Preventing birds from poor health is the biggest challenge facing the transition from traditional production to “no antibiotic,” Tony Newsome, department manager at Fieldale Farms, told Poultry Health Today.
Fieldale Farms is one of the first poultry companies to move into NAE production. It’s been a long process, Newsome said, but the company has figured out how to raise healthy NAE herds.
“We basically start from scratch,” first with chicks and breeders, he said.
When antibiotics are not used, essential elements such as biosecurity and the amount of bacteria play a much more important role. Eggs entering the hatchery must be blank, the hatchery must be kept blank and the chicks sent to the chicken coop must be blank, Newsome said.
“I don’t think there’s a big secret about how to run a hatchery and what to do. I think the challenge is that we’re all caught up in the lack of help, or in any case, and we’re letting go of the things we know we want to do every day. So to run without antibiotics, you can’t let them pass… He said.
Vaccination without gentamicin, for example, requires that the surfaces of the hatcheries are as blank as possible. A swab is made to look for bacteria. “I think that as long as [everything is] blank and everything is done through the book, you can go without gentamicin. We’ve probably done it for 15 years with wonderful success,” he said.
Newsome stated that optimal immunity is also vital when raising NAE herds, and this includes maintaining vaccination against Marek’s disease. Companies that avoid vaccination may suddenly wake up one day and realize that they are “in the worst disorders I have ever encountered” due to convictions. Possibly, the situation would take 6 to 8 weeks.
“I don’t need to be unvaccinated against Marek for a while. We grow a high-end product and don’t need to take a threat with anything so it interferes with the flow,” he said.
The vaccination plan will generally vary by location, “but we do everything we can to vaccinate as much as we can to make sure it compromises the immune system,” Newsome continued. For infectious bronchitis, Newsome added that Fieldale uses a multitude of separate vaccines instead of a combined vaccine, and conviction rates are as smart as anyone’s in the industry.
Another vital step with NAE herds includes care for waste. “The most important thing we fight every day is to keep the houses as dry as possible, because this humidity only reinforces the bacterial load,” he said, noting that Fieldale uses many amendments to the mess.
Ensuring food security, especially Salmonella containment, also requires sanitation, such as the right rodent in cattle and broiler buildings. The nutritionist is still looking for tactics to keep Salmonella levels low in the food supply, Newsome said. He added that Fieldale granulates everything, adding breeding food, to help decrease salmonella grades in hen herds before they occur.
© 2000 – script; 2020 – script; Global Ag Media. All rights are reserved.
No component of this can be reproduced without permission.