The 2015 Ross® Asia Training Seminar, recently held in Bangkok, attracted 45 key managers, representing 19 customer companies from 11 countries in the Asia region.
The agenda was designed to mix classroom presentations, on-farm demonstration and troubleshooting, and an interactive group training exercise on brooding to attract and optimize customer participation and interest.
Presentations covered a number of topics including a Ross 308 broiler performance update in Asia, broiler management strategies to maximize performance and economic return, broiler gut health assessment, optimizing ventilation for chick performance, preprocessing handling to reduce downgrades, broiler health and effective vaccination and a broiler performance checklist to complete the agenda.
The farm visit was focused on an in-depth ventilation exercise led by consultant Bernard Green to determine the critical control points and troubleshoot problems to optimize the environmental conditions required for good chick performance. This was followed with a hands-on demonstration and dissection by an Aviagen® Specialist Dr. Richard Bailey, who pointed out what to look for in the gut to determine good health status of the chicks.
On the last day an interactive session was initiated to engage several small groups to set-up a brooding area for 1,000 day-old chicks and test their knowledge and awareness of what is required to enable chicks to get off to good start over the first seven days.
The agenda was carefully selected to achieve the seminar objective -- bring poultry managers together, exchange ideas and update them with the latest information in order to maximize the performance of their Ross broilers when they return to their production facilities throughout the region.
“The most valuable content for me was the 'real' experience on the farm,” says Dr. Hiyori Kinoshita, Nippon Chunky, Japan.“I'll take the information back to our customers. I believe it is useful and helpful to improve broiler performance in our country.”
Greg Hitt, Ross service manager, Asia said, “The practical sessions helped reinforce many of the academic lessons provided throughout the seminar as well as allowing a good opportunity for customers to talk and share their own experiences. Hopefully each attendee will return to their company and apply their knowledge to help solve a problem or drive further improvements in product performance.”
“It was a very pleasant time to share lots of experience and knowledge from the field. I am happy to see that the participants were interested in learning more about continuing to improve the Ross broiler performance throughout Asia,” says Dr. Changhee Lee, Ross service manager, Asia.
