Look around you, companies of all scales and from different industries are reshaping at a rapid pace. Thanks to the wide variety of digital innovations, new tools are constantly being developed and released to the market. These tools are adopted by organizations worldwide seeking to facilitate measurement and data-driven decision-making for optimizing process efficiency and maximizing productivity.
The same is happening in the global agriculture industry and the poultry production sector, that are evolving quickly to meet the needs of the growing world population. The subsequent increasing demand for poultry protein is driving poultry farm managers and veterinarians to look for new ways of coping with the tremendous challenge of supplying quality poultry products at affordable prices. Some estimates suggest that the demand for global poultry meat is likely to double in 2050 in comparison to 2005, whereas a 40% increase in chicken egg consumption is also anticipated. Furthermore, the diminishing of agriculture resources and increasing costs of production are likely to influence the profitability of the entire poultry industry. In these challenging scenarios, poultry veterinarians and farm managers are expected to enhance productivity through the early detection, prediction, and prevention of diseases.
When it comes to poultry production, the margin of error is usually very small. A one-time biosecurity breach or an unsatisfactory outcome of a vaccination event can expose the entire flock to pathogens and leave them susceptible to disease outbreak, resulting in morbidity and mortality. Therefore, farm managers and veterinarians must adopt an agile approach to flock management by implementing new tools for risk analysis and taking prompt action. Luckily, informatization can effectively increase the productivity and management efficiency of decision makers on poultry farms. Due to intensive poultry farming, decision makers in the poultry industry are beginning to adopt more and more automation technologies to help them ensure optimal growing conditions for their flocks. Generally, the use of digital technology at the farm level has been mainly focused on disease detection, feed intake measurement, and environmental condition monitoring inside poultry houses. These have led to the development of new approach in the industry referred to as Precision Livestock Farming (PLF). This approach introduces new principles such as the utilization of sensory technologies to enhance real-time decision-making based on data outputs. For example, by harnessing the advantages of big data in the poultry production process, researchers can successfully predict the risk assessment of avian influenza.
Evaluating the importance of vaccination against disease in flocks and how the vaccination process can be enhanced by using new technologies available on the market is inevitable in this age. It is commonly agreed that vaccination is a key step in the poultry production chain to ensure optimal flock health and productivity. Vaccination is usually an expensive, laborious, and time-consuming process; therefore, it requires special attention to achieve a satisfactory outcome. The success of a flock vaccination event is majorly influenced by the proper administration of vaccination in every injection. Since vaccine failure has dual implications, including increased production costs and elevated risk of disease outbreak, it should be meticulously monitored. One of the major causes for inadequate antibody titers in flocks, as seen in post-vaccination serology tests, is due to human errors performed during the vaccination process. The tough environmental conditions and the laborious process of manually injecting large flocks in short periods of time has its tall on the accuracy of the entire process. Operators get worn out quickly and can accidentally administer incomplete injections, not ensure the correct vaccine temperature, forget to replace the needle frequently, continue injecting from an empty vaccine bottle, inject in the wrong injection site and more – all these can lead to inadequate antibody titer development that fails to provide complete protection from diseases.
This leads us to the conclusion that optimization of the poultry vaccination process is vital to ensure its success and safeguard flocks. Using an automized vaccination system such as pHi-Tech not only provides real-time alerts for injection application errors but also collects data during the entire process. Managers have access to comprehensive analytical reports and dashboards, providing them valuable insights from the vaccination process, without having to be there in person and closely monitor each operator. Decision makers are given the ability, for the first time, to review, analyze and derive actionable measures for optimizing the vaccination process and overall farm productivity by using the pHi-Tech vaccination system.
Remember – a vaccine is only as effective as the accuracy of its administration. Ensure your flock is immune by using pHi-Tech to ensure proper vaccine application in every shot.