Poultry farmers turn to drones for an eye in the sky
Poultry farmers across the country are depending on drones to protect their poultry houses and make work more efficient.
Barry Nguyen, is contracted with Pilgrims, where he owns four chicken breeding houses. Nguyen bought the farm in May 2022. He is familiar with drones and knows that that are becoming more popular. But he has not yet adopted to technology due to cost. He said he is doing more research about them.
Nguyen said that he is beginning to believe that Drones make a difference in his farms efficiency, by reducing the amount of time that it takes to walk the houses.
Chicken houses are no easy task to maintain. With almost 13 thousand birds in each of his houses. keeping track of birds can sometimes be difficult with the human eye. Drones, however may be more accurate and are keeping human interaction to a minimum.
To keep operations bio secure every time poultry farmers have to go inside the chicken houses they must disinfect themselves. Avoiding this time consuming biosecurity measure that can happen multiple times a day by flying drones to survey flocks visually from above significantly reduce the amount of time required to for personal sanitation.
The technology is especially helpful because of the sheer number of birds that poultry farmers must monitor.
“Maximum they put me is 12,500 hens and 2,400 roosters, per house maximum,” said Barry.
All around the world drones are being used for poultry farming. According to a recent report in Futurism, in Japan, drones are being used for protecting their birds. These drones are being equipped with lasers.
Each country goes about this differently, technology is progressing, with different styles of drones being manufactured.
The cost of these drones can range between $20,000 and $50,000 depending on the brand and capabilities of the equipment. Smaller poultry farmers, may still be using older technology while contracted farmers with Tyson, Pilgrims, are slowly adopting to the new technology.
