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Egg farm of CP Group in Pinggu, an hour drive NE of Beijing. With 3 million chickens laying 2.4 million eggs/day it is the largest single egg facility in Asia. The factory is highly automated, with only one employee to look after 176,000 hens in each of 18 chicken buildings. The brown breeding stock originated in Germany. The cages, with conveyor belts for removal of eggs and manure, and food and water delivery system, are imported from Big Dutchman in Germany. The birds are kept in cages 60cm square, 8-9 chickens per cage. The hens are here for 52 weeks of laying before going to slaughter, and sick or dead chickens are fed to crocodiles kept at an adjacent facility. The chickens are fed a mixture of corn grown domestically and soybeans imported from Brazil, Argentina, and the USA. The eggs are on a vertical conveyor belt on their way to the packing house. There is a robot on each floor of each hen house, and it scans the cages with ultrasonic waves to detect shapes and then measures temperature using infrared radiation. Sick or dead chickens have a different thermal profile, and the robot alerts the hen house employee of locations where there may be problem birds.

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STNMTZ_20160627_16789.tif
Copyright
©2016 George Steinmetz
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8688x5792 / 144.0MB
Contained in galleries
Feeding China
Egg farm of CP Group in Pinggu, an hour drive NE of Beijing. With 3 million chickens laying 2.4 million eggs/day it is the largest single egg facility in Asia. The factory is highly automated, with only one employee to look after 176,000 hens in each of 18 chicken buildings. The brown breeding stock originated in Germany. The cages, with conveyor belts for removal of eggs and manure, and food and water delivery system, are imported from Big Dutchman in Germany. The birds are kept in cages 60cm square, 8-9 chickens per cage. The hens are here for 52 weeks of laying before going to slaughter, and sick or dead chickens are fed to crocodiles kept at an adjacent facility. The chickens are fed a mixture of corn grown domestically and soybeans imported from Brazil, Argentina, and the USA. The eggs are on a vertical conveyor belt on their way to the packing house. There is a robot on each floor of each hen house, and it scans the cages with ultrasonic waves to detect shapes and then measures temperature using infrared radiation. Sick or dead chickens have a different thermal profile, and the robot alerts the hen house employee of locations where there may be problem birds.

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