Publicatie in Pluimveeweb

Recently Poultryweb featured the knowledge article below….
And we are happy to share it again… Do you have any questions after reading this article ?
If so, please contact us.

photo series: two farms on one property “what you can do yourself makes you less dependent”

Although growing up among chickens and roosters, it wasn’t a done dealfor Jan van Gils that he would take over his parents’ poultry farm.
He chose to study electrical mechanical engineering and then started his own company in it.
From the premisses of his parents’ farm, he has since been running an installation company for barn ventilation and barn lighting for cows (not for poultry). Besides his knowledge of poultry; dairy cattle were no stranger to Jan either. As a small child, he walked among the cows at home in the yard, until his parents made the switch from dairy to poultry twenty-five years ago. Jan’s parents started with a barn with 10,000 breeders.

Electro mechanics may have been Jan’s interest, but farm life was never out of sight. At Van Gils’ home, the three children were expected to help out, Jan recalls. After school, the Van Gils brothers and their sister were in the barn. Over the years, the number of chickens steadily increased and even doubled to 40,000 when a second barn was built in 2013.
Jan: “The new barn was fully automated. Looking ahead, we chose to extend and modernise the old barn. At the time, it was already clear that I would take over the poultry farm. The installation company had grown bigger. With more colleagues on assembly, I am now in the office a lot for planning and administration. This is easy to combine with the work on the poultry farm, especially now that the poultry houses are fully automated.”

The expansion to two barns and 40,000 breeders affected the planning of the poultry farm. Jan: “Vacancy time is too short. We often have to disinfect on Sundays so that veterinarians can take hygiene samples on Mondays. There is no external company willing to disinfect structurally on Sundays. So we started looking for a decent device that would allow us to disinfect our stables ourselves. Also to be independent of an external company and to be able to schedule disinfection without worries.”

Jan wants a solution that will last at least 10 years. His first purchase turned out to be a cat in the bag and quickly broke down. He continued his search and then ended up at Veugen Technology in Nederweert, Netherlands. Jan: “At Veugen they supply customised disinfection equipment, which is important to us. Also, my brother has a poultry farm and we wanted to use the device on both farms.” The Powerfogger 100 with two nozzles has been modified for the Van Gils brothers in a few areas. For example, the fogging device can be easily transported with a forklift truck.

“Our stables are 85 metres in length, but the Powerfogger can transport the fine mist up to 140 metres. Maybe too oversized, but this was a conscious decision. You don’t know what the future holds. Maybe we will extend our stables or take over a 120-metre poultry house and then our equipment will already be suitable for that,” Jan says, always looking to the future.

When using the Powerfogger, the entire barn is fogged within 2 to 3 hours. So Van Gils can easily disinfect both his stables within a day. He has now been using the device for 10 years. Recently, Veugen Technology carried out maintenance on the Powerfogger. Wearing parts have been replaced. Jan: “The fogger looks very good. There is nothing wrong with it. Now that some parts have been replaced, the fogging device can last at least 9 to 10 years again.” And after that, when the fogger is really written off? “Then I will immediately buy another one back,” Jan concludes.

The image below is a preview of the original Dutch article.