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The Rural Voice, 1980-02, Page 8is easy to remove. The eggs are gathered once a day by the Cartwrights and their two teenagers, Carol and Neil, every afternoon before supper. That's a seven day a week ritual, since Marjorie Cartwright said, "the hens don't know it's Sunday." The barns are completely environmentally controlled with fans, lights and water. When the hen lays an egg, it rolls out of the cage and onto a plastic conveyor belt that takes it down to the egg collecting racks at the end of the row. Although the Cartwrights grow corn, they prefer to buy their feed ready -mixed from the mill and part of their system includes an automatic feeder which moves down the rows of cages. After the eggs are gathered, they're stored in a refrigerated unit until picked up twice a week for a Strathroy egg -grading stat ion. The Cartwrights said predators like skunks and foxes, once the headache of many egg producers, are no longer a problem. However, to prevent any problem with rats or mice in the layer barns, they keep cats in the barn. The cats are put in when the hens are, don't interfere with the birds and patrol up and down the alleys to keep pests under control. Researchers suggest that producers with flocks of up to 10,000 hens should use three cats and larger operations might raise the number to five cats. Cats should be kept active, and so the numbers should be kept down if they're going to be effective. The Cartwrights are now operating at 90 per cent production efficiency in their one barn, and the hens in the second barn are just starting to lay. This is Marjorie Cartwright's second year as a committeeman and she continues a tradition started by her husband of representing county producers on the Ontario Egg Producers Marketing Board. Frank Vanhevel of R.R.1, Bornholm, who now has a flock of 9,000 laying hens in his barn, started in the business in a smaller way. He began in 1960 with 500 , hens, an operation he ran while working part-time off the farm. Ms. Vanhevel decided he wanted farming to be his fulltime operation, so started by making a deal with Stacey Bros. in Mitchell to buy his eggs for five cents a dozen. From there, he gradually added to his farming operation, building the present barn in 1963. He chose egg production partly because his parents had chickens before they emmigrated to Canada, and also because he had worked for an egg -grading station and thought he'd like the business. Today, the farmer combines his egg operation with cash crop farming and grows wheat, corn, white beans and soybeans. Mr. Vanhevel is a committee- man on both the Ontario Egg Producers' Marketing Board and on the Perth County White Bean Producers' Board. Although the egg operator started to install automated equipment in his barn about six years ago, he stepped up the procedure last year. He started by insulating his barn with urethane. Then he made a switch in his method of housing the birds. Mr. Vanhevel now uses the new reverse cages, which are 12 inches deep and 16 inches wide, instead of 16 inches deep and 12 inches wide, the style of older steel cages. One major reason the egg producer decided to switch was that the older cages just weren't adaptable for the egg belts he wanted to use to increase automation in the barn. Mr. Vanhevel is assiste 'd in his operation by his son and daughter who collect and clean the eggs every day after school. They now collect approximately 5800 eggs a day, which are readied for shipment to C.B. White and Son in Burlington. Mr. Vanhevel also keeps some of his eggs for sales at the door. The codfish lays ten thousand eggs, The homely hen lays one. The codfish never cackles To tell you what she's done. And so we scorn the codfish, While the humble hen we prize, Which only goes to show you That it pays to advertise. PO. a THE RURAL VOICE/FEBRUARY 1980 Mr. Vanhevel believes the greatest problem right now in the egg business faces the young farmer who wants to get intoegg production. He said, "For a young fella to buy a farm or quota is just about impossible at today's prices." For the existing operator, "paper quota" can be purchased apart from the farm for the first time. Now a farmer can buy 10 per cent of his basic quota from the marketing board when another producer retires or decides to reduce the size of his operation. Also, producers can lease quota for up to two years from fellow producers. Gerald (Gerry) Heyink, whose distinctive gold barns are an eye-catching sight on Hwy. #4, just north of Hensall, is a relative newcomer to the egg business. In 1977 he sold the farm he'd owned near Blyth for 18 years •where he was fattening hogs and raising heifers -and bought the county's largest egg operation. Mr. Heyink said the reason he made the change was that he wanted "a more steady summer and winter job" for himself and his eldest son, Bill. Now the Heyinks have a quota of roughly 31,000 birds and raise 20,000 pullets annually as well. During the week Gerry, his wife Jenny and Bill collect the eggs in the morning, and the two younger sons, Raymond and Allan, help with the day's other two collections. Gerry Heyink has gone to the three times-aday collection since it guarantees the eggs will be fresh when they go in the cooler and results in fewer cracked eggs. The egg producer now sells his crop to two different companies, who pick the eggs up twice a week, and he m akes sure eggs from both barns go to both companies. This way, Gerry Heyink can compare the gradings from the two companies and discover who is paying the most for his product. In the three years he's been in the egg business, Mr. Heyink has already switched the companies he deals with after using the pride comparison test. Mr. Heyink said the gradings are also a good indicator of conditions in the poultry barns and whether the feed is getting the optimum results. The producer changes his hens every 12 months now -one barn in the spring and the other one in the fall. The pullets the family raise as replace- ments are housed in a four -storey barn where they're raised on the floor, rather than in cages. Gerry Heyink thinks it's cheaper to operate this way, at least in a case like his where the barn was already available on the farm. The producer adds the reason he and his son raise their own pullets is to ensure they'll get good producing hens -this way they know where the birds come from and that they've been vaccinated against disease at the right time. Inside the two laying barns, one of which is a two-storey structure, the hens are housed in flat deck steel cages, with four birds to the cage. Again, the barns are fully automated -from the pit scrapers on cables that clean out the manure to the egg gathering belt. Unlike many producers who purchase pellets from the feed mill, the Heyinks buy grain from area farmers and mix their own feed in a mix or stationery mill beside the barns. The feed takes the form of mash, which Gerry Hyink is convinced is better for both the pullets and laying hens. The mill has only been in place for a year, lint Mr. Heyink thinks it has already saved them money, as well as allowing them to keep tight tabs on the kind of feed they're giving their birds. Gerry Heyink said he's found the hens "get bored with the pellets, and just like kids, then they .get in trouble." To date, the Heyinks don't have any regrets about their change from hog farming to operate a poultry farm. As Jenny Heyink says, looking after all those hens certainly "is not a boring job."