Gov’t funds tech for chicken farmers

Jan 08, 2020

The Canadian and Ontario governments are investing in upgrading the data-entry and tracking systems for egg and chick production in the province

By Jackie Clark
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Recently, the federal and provincial governments provided funding through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership to enhance Ontario’s hatching egg and hatchery industry. The Ontario Broiler Hatching Egg and Chick Commission (OBHECC) will administer the funds to enable farmers to upgrade their operations.

“With cost-share funding of up to $141,450 through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, the Ontario Broiler Hatching Egg and Chick Commission will upgrade its systems that track egg and chick production. This upgrade will reduce costs to the hatchery sector by further automating data inputting processes,” said a Dec. 30 release from the Ontario government.

These updates will also connect other data-monitoring systems.

“For example, it will be possible for individual producers to setup and store their barn management data monitoring the barn environment,” OBHECC said in a Jan. 8 statement to Farms.com.

"OBHECC is committed to partnership that drives innovated processes to meet new challenges and opportunities for our membership and industry," Bill Van Heeswyk, executive director of the OBHECC, said in the Dec. 30 statement. “This progressive solution will reduce overhead and increase the overall efficiency of the hatchery supply chain while building value and serving the chicken industry's needs of sustainable, safe and high-quality products,” he added.

Farmers themselves and the broader industry will benefit from the increased efficiency.

“Today, each hatchery manually enters data into its proprietary system as well as the OBHECC online traceability system. The project solution will modify the current authentication service and data service, and will allow the hatcheries to connect and upload data. (As a result, the system will) automatically reduce data errors and data entry hours, thereby reducing the transfer of costs to the entire industry,” the OBHECC statement explained.

“Furthermore, the lag time to get data into the system will be reduced as hatcheries and farmers will not have to manually enter the data into OBHECC systems,” the statement said.

OBHECC will use this funding to help farmers upgrade to the new data-tracking system.

“The main action of this will be to upgrade the back-end systems and provide each hatchery with a custom-made application which will transfer data according to their individual business practices,” the Jan. 8 statement said.

Pattonmania\iStock Images Plus photo

Video: Secure Your Pig Herd with AgView | Streamline Disease Defense with Traceability

Join Jill Brokaw, a third-generation pig farmer and staff member of the National Pork Board, as she dives into a resource developed by the National Pork Board, paid for with Pork Checkoff funds. AgView is a pivotal tool, enabling swift and efficient responses to potential foreign animal disease outbreaks by allowing producers to securely share location and pig movement data with State Animal Health Officials to rapidly contain the disease threat and determine where the disease is or is not present.

Why Should Pork Producers Care? AgView standardizes and streamlines how America's pig farmers communicate information to animal health officials that supports business continuity in an outbreak. It is an entirely voluntary tool where you continue to own and control your data.

Getting Started with AgView: Getting started is incredibly easy. You can access the platform on any device. Producers can upload data directly to their AgView Account or work with the National Pork Board to connect the platform using an application programming interface or API.

Takeaway: AgView was built to be the path to protection that helps producers and officials respond to a foreign animal disease emergency the minute a threat arises, providing the critical information needed to manage a foreign disease crisis.