The school, titled the Wadi Poultry Academy (WPA), aimed to enhance Wadi personnel’s knowledge on breeder management practices.

Attendees included 21 farm and hatchery personnel and 2 representatives from Wadi’s subsidiary, Inmaa, from Sudan. Wadi Group plans to hold further academies in the future, covering different aspects of poultry management.

Aviagen and its distributors continually work in tandem to help grow and expand the poultry industry in the Middle East and Africa. The Wadi Academy closely mirrors Aviagen’s own principles of developing the next generation of poultry professionals through the transfer of global expertise to a local market.

International experts were selected by Wadi to present at the Academy, with Aviagen providing a number of speakers. The Aviagen experts joined specialists from Wadi Group in hosting a series of lectures, group discussions and workshops, covering a host of subjects such as ventilation management, brooding and biosecurity. Each lecture was followed by an assessment, which created positive competitiveness amongst attendees, with prizes and certificates awarded.

Puzant Dakessian, chief - poultry sector at Wadi Group said, “I am grateful to Aviagen for its contribution to the Academy’s first module in providing guest lecturers whose knowledge and expertise provided invaluable insights to our teams. Education is a cornerstone of Wadi’s philosophy and this is something we share with Aviagen. Our investment in teaching and training over many years has resulted in our staff playing integral roles in our business today. It is now time for us to pass this knowledge on to the next generation to help keep the momentum of education and our culture of collaboration. We hope that the breeder module is just the beginning and we can develop our academy further with different modules for staff and also roll them out to our customers.”

Robert Haggarty, senior technical manager Ross MEA at Aviagen, added, “Aviagen places great value on its relationships with distributors. We always aim to offer support and work hand-in-hand with them to promote knowledge and information sharing so they achieve the best possible results from their Ross stock. The concept of the Wadi Poultry Academy draws synergies with our own commitment to education through our successful Production Management Schools. Having a mutual strategy of developing the next generation of poultry people and working together to achieve this, help to make collaborations like ours flourish.”

Bulent Tanyildizi, international commercial manager, Ross MEA, concluded, “Egypt is one of the major markets in the MEA region and Aviagen has a special focus on this dynamic market. Our long-term partnership with Wadi is very important as we are jointly targeting to increase our market share in Egypt and Wadi is now investing in new GP facilities to support this target. The Ross MEA Team spares no effort to provide commercial and management support for Wadi to achieve production targets in order to ensure top quality Ross birds are supplied to the Egyptian market.”

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.