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Agrotop building large New South Wales poultry farm on schedule
Agrotop has carried out a series of thorough tests at a large state-of-the-art poultry farm in the Griffith area of New South Wales (NSW), Australia.
The farm, once completed, will be one of the largest chicken farms in Australia with 70 poultry sheds on five different sites in a close geographic area.
So far, Agrotop has completed the building of eight sheds, five of which are already populated and the remaining three will be populated at the next grow out.
Stanley Kaye, Agrotop’s broiler expert, who provided after-sales service and checked the house systems, carried out the tests.
The inspection included testing the tightness of the sheds using static pressure and smoke tests. This included a close examination of air speed achieved in the shed at multiple locations with different combinations of fans, static pressure and tunnel door opening.

In addition, Agrotop checked minimum airflow in sheds using smoke test. This was done to ensure that air reaches the shed’s center without creating a draft on the chickens. The tests showed that the sheds have been well designed and implemented. When a minimum vent fan was turned on, with all the inlets closed, no whistling was heard from the panel joints. This is often a critical area for leaks. Moreover, very satisfactory static pressure was achieved.
The wind speed test showed that the desired wind speed was reached. Even more importantly, there was very constant wind speed through the cross section of the house, indicating that the shed is well designed aerodynamically.
The minimum ventilation smoke test also went very well. At almost any combination of static pressure and angle of opening of the mini-vents, the smoke (i.e., air) flowed to the upper center of the house without causing drafts.
“This is very important as it makes the shed easy to operate as the grower does not have to worry too much about achieving a particular angle of opening for the mini-vents,” Kaye. “I have worked with sheds that were hard to ventilate in cold weather because it was hard to achieve the right static pressure. This farm will be like driving an automatic car rather than a gear shift that requires more concentration.”

The earthworks for the next farm have been completed and the concrete pads are being prepared, thus the construction is proceeding according to schedule.