Royal Pas Reform improving vaccination, animal welfare, nutrition
Royal Pas Reform's Erwin Prinzen spoke to The Poultry Site about global industry trends
11 July 2022
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Improving environmental and health protocols for hatchlings and helping hatchery managers operate high-performing hatcheries are top goals the Royal Pas Reform personnel displayed during IPPE 2022. Erwin Prinzen, product and sales director, shared the reasoning with The Poultry Site’s Sarah Mikesell during the show.
“Basically, we see three major trends in the industry,” said Prinzen. "One is the trend toward more vaccinations inside the hatcheries, especially on the in ovo side."
Royal Pas Reform has invented the SmartVac hatchery automation system for in ovo vaccination and nutrition. It’s a system which injects 100 percent in the amniotic fluid and is a revolutionary system.
“The second trend we see is the trend towards more and more attention to early feeding, basically from an animal welfare perspective. We also have the SmartStart system, which is a system with feed and water available at the time of hatch for each chick. So, when they hatch, they immediately have access to feed and water with great results and reductions in first-week mortality, for example, which is a typical indicator of animal welfare, as well.”
Prinzen identified the third trend as the need for more data to support hatchery managers so they can optimize their hatchery performance.
“That requires more sensing in our hatches and our setup of machinery, in general,” he added. “This information then is converted into dashboards so we can support our hatchery managers even further. One of the examples is a new trolley which measures the eggshell temperature and weight of all the eggs. So, we can also make a good indication of the weight loss over time of the eggs.
“So, we see on one hand, more on the hygiene and vaccine side with the SmartVac system, the trend in animal welfare with early feeding,” said Prinzen. “Finally, we also see the trend toward more sensing, data collection and reporting to support hatchery managers and improve their results.”
Similar trends are evident worldwide, said Prinzen, though it varies by region. For example, in ovo vaccination is common in the US but is just getting started in Europe. From an animal welfare perspective, he said a lot of western European customers are incorporating early feeding, but other regions are more interested in it because of the performance results. The same holds true for data generation. It may be a stretch for some hatcheries while others are gathering more information as time goes along.
“It’s easy to gather data. But I think with our over 100 years of being an integrated supplier – we supply incubators, automation, climate control and we are able to gather all data and combine it into real information for the hatchery,” said Prinzen. “To confer that information requires a lot of knowledge and experience. I think within Pas Reform, we have the perfect combination of people, history and knowledge to make that happen.”
Prinzen said Pas Reform doesn’t intend to send all kinds of data to customers and tell them to “look at what they can do with it."
“We want to go steps further and give advice and even in the future, automate the response of our machinery to this advice instead of giving just verbal advice to hatchery managers, but connecting machinery in real time to the data and go into the route of more autonomous operation of the machinery,” said Prinzen.
