Fortica successfully applied in Swedish free range chicken farm

Fortica successfully applied in Swedish free range chicken farm

The Swedish brothers Christer Berghem and Martin Andersson and their families started to raise Free Range chickens during the autumn of 2015. The Stora Lund farm has been in their family since the brother’s grandfather and father bought it back in the nineteen fifties. They used to produce pigs, but they stopped doing so about ten years ago because of the economic situation. This is when they decided to devote their time to arable farming and started to grow potatoes and wheat. They went to a meeting on organic farming last spring at which they were introduced to the idea of holding free range chickens. As they still had the old pig houses they decided to give this a go as the idea behind the concept was based on using existing buildings.

New method to raise chickens (Sol & Sprätt)

Demand for organic chicken has boomed over the last year in Sweden, which prompted the idea to find a concept to range chicken longer and give them more space to move. The chickens are to be held for 60 days and have the opportunity to go outside. The chickens will be marked as ‘sol & sprätt’ in the Swedish supermarkets, what means ‘Sun and Free range’. They intend to keep slow growing breeds in the future to ensure a steady production. By allowing the animals to grow over a longer period and ensuring that the density in the house is 25% less, the meat produced by the birds will be more mature and have a rich taste.

Control equipment

The production takes place in one starting room, where the birds are kept for 20 days before being moved to the finishing room where they are kept for the rest of the time. The complete farm will be controlled by two panels with integrated Fortica computers. The ventilation, heating, lighting and water supply is controlled in both rooms by the FORTICA-PB. The feeding is controlled by a FORTICA-FWS. The SmartWinch motor is used for the opening and closing from the air inlet flaps and the outlet doors in the farm. In order to monitor the growth of the animals is used the DWS-4-ZW animal weighing platform. The layout of the farm was designed by our Swedish distributor Olisystem AB.