Browne Poultry might fly under the radar, but the award-winning pullet rearer has quietly built an impressive operation. Michael Barker reports
It’s not always easy to switch from one farming endeavour to another, but County Tyrone-based Browne Poultry is an example of a family that has made a great success of it.
Jason Browne’s parents started out in arable production, with cereals the predominant crop, but once they made the decision to put down 8,000 pullets in two houses in 1967, the business never looked back.
Today the farm is mostly grassland with a small flock of pedigree Texel sheep and sport horses. The Moy Park supplier rears 70,000 pullets per cycle in seven sheds, and the range of initiatives to keep the company at the forefront of production led to it being named Pullet Rearer of the Year at the 2023 National Egg & Poultry Awards.
It’s a far cry from the company’s humble beginnings, and in fact it was thanks to a chance encounter that Browne’s parents first moved into poultry at all. “My mother met up with a good friend who had moved away, and the conversation started about poultry and all the financial positives about rearing birds,” he recalls. “On reporting back home, my father told her that it was ‘nonsense’, but on further investigation changed his tune and invested in the first poultry house at the princely sum of £4,000.”
Coming from a farming family, it seemed destined that Browne would come into the business and eventually run it one day. He recalls feeding the hens on the weekends at the tender age of nine, and sure enough after studying agriculture at college he joined the family farm business in 1984, going on to form Browne Poultry in 2016.
The past decade has seen the business really take off, and it’s been a tale of constant improvement with a series of investments making it a slick operation. “We have seven poultry houses, and the two original houses from 1967 were replaced with two steel-framed houses in 2015,” Browne says. “From then on, each year we revisited each of the other houses and updated them, adding new equipment along the way, to get them to exactly the same standard and user-friendliness. Anyone could come in and run the operation now.”
Those investments over the decade have included installing LED lighting across the farm, as well as updating all the water systems with digital readouts and flood prevention measures. Variable-speed spinners have made feeding easier, while electronic weighers have improved the accuracy of bird monitoring.
Another important investment was in wind turbines, with Browne making his first installation back in 2005 thanks to a grant from Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture. “It’s just progressed since then, and now I’ve got four turbines up,” he says. “It means we are entirely sustainable, and it’s a way of adding passive income and increased efficiencies.”
Browne sees energy efficiency as a key part of his business strategy, and plans to put a heat exchanger on one of the bird houses further down the line. Hot water heating was introduced in 2016, which enriched the environment for the birds, though he observes that as a result of the RHI scheme, gas power would have made more financial sense due to what he describes as empty tariff guarantees from Stormont .
Part of the company’s commitment with Moy Park includes reporting on how the birds are performing, and to that end Browne Poultry has been involved in trials to evaluate bodyweight profiles, fleshing and drinker management. These resulted in such substantial improvements in laying performance across a range of farms that some of them moved from bottom quartile to top quartile performance. “We’ve been recording water intake and flow rates as part of that, and St David’s was involved as well,” Browne explains. “It’s all about tracing back how birds are performing and showing how well we are doing things.”
Biosecurity is a top priority. The Browne Poultry site features dedicated purpose-built changing rooms with three shower cubicles for use in disease-challenge situations, while there is individual footwear for moving around the site and power washers with disinfectant to clean the wellies.
Browne doesn’t suggest there’s a magic formula for success when it comes to bird welfare and continual improvement. “The devil is in the detail,” he says. “It’s about focusing on all the little things – the 0.1 per cents all add up. We do everything and make adjustments on a daily basis, so we are not firefighting. We are just doing the wee things right.”
Expanding on the point, he says there’s a laser-like focus on “keeping the houses correct”, which is to say making sure the bedding and the temperature is at the right levels, with ventilation key to a successful operation.
Jason and Jacqueline Browne have five daughters, and are very much of the view that it will soon be time for the next generation to take over. “One of them is hoping to attend agricultural college next year and hopefully she is going to come and join the family business,” he says. “You want them to come in. There’s a vast difference in the way the farm is now, compared to when I arrived, as it is more user friendly today. I’m not ruling anything out, but it would be lovely to see a couple of my daughters come back, as you can’t beat family working with you. They all help out at different stages when rearing birds.”
The award was special, and it was a mad dash to make it back from a trip to Canada via Dublin, meaning a sleepless night before the event. “We went to the awards half asleep – it was like Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” he jokes. “It was good to win, but the best thing was just getting nominated by Moy Park. That was the highest point. If I hadn’t won, I wouldn’t have been too concerned. Just the fact that they nominated me was a vote of confidence in itself.”
Browne Poultry clearly doesn’t crave the limelight, but the recognition of a job well done makes all the hard work worthwhile.