The River Severn catchment is home to nearly ¼ of the UKs poultry sector, and the sector’s environmental impact is a hotly contested issue.
Working with Specialist Farm Enterprises and supplier Calyx, this project deployed biological sensors to poultry producers across the region to measure the rate of ammonia emissions emanating from their broiler sheds. All told, 130 sheds among a cohort of 29 farms were equipped with sensors.
The data generated by these wireless sensors, connected via different public cellular networks and LoRaWAN was blended with other environmental, input and husbandry data to determine the optimal conditions that limit the level of airborne ammonia.
With a crop rotation of just 7 weeks, improved data driven decision making is resulting in near instant and incremental environmental and economic impacts. The aggregated data is also available to Councils to help to present a more accurate picture of the sector’s environmental impact.
An extra aspect of this project has been to undertake a dissipation trial with sensors installed at different distances (up and down wind) from a cluster of poultry. This trial provides invaluable insight into the wide area impact of ammonia emissions.