INNOVATION IN THE POULTRY INDUSTRY.

John Jewson, a poultry farmer in East Anglia, UK, has a farm surrounded by houses on three sides and has had to tread a careful line between running his business and keeping his neighbors happy. While the family farm has reared various species over its history, Jewson has found that poultry farming is now the answer. At Poplars Farm, near Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, Jewson has three sheds and approximately four acres, from which he runs a commercial pullet replacement operation, taking in free-range chicks and rearing them to point of lay. "It is a very niche operation,” said Jewson. “This is realistically the only kind of farming that can fit onto a site like this.”(urban farming). He has found modern improvements in farming methods have made running the farm easier. “It’s all automatic feed lines now. One great development in the last few years has been the increasing use of modules for moving the chickens round,” Jewson said. “That’s been an investment that has really paid off. It’s very welfare friendly for the chickens and makes life a lot easier for the catchers.” The most recent investment on the farm has been a solar power system, which cut his electricity bills by 50 percent. The 50 kilowatt ground-mounted system occupies a small parcel of land next to the chicken sheds and in daylight conditions turns the farm into a completely green operation with power left over to export to the grid. The panels were installed by EvoEnergy, one of the country’s largest solar power companies. “They are actually doing better than we expected, producing approximately 20 percent more electricity than anticipated,” said Jewson. “On a typical day, we are using approximately 12 kilowatts of power, and the panels are producing approximately 40 to 48 kilowatts.” Under the feed-in tariff scheme, designed to encourage businesses and homeowners to produce more green electricity, Jewson is paid for all of the electricity he produces, whether he uses it or not. He is also paid for exporting power to the national grid.see more “The scheme lasts for 25 years, and I often joke that this is my pension, because it will be generating money as well as electricity long after I’ve retired,” said Jewson. Jewson decided to go for a ground-mounted system rather than put the panels on the roofs of his sheds, because he was worried about adding extra loads onto the roofs. He also felt the dust from the ventilation system might settle on the panels.