Students came together in Budapest for week-long hatchery module

The event was designed by Aviagen’s global hatchery support team to teach attendees what environmental conditions a developing embryo needs during incubation, and how to identify if a hatchery can meet them. It also provided students with the right tools and skill set for obtaining optimum performance and economic returns in the hatchery.

Thirteen tutors representing Aviagen, as well as leading external industry specialists, covered a different element of hatchery management each day, including “Fertility and Hatching Egg Care,” “The Science of Incubation,” “Delivering Incubation Conditions,” “Biosecurity” and “Problem Solving.” The final session of the course saw the students presented with a dossier of information covering a real live hatch failure. Using the information from the course, they had to work out what had gone wrong and suggest what changes needed to be made in the hatchery to prevent the problem from happening again.

Aviagen’s global hatchery support team is responsible for making sure the best possible incubation and hatchery management advice is offered to Aviagen customers around the world. The latest module offered a chance for students to meet the team’s two newest members, Ampai Nangsuay and Aline Ferreira. Ampai joined Aviagen at the end of last year as a hatchery technical service manager based in Asia. Aline became a part of the hatchery support team in November as an incubation specialist and has since taken on responsibility for the incubation trials in the U.S., as well as customer and internal support in the Americas. You can learn more about the growing team and how it assists customers here.

Dinah Nicholson, school director and global manager, hatchery development and support at Aviagen, said, “This was another hugely successful module for the EMEA School and we were thrilled to welcome so many attendees from across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The students were offered the opportunity to meet and exchange experiences with each other, as well as leading specialists in poultry incubation. It is always our aim to provide courses that strike a balance between classroom learning, problem-solving exercises and practical demonstrations, and the feedback we’ve received from students so far has been fantastic.”

Berk Aras, production supervisor for CPF Turkey, attended and commented, “I was particularly interested in learning about optimizing chick quality, improving economic benefits and hygiene management. The wealth of information available throughout the week was excellent and a real benefit for me is that I can now put my learning in to practice immediately to help improve my company’s economic performance.”

Bob Yamagani, president of Fukuda Breeders Co. Ltd. in Japan, added, “The range of experts available to learn from was very impressive. I am planning to build a new hatchery with single-stage incubators so their advice and knowledge on the planning process was hugely beneficial to me.”

About Aviagen
Since 1923, Aviagen® has established itself as the world's leading poultry breeding company, developing pedigree lines for the production of commercial broiler chickens under the Arbor Acres®, Indian River®, and Ross® brand names. The Rowan Range® and Specialty Males® are specialty breeding stock from Aviagen that offer greater flexibility for customers to meet specific or niche market requirements. The company is based in Huntsville, Alabama, USA with a number of wholly-owned operations across the United Kingdom, Europe, Turkey, Latin America, India, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S., and joint ventures in Asia. Aviagen employs more than 3,900 people and has a distribution network serving customers in more than 100 countries.

For further information, please visit www.aviagen.com.