The Rural Voice, 1999-12, Page 12B.J.
BEAR
GRAIN CO. LTD.
WET BREWERS
GRAIN
can help your
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GRAIN CO. LTD.
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(519) 669-1750
All of as here
wish you and yours
a wonderful holiday season
"Our experience
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99 YEARS' EXPERIENCE
Member of Canadian
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• Farm
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DAVIDSON
WELL DRILLING LTD.
WINGHAM
Serving Ontario Since 1900
519-357-1960 WINGHAM
519-664-1424 WATERLOO
8 THE RURAL VOICE
Scrap Book
Drawer system coming for poultry trucks
Coming soon to a poultry barn near
you: chicken in a drawer. A new
modular crate system to assist easier
catching and transportation of poultry
will likely soon be instituted by
Ontario processors,
Gerry Connor of
Meyn Food Equip-
ment Inc. told the
Poultry Producer
Update in Seaforth,
October 28.
Connor, whose
company sells the
systems, says there
are already four processors in western
Canada that use the system. account-
ing for nearly all western production.
There has been interest with Ontario
processors and probably they'll be
instituting it in the spring of next year,
he suggested.
The modular drawer loading sys-
tem is much more than just a different
way to handle poultry crates at the
barn: it's an entirely new automated
system from barn to killing floor.,
At the barn level, modules of
crates, four or five high, (24-36 in all)
are taken right into the barn with a
fork lift (in western Canada two-story
barns have used a temporary track
system installed on the second floor to
move the modules). In the drawer
system, the bottom of each drawer
forms the top of the drawer below.
The top drawer is loaded first. When
open, the drawer provides more room
for inserting the chickens, meaning
less chance of injury.
Once loaded, the module is taken
to the truck on the fork lift.
At the plant, a fork lift unloads the
modules and places them in an
automated system
that pushes each
drawer into a
conveyor system that
delivers the drawer
right to the killing
line. Because the
birds are kept in a
light -controlled
environment through-
out the journey, they arrive calm.
It takes only one forklift operator
and five hangers to handle 7,500 birds
per hour. It costs about $1.5 million to
install the system. The hold up for
some companies adopting the system
is that all the trucks will have to be
altered, Connor said.
Connor also showed a videotape of
the next step in the automation of
chicken -catching: a chicken catching
machine. One company in Minnesota
has recently purchased two of the
units, he said.
Looking a little like a small
combine, the machine goes up and •
down the barn scooping up chickens
(guided by rubber fingers) onto a
conveyor that drops them gently into a
holding bin. Once the bin is full the
machine goes to an unloading area
where the chickens are dumped into a
second machine that automatically
fills the drawer modules.0
The drawer units go right
into the barn.
Biotech plants may give cattle vaccines
Plants are poised to help give cattle low -stress and painless protection from
respiratory disease through an oral vaccine concept being developed by
University of Guelph researchers.
Plant molecular geneticist Judith Strommer is working with colleagues
microbiologist Reggie Lo and immunologist Patricia Shewen to create a
genetically altered alfalfa line with a bacterial gene from Pasturella haemolytica,
the major disease causing pathogen in cattle. This new line is capable of
producing natural bacterial antigens that, it is hoped, will stimulate immunity to
P. haemolytica. Cattle losses to respiratory disease currently cost millions of
dollars each year in North America.
By moving the gene for P. haemolytica into a different sort of bacteria, one
naturally capable of transferring genes to plants, the researchers are able to
produce plants that contain the bacterial protein. If the protein induces an
immune response in cattle fed on the alfalfa, it should be able to serve as an oral
vaccine, protecting cattle from disease caused by the growth of P. haemolytica.0
— Source: University of Guelph Research Magazine