Day 103 - 14 Mar 95 - Page 12
1
2 Q. So what were the differences that would account for some
3 sheds dying and some not?
4 A. This particular incident I can think of, the mortality
5 varied from house to house for reasons that we are not
6 entirely sure. But, obviously, it has to do with air
7 circulation, pockets of humidity and the age of the birds
8 at the time. There is no obvious explanation.
9
10 Q. When you say the age of birds, that is because of the size
11 of the birds, is it?
12 A. Yes.
13
14 Q. The more densely they are packed in, the less the air is
15 going to circulate around them?
16 A. That is possible. You could say that but, in fact, we
17 had heat stress mortality at different stocking densities.
18
19 Q. Was it greater at the greater stocking densities?
20 A. No, not necessarily.
21
22 Q. How different was the stocking densities you are talking
23 about?
24 A. I cannot remember ---
25
26 Q. You do not know?
27 A. -- the particular case.
28
29 Q. So it could have just been a slight difference?
30 A. Yes.
31
32 Q. When you had the serious problem with Gumboro disease, what
33 was the level of losses?
34 A. The average loss across the company was a mortality of
35 two-and-a-half per cent on an annualised basis.
36
37 Q. That is an increase on the normal mortality rate?
38 A. That was over and above the normal mortality.
39
40 Q. When you say "annualised" basis?
41 A. Well, that is -----
42
43 Q. You get three crops in a -- no, sorry, more than that. How
44 many crops of chickens in a year?
45 A. About five crops, so the way that -- the reason why
46 I quote the figure like that is because that is an average
47 across all farms. Some farms, in fact, lost up to 20 per
48 cent of birds from Gumboro disease, other farms lost
49 nothing, and two-and-a-half per cent was the average across
50 all farms over that period of a year.
51
52 Q. It went on for three years though, did it not?
53 A. Yes.
54
55 Q. At severe levels?
56 A. As I said yesterday, it gradually reduced each year.
57
58 Q. Would you agree that broiler houses provide the ideal
59 conditions for the rapid spread of viral diseases like
60 Gumboro?
