Animal Husbandry

Willy Baumann, Ing. Agr. HTL Willy Baumann, born in 1951, is married with three grown-up children. After completing studies in practical agriculture in Switzerland, he studied marketing and business management at the Engineering and Agriculture College in Zollikofen, Switzerland. While working, he later completed postgraduate studies in company management at the Technical College in Lucerne. After three informative years working in the cattle and meat trade and in meat processing, he moved over to feed advice for agricultural animals. In line with the implementation of the Swiss Animal Protection Act, he gradually became a holistic specialist consultant on species-specific farming, feeding and breeding. As the managing director of a poultry-farming organisation, he learned the mechanisms and strategies of the three poultry farming companies which currently operate all over the world. Since then, Willy Bauman has been working on a poultry farming method which is based on species-specific husbandry and feeding. Since 1995, he has been the managing director of ß"ko-Marketing GmbH in Ottenbach, Switzerland. As well as overall business advice, he has developed and implemented a functional multi-climate shed for species-appropriate poultry keeping and at the same time is the author of the book "Species-appropriate chicken farming". As the main person responsible for the advanced organic guidelines, he is promoting species-appropriate poultry keeping across Germany, Austria and Switzerland, this involves feeding systems for integrated animal nutrition and product development for organic food sources in Germany and Switzerland. Willy Baumann's expertise has landed him positions on various panels of organic associations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland over the last ten years, and he is often asked for advice. For some years, he has focussed his agricultural advice on development strategies to protect against negative environmental influences and on alternative therapies for domestic livestock.

The task

Optimum husbandry of agricultural livestock involves not only species-appropriate living conditions, good food and green spaces, but also the reduction of unhealthy influences from altered field strengths. In recent years, it has become apparent that worsening environmental conditions have a strong impact on animal health, which made the need for an environmentally responsible, "gentle" counterbalance more and more urgent and pressing. The problem of particulate pollution, which is largely attributable to the changed ratio of ions in the air as a result of electro-smog, proved particularly important. In order to achieve a clean environment and therefore species-appropriate, healthy animal husbandry, we must attempt to significantly reduce or even eliminate the damaging influences

The test

In specialist young hen farms, data on mortability, egg yield and egg mass was recorded for a total of around 5500 hens in order to obtain comparative values before and after fitting the memon® transformer system.

The result

As well as the sensational reduction in the mortability rate in the first 18 weeks by 49 %, the installation of the memon® transformer significantly improved the various environmental conditions. Across all the sites, the animals drank more water and this increased yield and/or reduced feed consumption. The result is better use of feed, i.e. the cost of food per kg of eggs is reduced. In all cases, dust and odour pollution reduced after the transformer was fitted.

Influence of the memon® Transformer in the laying performance of 5500 outdoorhens

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