In Jan. 2023, as Xiangjia Husbandry’s incubation center with an annual output of 100 million day-old chicks officially went into production, another incubation project of this scale in China was born which is another “Hatch 4.0” intelligent hatchery built by Ei Farming in central and western China.
The right is the best——KING-7 tunnel incubators
To meet the needs of hatching various breeds of colored chicks, we recommended multi-stage KING-7 New Type Tunnel Incubators which can load eggs by batches and has been recognized and acknowledge by Xiangjia.
Indispensable for modern hatcheries-automation and logistics systems
Automation equipment is becoming an indispensable part of modern production of hatcheries. The automation of intensive hatcheries consists of three core functional systems and four logistics systems.
Three automation lines: hatching egg handling system, egg candling system and chick handling system
Four logistics system: hatching egg holder logistics system, setter trolley/tray logistics system, hatcher trolley/tray logistics system, chick basket logistics system
Xiangjia project is equipped with two sets of hatching egg handling equipment with one main units and two sub-units. The capacity reaches 380000 eggs per day which can realize automatic inspection, weighing and grading, head adjustment, automatic tray stacking and loading.
Based on human intelligent technology, the NCI egg candling and transfer system can precisely identify addled eggs to avoid their influence on healthy chicks during hatching. To effectively avoid contamination, the system will transfer the fertile eggs to hatcher baskets first and then handle the non-viable eggs.
The automatic chick handling system equipped includes vibration screen, chick counter and packer, hatcher trolley/basket cleaner, hatcher basket destacking and stacking modules to realize respective functions.
The project is also equipped with AGV logistics system for chick handling system. The cleaned hatcher trolley/tray will be automatically loaded on the hatcher trolleys, transferred to the shelves in the store room by AGV cart and during egg candling, they will be automatically transferred to the candling and transfer system. No more labor is needed to finish candling and transferring of eggs, handling of chicks and material flow.
The annual output of Xiangjia incubation center is 120 million eggs and more than 300000 chicks are hatched every day. With the automation and logistics systems, there are only 61 management staff and front-line staff in total.
Energy saving and low carbon emission create extra value-environment control and energy recovery
Air-source energy
The project is equipped with ultra-low temperature air-source energy unit to provide cooling energy and heating energy all year around. As the heating source for hatcheries, the unit can save more than 40% cost compared with gas boilers.
Environment control
The hatchery environment control system includes five modes which are cooling, heating, constant temperature, constant humidity, and ventilation. Users can switch among the five modes for different seasons. The hatchery management system controls the cold and hot water flow of the main and auxiliary coils to realize temperature control and solve the inconvenience of repeated switches during the transitional season.
Air exhaust of EC fans
EC fans that adopt variable frequency technology are used in the hatchery to exhaust the waste air. This meets the requirement of changed air flow during early and later phases of incubation. No frequency converter is needed for continuously variable transmission which saves more energy.
New trend of digital enablement-intelligent hatchery management platform
Intelligent hatchery management platform is the digital platform which helps achieve the goals of “digital, unmanned, green”. It includes four modules which are AIO intelligent equipment management, equipment operation management, energy consumption analysis and production coordination.
Customer focus-we are not just talking about it.
“Hatch 4.0” intelligent hatchery is the the overall solution independently designed by Ei Farming to provide design schemes based on customers’ needs. The R& D team developed special hatching egg handling lines for Xiangjia to meet their requirement of hatching the eggs of various breeds of colored chicks.
In early December, epidemic lockdown was implemented in the project area and the civil construction and other construction units all stopped working. But Ei Farming team was still busy at the site. After the lift of the lockdown, the country entered the peak of the first wave of the epidemic outbreak, and the installers on the site caught fever one after another. The team was anxious about the health of the staff and also wished to finish the installation and commissioning of the equipment and assist Xiangjia to start production before the Chinese new year. Customer focus is more than a slogan. Our team did not have time to hesitate. The uninfected staff were put into work and the staff who recovered from COVID-19 shortly started to work overtime. At the critical time of the Spring Festival, the team completed the installation and commissioning of the main equipment and Xiangjia incubation center successfully went into production as planned.
“Projects deliver not only products and equipment, but also services and product packages,” Executive Vice President Chen Bin stressed many times on various occasions. In order to meet the normal production needs of customers during the Spring Festival, technical support personnel stick to their posts during holiday to ensure the normal operation of equipment, and helped Xiangjia 100 million intelligent incubation center with safe production.
