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Role Purpose:

• The purpose of the Poultryman role is to implement processes and procedures and maintain chicken houses allocated to them to ensure adequate welfare and growth of chickens in order to deliver the optimal number of the right quality birds at the right time and at the lowest cost.  

Required Qualifications:

• Minimum Grade 12
• Physically fit with no allergies to dust and feathers 

Required Experience:

• Will be deemed proficient between 6 months within the role , 1 year's relevant breeder farm experience would be an advantage.

Required Knowledge and Skills:

• Knowledge:
  • Understand basic poultry nutrition, growth, anatomy and reproduction
  • Farm operations and processes
  • Ability to recognize ventilation, brooding, feeding and water requirements of the birds and make the correct adjustments
  • Operation of farm equipment
  • FAWLT principles for optimal performance

• Skills:
  • Verbal and written communication
  • Numeracy
  • Stockman ship
  • Mechanical aptitude
  • Love for animals

Key Responsibilities

Housekeeping

• Manages litter by turning litter and checking that litter is in adequate condition to prevent disease.
• Replaces globes to ensure adequate lighting for bird growth
• Attends to feed spillage to ensure that birds do not eat more feed than required thus maintaining bird weight and costs
• Attends to water spillages to ensure that environment is dry in order to prevent spread of disease.
• Washing of drinkers as per procedure
• Picks up mortalities in order to clear the chicken house of dead birds and thus prevents the spread of disease.
• Keeps site drains in a good condition

Site maintenance

• Ensure all feeder lines are assembled and maintained accurately to avoid any delays on feeding or unnecessary breakdowns.
• House partitions general maintenance
• Report and repair of breakdown

Chicken Welfare

• Ventilates the chicken house according to season and weather conditions to ensure that birds have ideal air quality and temperature
• Activates feeder and waterlines at the correct height for birds age to ensure adequate feeding and drinking
• Feeding of birds daily
• Collecting minimum of 5 egg collections and 12 times floor egg collections
• Ensure that all production house charts are updated and accuracy
• Medicating/Vaccinating as per veterinary standards to ensure good health status is maintained
• Conducts test weights on birds to determine growth level and informs Farmer of problem areas for adjustments to be made in feeding programs.
• Grading of birds to maintain good uniformities.
• Grading of eggs daily
• Collection of droppings inside nest boxes
• Replenish of shavings as per procedure
• Prill of nest boxes as per procedure
• Reporting abnormal mortalities in order for Veterinary Lab to investigate causes of mortality.
• Ensures cabling is adequately covered and safe to prevent injury to birds
• Reports maintenance issues to the Assistance farmer to ensure that machinery in the chicken house is operating correctly for safety of chickens
• Ensure 100% compliance of all Biosecurity & AI protocols (Shower at SQ and at the farm)
• Remove shavings from eggs and ensure that hatchery receives clean fertile eggs daily.
• Sanitize hands before handling any eggs.
• Employee should read company standard procedure before starting any duties.

Environmental Management

• Inspects bait stations to ensure that pests are not entering the chicken house
• Culls and adequately disposes poor quality birds to ensure environmental safety

Record Keeping

• General admin work that includes house pen chart feeding into site flock book - temperature records, water readings, alarm testing, feed allocation , daily mortalities, bodyweights , cv & uniformities

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