Sinyavinskaya Poultry Farm
"Sinyavinskaya" Poultry Farm (Leningrad Region) is Russia's largest egg producer and its most active exporter. "Sinyavinskaya" was Russia’s first egg-producing company that completely stopped using antibiotics. Reason enough for our colleague, Yaroslav Nemirovsky, to interview Arthur Holdoenko, the director of Sinyavinskaya, about the current activities and future plans.
Arthur Mikhailovich, wasn't it a scary operation to step away from the use of antibiotics, knowing that you have almost 6 million birds of different ages, all on one site? Well, first of all, we were already gradually moving towards phasing out antibiotics, when we began to develop the export of our products, we just had to do phase them out at a faster speed. Our main Export market for eggs is the Middle East. The requirements of buyers there are very stringent and, for example, if even traces of antibiotics are found in one single egg, the supplier must take the entire container back at its own expense. Secondly, I have worked as a veterinarian for many years and of course this experience helped me enormously. I have seen that it is possible to quit with antibiotics in egg production. The principle is simple, you need to improve the discipline on biosecurity of all, to twist all the little things and most important - constant vigilance.
Arthur Holdoenko and Thijs Hendrix
Currently, you export up to one third of all eggs produced within your operations, do you plan to develop this area further? We have made many steps to go abroad, we have ruled out or competitors, we have been able to ensure the constant quality of the products and we have been able to maintain the value of the selling price. Yes, export does give you volumes, but yet I believe that by correctly positioning yourself in your home country of operations, you can earn more than by exporting in the current egg market.
Have you considered to develop processing of eggs? To do this, we need to change the legislation for the same HoReCa. But in the meantime, for example, compound mixtures are supplied to us by German companies and everyone is happy with them. This means that we will still be processing a fraction.
You’ve mentioned "winding all little things up". What do you mean by that? I am not only concerned about the use of antibiotics, but also by the efficiency of production in general. People believe in some myths and are lazy to calculate what is good for them and what is not. For example, we thought that the production of heavy eggs was profitable for us. Yes, it is easier for the marketing department to sell such eggs, but in the end we lose money on every egg like that. The larger the egg sizes, the more notching and melange we have, and more prolapse can be found among the hens as well. Abroad, where up to one third of eggs produced are being processed, this may be acceptable, but we sell eggs by the piece. Because of this, we had to slaughter our laying hens early. We are now - so far the first in the
country - to keep our laying hens for almost 100 weeks, like they do in several other parts of the world. Keeping the laying hens for longer allows us to save a lot on the rearing of young hens.
It has been almost two years since Sinyavinskaya switched to the Dekalb White . What was the reason?
My specialists and myself have seen this breed abroad during our technical visits to other egg producers, and we see around us that the Dekalb White is gaining so much in popularity. The main reason to change breeds was that we sat down together, and collectively we did the calculations whether the Dekalb White would meet our objectives. Actually, we see that reality has turned out to be even better than our calculations! The quality of the eggshell has improved drastically compared to our previous breed, and the average flock productivity has increased by 4% over the production period, and not to mention the exceptional livability of the Dekalb White. In addition, we also sell many day-old chicks, to us it is also important that our customers have fewer problems. In general, as they say here in Russia, it is nothing personal, just business.
Hendrix Genetics Layers technical visit to Sinyavinskaya Poultry Farm