Big brother watches flocks online

By Martin Cassidy
Rural affairs correspondent

Poultry farmers are using the latest ultra mobile computers to play big brother on their flocks and allow Northern Ireland's biggest poultry company to count its chickens.

Recording is second nature to most poultry farmers. The daily round of chores often includes jotting down feed consumption and growth rates on the back of an envelope.

Chicken farmers though are now going down the hi-tech route.

The information is put onto computer

Enter the latest generation of ultra-mobile computers which are being used to streamline one of Northern Ireland's biggest poultry operations.

Armed with a feed bucket in one hand and a new slimline PC in the other, the modern flock owner can connect to the web while tending his flock.

More than 40 farmers in Tyrone and Armagh are taking part in the £100,000 pilot IT project, which is being managed by the Department of Agriculture and the Moy Park poultry company based at Dungannon.

Department of Agriculture IT advisor Gavin McQuaid said farmers can log production data and download the latest market information.

"Using this device, the farmer can walk along his poultry shed recording the weight of birds, the temperature of the house and so on," he said.

In Moy Park's busy production office at Dungannon chicken chief Tom McKeown is monitoring the information arriving in from the farms.

The £36m factory on the edge of town processes a staggering 1.3m birds a week for supermarket customers across the United Kingdom.

Getting the right size of bird to the the right place is a major logistical operation and the ultra-mobile computers are allowing the necessary information to flow from farm to factory.

"From a factory point of view bird weights are easily seen from day seven, 14 and 21 allowing us to project how birds are growing and how they will meet factory requirements," said Mr McKeown.

A few miles away farmer David Brownlee is allowing his free-range chickens out for the day.

As the chickens head out across the field, he stops to record his flock details on the computer.

Gavin McQuaid said the information went straight to the website

"There are eight different things we have to upload to the web site every day, such as water consumption and mortality," he said.

Like the other farmers taking part in the computer trial, David says its a lot more efficient than going through the birds with a piece of paper and trying to collate the information later.

For Moy Park the computer data is also an early warning system, allowing field staff to trouble-shoot potential problems.

A sudden drop in water consumption, for example, could alert then company's advisors to a flock experiencing the onset of disease.

Were bird flu to strike, the computer data could prove vital in controlling an outbreak by allowing the early isolation of an infected flock.

The mobile phone connection has an added benefit in that it allows the farmers to photograph their flocks and forward the pictures to the field staff at headquarters.

And it is not only young farmers who are taking to the new computer technology.

Moy Park's IT manager Bill Newell says that many of the older flock owners are showing a real appetite for the ultra mobile PC.

"Some are even getting surveys done to find spots in their poultry houses where they can get a high speed connection," he said.

While the IT trial is only a few months old, the farmers involved predict that big brother is here to stay.