The two tier free range house of the family van Heerikhuize

On 1 July Mr. J van Heerikhuize can call himself the proud owner of a modern free range house completly ready for the future.

There was an absolute need. The farm also has 140 dairy cows and 1000 pigs and there are two sons ready and willing to continue with the farm. The two sons Jan and Arie are very willing to continue the family company. Because there are two successors the family had to look for expanding possibility's. The dairy cows and the pigs where no sufficient enough for the two sons.

The choice for poultry came in the first place from the lady of the house. Mrs van Heerikhuize comes from a poultry family and had already said several times: ?We should build a poultry house?. The youngest sons also had a good feeling with this idea. He had done several apprentices at poultry farms

2 Years ago the initial preparations started. There were enough possibility?s within the rural destination plan and also the necessarily licence were easy to get. The possibility’s for contracts with egg distributors were good so there were no causes for doubt.

Several different farms were visited in the following period. Very soon it was obvious that it wasnt going to be a aviary system. “That’s not our poultry house, we don’t have the right feeling with it”. Mr. van Heerikhuize said. This reduced the possibility’s to the traditional systems. But what’s traditional. In order to get a sufficient number of birds the two tier system came in the picture.

The next thing to do is looking for the right supplier. Only two suppliers have made an offer. Jansen Poultry Equipment has always had a good name in this area. But what was most important to the family was that the system would be durable and solid. And just that is what made the difference.

The farm house of 22 by 100 meter has an winter garden of tree meter on both sides. On the two tiers are two rows of XXL nests in  a Comfort 3 lay-out with 1,5 meter manure belt on top of t5he nests. In front of the nests there is a 2,4 meter slatted area with underneath manure belts. 50.000 Birds are housed in total.

The transport of the eggs to the central egg room is done with the Jansen Poultry Equipment Flex-belt. The Moba 70 egg packer can be easily supplied with this transport belt.

The planning of the building period was very tight and well organized. The perfect work planning of Jansen Poultry Equipment and the good preparation of the mechanic of Jansen took care of it that the night shift could continue each night with out delay.

The family had heard a lot of story?s about all the things that can go wrong when the birds come first in the house. None of them proved to be true. The good support of Verbeek Hatchery’s and absolute perfect reared chickens by Mr. van de Top from Voorthuizen resulted in a very good start. The birds are 29 weeks now and are producing over the 95 %.

In the first weeks the family has done everything that is possible to keep the percentage floor eggs as low as possible. This absolutely pays, the more time you spent in the beginning the more benefit you have during the peak of production.  This meant that the family planned 6 rounds through the house during the morning. Because of this they still collect less then 500 floor eggs. The birds are now in full production and the percentage floor eggs is definitely below the 1 %.

At a certain moment there were some problems with bronchitis. This resulted in a miner lift in the number of floor eggs. By keeping the nests open a bit longer the problem was soon resolved. Problems with nest polluting did not occur during this time.

The house wouldn’t have been much different if the family had to do it all over again. This is the farm house for the family van Heerikhuize. Mr van Heerikhuize also has a tip for his colleague poultry farmers: Choose for reliability and service. When an investment of such kind for the long term is made, it is nice to know that the supplier will back you up when you make an appeal on them.

Do you want to know more about this system or the possibility?s that Jansen Poultry Equipment can offer? Get in contact with our poultry specialists.