Heart of England Farms
Henley Road, Claverdon
Warwickshire, CV35 8PS
Tel: 01926 843460
Henley Road, Claverdon
Warwickshire, CV35 8PS
Tel: 01926 843460
Hatchery
As would be expected the finite attention to detail afforded to the breeding birds is continued through the eggs and on to the hatchery. Final egg collection occurs late in the day and the eggs are brought to the egg washing facility to start their journey through a series of the latest and most technologically advanced machines available today.
The automatic egg washing machine is unique in design in that only eggs showing surface soiling pass through the vigorous four stage cleaning program. Visually clean eggs move straight to the rinse and sanitise chamber thus retaining the shell cuticle, which is the eggs natural defence mechanism. Eggs are graded whilst on this machine and any small, mis-shapen or cracked eggs are removed allowing only first grade eggs to be trayed before moving to the controlled environment egg store for cooling.
The hatchery has been completely refurbished over the last decade with new state of the art Petersime incubators and hatchers installed. Each machine has individual computer control of internal temperature, ventilation, turning and humidity which takes the guess work out of incubation and ensures a uniform chick that hatches on time. With a setting capacity in excess of 100,000 eggs per week we can supply increasing customer demand for large and small orders and fulfil our own weekly requirement for chicks to be reared on to poults.
Our weekly hatch day is Monday and we run many temperature-controlled vans to ensure the chicks are at their destination within hours of leaving the hatchers.
A strict one-way bio-security system operates through out the hatchery which prevents the chicks, or dust from the chicks, coming into contact with incubating eggs. Swabs are regularly cultured from around the hatchery to check our cleaning and disinfecting programs are effective and that only strong, healthy chicks are being produced.
