause mayhem in the poultry industry. And as time passes, we are acknowledging many more causative agents with probably less aggressive pace, but never the less with high overall costs, and not just financial.

The best method to decrease the impact of a different avian infectious agents is to minimize opportunities for pathogens to be transmitted to poultry houses via breeding stock, eggs, personnel or fomites etc. This minimization we call biosecurity – biosecurity is a strategic and integrated approach that encompasses the policy and regulatory frameworks for analysing and managing relevant risks to human, animal and plant life and health, and associated risks to the environment (Hawkes and Ruel. 2006).

In order to implement biosecurity in your poultry farm first follow these easy steps:

  1. You must have a responsible person regarding biosecurity (ideally this person should have previous knowledge regarding biosecurity implementation).
  2. Invest in employee education on biosecurity.
  3. Strictly separate clean area from dirty area, for example hatchery is a clean area but waste collection room is obviously a dirty area. You can mark a border of clean and dirty area.
  4. Change all clothes when entering farm – even if it is just to quickly grab something.
  5. Don’t forget about pests e.g. rats, flies, etc. – keep the farm clean.
  6. Regularly check feed and water.

It is better to start small than quit half way through.

Thermal floor disinfection with a flaming device in poultry barns for better prevention of coccidian and bacterial infections

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Thorough cleaning and disinfection between subsequent production cycles is a key management practice in broiler and turkey farming for disease prevention and lowering the infection pressure in the poultry barn. Still, in floor-housed production systems, the flooring can remain a reservoir of pathogenic organisms. Cracks and holes in the flooring can be difficult spots to thoroughly disinfect and remain a potential hide-out for pathogenic bacteria and coccidian oocysts and worm eggs. The eradication of coccidian oocysts can be especially challenging since these organisms are very persistent and largely unaffected by chemical disinfectants with the exception of ammonia.

An effective disinfection method, proven in practice, is thermal disinfection or disinfection based on radiation. Thermal disinfection is carried out with a machine with a heat of 750°C making contact with the flooring for only a few seconds during which the top layer of the floor gets heated up to 300 to 400°C . The limited contact with the floor prevents damaging the concrete flooring, but effectively kills pathogenic organisms. Some specialized poultry service companies offer this solution and are also able to disinfect the walls of the barn in a similar way, eradicating harmful pathogenic organisms from the poultry barn.

On-farm tractor-mounted flaming devices are available as well and allow for a cost-effective method for poultry barn disinfection.