Elizabeth Doughman, editor, WATT PoultryUSA and Poultry Future: Hello and welcome to WATT Poultry Chat. I'm Elizabeth Doughman, the editor of WATT PoultryUSA and Poultry Future.
Today’s Watt Poultry Chat is brought to you by Zoetis. Attention to the details of cleanliness at the hatchery is important to the health, development and productivity of chickens. During incubation, chicks experience significant growth and development. And even though they’re seemingly protected within the egg, the cleanliness of the hatchery can have a significant impact on them.
Joining us today to discuss opportunities to improve sanitation in the hatchery is Dr. Josh Deines, Ph.D., technical service device lead at Zoetis.
Thanks for joining us, Josh.
Why are good hatchery sanitation practices so important?
Deines: Good sanitation practices are important across all aspects of animal health and all pieces of production, but the hatchery is just such a critical space, in general, because of all the key processes that happen there and that's really where our chicks get their start. Having good sanitation is even more important in this space.
If you think about the broiler and how long they're on feed and alive before processing – and then you include their time as an embryo – they’re spending about one-third of their productive life in the hatchery, just developing as an embryo, as you mentioned in the introduction. So, it's really an important space.
The hatchery is judged on a lot of things, and it is always under a lot of pressure to achieve high hatchability. When they receive their eggs, the potential for them is somewhat already given. Those eggs are either fertilized or they're not, and their genetic potential has already been determined by their parent stock.
For a hatchery to achieve the maximum hatch, they should have good sanitation in place to avoid contamination of eggs, and then also to have the best processes in place that I mentioned, like vaccination is a huge thing that occurs to the hatchery. In trying to maximize hatch, we're trying to eliminate and reduce all of the risk that could be given to that chick.
Not only are we trying to maximize the hatch, but additionally, once the chicks hatch, we want to have good quality chicks or poults that are going to the field.
The cleanliness and sanitation programs that are in place directly influence both of those things, the hatchability and the quality of chick going out the door.
Doughman: What are some of the opportunities for hatcheries to impact sanitation or cleanliness of their facilities?
Deines: There's a lot of things that people can do. I'd say the first is to just have a program in place for sanitation. A lot of hatcheries already have one and, for those hatcheries, I think a periodical review of that program is important.
For the hatcheries that don't have a program, it should be something that's consistent and measurable in place that they just know for a fact is happening on a reoccurring basis. In order for that to happen, there has to be some kind of monitoring, with a focus on the areas that are most likely to impact the hatchability or the health of the chick. I know we're all struggling with labor opportunities, and you know, have got to all this cleaning, all these programs.
Instead of just forgetting about it and saying it's something not critical, do something. Put together a program. Prioritize on the places that are most likely to have an impact. Then follow up and monitor.
One way you can do that – whether you're creating a new program or you're reviewing or revitalizing your current sanitation program – is to think about the egg in your hatchery and the all the processes it goes through. Just follow it through and say, ‘okay, what are the critical processes or steps or pieces of equipment or people in that time or space? And how can we do a better job here?’
For example, starting in the egg room. The egg room is where the eggs are first getting to the hatchery so they might be coming in with a microbial load from the farm. There might be eggs that are accidentally broken and then creating organic matter in that space.
That environment should be very clean. That's a good place to watch for, ‘alright, when we're cleaning it, are we making sure we're not spraying on the eggs?’ That's one thing that should be reminded to the crew who's unloading that maybe isn't familiar with microbiology. When we're spraying and washing those buggies, try to do it at a time when the egg room is the most empty or move them out of the way to avoid the splattering.
Another example would be going to the vaccine room. This is a great place to take microbial plates, but that space shouldn't be shared with other people in a lot of cross traffic. It's a very specialized room and it should be very clean. That can be part of your program as well.
I guess another example would be the vaccine administration areas. Whether it's an in ovo vaccination in the hallway or a dedicated transfer room and spray vaccination, look at the equipment. Have some sort of program in place for how to clean and maintain that equipment. Vendors and suppliers are always willing to supply that so when you're creating a program, partner up with them.
For example, at Zoetis and our in ovo vaccination equipment, we can provide you with all of the protocols, the steps, training, videos and monitoring programs to teach you how should that equipment be cleaned and what does a monitoring process look like.
If you're at the management level, you're not directly working with that device, don't be scared to walk by it and take a deeper dive. If it just looks clean at the surface level, that doesn't always mean that it's really clean and things were put away correctly. Get in and look at the details.
That goes for all equipment, not just the vaccination. Hatch baskets, for example, that's the first real external environment that that chick is exposed to after coming out of the egg. If their navels are wet, they're still sealing up. And if they're exposed to a hatch basket that has bad pathogenic bacteria on there, that could be bad news for chick health later down the road and chick quality.
Hatch baskets are another great place to focus. How well they're cleaned is determined by the basket, the tray washer, and so there's, there's a lot of rules of thumb. A couple easy ones to put on a program is making sure that that wash temperature gets to at least 140 F. That will help the chemicals be more effective. It will kill more bacteria, and it's not so hot that it's as hard on the baskets and the plastics.
The final location for following the egg flow that's often overlooked, because it kind of overlaps the whole facility, is the ventilation and HVAC. That air that's being recirculated through the hatchery is often a source of contamination.
When we think about where our contaminants can come from, t's either going to come from the water, the people, the air or the eggs coming in. If we're looking at those four entrances, we're going to be a lot more successful.
Like with HVAC, you know that there are filters that should be on a reoccurring change out program. How often they're changed is determined by where they're at, type of filter, etc. But, for example, in the hatch hallway, those filters should probably be changed after every hatch because there's so much down that is accumulating on those and we don't want our fungals, especially, to build up and be circulating in the hatchers.
Doughman: How can hatcheries evaluate and monitor sanitation?
Deines: Good question. With having a good program, monitoring is what's going to tell us is that program effective and where we should be.
A lot of it is just putting in the elbow grease. A lot of times people want the silver bullet for a chemical to eliminate out all their problems. And that's not always the case. Sometimes, it's just a matter of elbow grease and doing it and then verifying with the monitoring program.
There are a few ways to do that, but one is have a plating program; looking for what are the microbial challenges currently in place in my facility, and then, when I introduce my sanitation program, is that being reduced? Am I moving the needle and making an improvement? You've got a couple things there. One, what is my baseline? And two, how can I improve that? Earlier we talked about focusing on those priority areas, and I'll say the same thing is true here.
For plating the floor in some high traffic rooms, it's always going to be dirty. What does that mean for chick health? Well, probably nothing, depending on the type of bacteria or pathogen you're discovering there, but some places, like our vaccination equipment, hatch baskets, our vaccine mixing room or lab, have a higher likelihood of either positive or negatively impacting hatch and chick health. So those are places to monitor.
A plating program won't tell you everything, but in areas that you know you want to be really clean; it can give you pretty much a yes or no answer on is it clean or not? That plating program might be daunting to some who don’t not understand how to do it. There's a lot of good templates or examples out there that, again, your vendors are happy to help with. Our sanitation and chemical vendors and providers do a lot of this.
We're always concerned about animal health, especially as it pertains to vaccination and hatchery. We do conduct full facility wide – we call them environmental surveys – that look at the microbial challenge and assess the sanitation program. There's really two components to that. What is my bacterial challenge at risk, and what is my fungal mold challenge and risk? We can separate those two things out with weighted equation to give you a standardized result so you could track it over time, or compare yourself against your partner hatcheries, and we can help train to that.
Aside from having a third party come in – which is a great place to learn, to get a double check, to do a deep dive – monitoring is most effective when it's done at the individual level on a reoccurring basis. With those results, it's really important to actually review them. It's one thing to take the samples, to get the data, put it on a piece of paper, but to really make a difference, they have to be reviewed, and then make decisions off of those. In a place that should be a zero count for bacteria and you have a lot of colonies, that should be a good feedback that it's either not happening, you know, the elbow grease component, or there's another introduction to contaminant that I'm not aware of. So going back and walking through and following the path of the case with those results in hand is the best way to move the needle.
Doughman: Thank you so much for sharing these insights. For more information on the solutions discussed here today, visit Zoetis at www.zoetisus.com/poultry.
Thanks again, Josh, and thanks to you for tuning in.
