What does a typical day look like?
It’s a very varied role in R&D, no two days are the same. Time is split between office-based work applying for projects and grants and securing funding, as well as writing reports on current or completed trials and then time spent on farms running trials.
The projects we run are often collaborations with other businesses or Universities. We have access to many modern, state of the art broiler farms and with the help of our service, we get accurate real-time environmental and performance data, so are able to gather reliable results which are representative of the commercial production system.
Projects so far...
Over the past year we have been involved in trials looking at:
- Nutritional support to improve production/reduce disease or stress.
- Robotics – everything from environmental monitoring to faeces analysis, product application onto litter for a reduction in greenhouse gases, and bird welfare monitoring.
- New methods of monitoring birds to improve welfare and production using modern camera technologies and sound monitoring.
- New methods of disinfection for drinking water and house cleaning to reduce the use of chemicals and medication.
- We aren’t limited to chickens either! With our remote environmental monitoring technology at OPTIfarm we can transfer into other animal businesses, currently looking at pigs, fish, honeybee health and insect larvae.
