Day 090 - 16 Feb 95 - Page 51
1 farm, I apologise. What I mean is that a farm is usually
2 depopulated over no more than two days. The first house to
3 be cleared of birds, the cleaning crew would immediately go
4 in and take out the environment/index.html">litter and then they would move on to
5 the next house taking out the environment/index.html">litter. Meanwhile, another
6 crew would start washing down the first house and then that
7 crew would move on to the second house to do the
8 wash-down.
9
10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I get the picture now. If you have each unit
11 in series being empty for at least five days, even though
12 if there are a number of units you might start filling the
13 first one before you finish with your lay period on the
14 last one, there will be a period in that 10 days where the
15 whole farm is quiet for five?
16 A. That is correct, yes.
17
18 Q. Even if you have only got a small number of units you still
19 stick to those periods?
20 A. That is correct, yes.
21
22 Q. If you had a lot of men working quickly through a large
23 number of units you would still stick to those figures,
24 would you?
25 A. That is correct. Obviously it is much easier with the
26 smaller farms. With a smaller number of units you can
27 actually leave the houses empty for longer, or the farm
28 empty for longer, which has a great benefit from a hygiene
29 point of view.
30
31 Q. In the 50s I recall a practice grew up that some people to
32 add to their income if their back garden was big enough or
33 they had a paddock, they might build a broiler unit and
34 contract themselves to someone or other and do a bit of
35 work before they went off to the office and a bit when they
36 got back and so on. Is that a practice which still
37 prevails and, if not, when did it come to an end? Am
38 I right in my recollection?
39 A. You are absolutely right. This was a very common
40 practice. We do still have a small number of these units
41 on contract to Sun Valley. That would be an example of the
42 one house unit or one farm unit that I referred to
43 yesterday. That practice is less and less common now
44 because the standards of management required and the size
45 of the unit required to make it economic in this day and
46 age really mean that the house has to be bigger, the unit
47 size has to be bigger and the farm really has to be bigger
48 to be a truly economic proposition. It is less common now
49 for people just to have broilers as a very subsidiary
50 enterprise.
51
52 Q. But you do not have people going off to the office for
53 eight to 10 hours in the middle of the day and no one
54 looking after broiler house?
55 A. No, it is not just not possible to manage chickens like
56 that nowadays. They do require much more care and
57 attention, it seems, than 30 years ago.
58
59 MS. STEEL: When the sheds are depopulated are the birds
60 actually counted when they go for slaughter?
