Growing broilers in a comfort colony system

Easy to manage
Onur and Ömür Oral are brothers. Together they own and run the Orallar company, a major breeder and broiler operation near the village of Göynük in the Bolu valley, located at about a three hour drive east of Istanbul in Turkey.From their own parent stock they currently produce about 65 million hatching eggs per year and this year they are even planning to expand up to 85 million hatching eggs. A part of the day old chicks they produce, are grown by themselves and for that reason they recently installed Bromaxx cages of Jansen in two newly built houses. Why they decided to do so? “A colleague producer and friend is using the system already and he told us about his positive experiences”, says Ömür Oral.

Onur and Ömür Oral from Turkey: “In a broiler cage system, we grow birds of a better quality at lower cost”.

“We believed that indeed it would be a profitable system. Moreover, it was the only solution in the mountainous area where we are located, to build a high capacity operation at a place where only limited suitable land is available. As a result, we invested a total amount of 1.6 million USD in two houses with a capacity of 79,200 birds each. We have chosen to build four-tier cages to fully benefit from the system. In total we have 660 compartments for 120 birds in each house. During the wintertime temperature goes down to 15 centigrade below zero in this area. For sure we will make enormous savings on the cost of energy then. During the summertime, it will be the other way around since we will then be able to use less energy per bird for cooling the houses. Moreover it is cost saving from a labour point of view.
Compared to our floor housing systems, we can manage more birds with even less workers. And not just that: we have no cost for litter and litter removal”.

Strict on biosecurity
Of course such a system with a very high bird density demands proper management and excellent climate control systems. And because of the high bird density, we must also be very strict on the biosecurity measures. We are running the second round now and we have experienced the benefits already after the first round. This time we have put 94,000 birds in each house, but we will take out 24 of each compartment after 30 days. These will be sold on the domestic market, since during the summertime there is an increased demand for whole birds of a lower weight. From that moment there will be enough space in the cages again to keep them up to the full slaughter weight of 2.4-2.5 kilograms.”