H2Ozone's AgriSafe helps improve farm profitability and reduce mortality

Grant support in Northern Ireland from the Department of Agriculture, Equipment & Rural Affairs’ (DAERA) Farm Business Improvement Scheme reduces the cost of purchasing an AgriSafe unit by up to £1,800 or 40%.

Growers using the AgriSafe system have confirmed that their birds are attracted to the smell and taste of the ozonated water that the AgriSafe unit produces, and birds grow faster and have less problems with disease. They are also able to stop using antibiotics, chemicals, detergents or acid-based materials to control potential diseases like Campylobacter and Histamonisis (black head).

Maurice McCarron, who runs Killacorn Poultry in County Monaghan, ran three sets of side by side tests on different batches of broiler chickens, with one using AgriSafe’s ozonated water and the other a normal water supply. The mortality rate on using the AgriSafe unit was 3.3% compared to 4.9% on the batch using normal water, and the financial return on the batch was 10% higher.

H2Ozone General Manager Michael Delaney said: “Poultry growers we are working with in both the UK and Ireland are reporting very positive improvements in performance using our AgriSafe units, with food conversion ratios as low as 1.53 and mortality rates below 3%. Animals are attracted to the smell and taste of ozonated water and therefore drink more, which improves growth. They also benefit from the reduced disease that comes from ozone’s disinfecting properties.

“Increasingly the major supermarkets are looking to source animals from a supply chain where use of antibiotics and chemicals is zero or vastly reduced. AgriSafe helps farmers achieve this and it has applications beyond poultry, with AgriSafe delivering improved results in dairy, beef and piggery applications too.”

Maurice McCarron, who runs Killacorn Poultry said: “The AgriSafe system was easy to use and we were very pleased with the results achieved which included improved weight gain and food conversion, lower mortality rates and an uplift in profitability. Following these very promising results we will now be conducting full site trials having now installed AgriSafe units for our entire 130,000 broiler chicken site.”

AgriSafe has also been used on multiple piggeries in Ireland and the UK with farmers seeing improvements in their animals’ welfare, ADG (Average Daily Gain) and end weights. The ozonated water also helped reduced incidences of pathogenic challenges like salmonella, E-Coli, and pseudomonas from developing.

Hugh Gabbie, who uses the system on his piggery in Country Down, said: “After installing AgriSafe to supply water to our 2,000 pigs after two weeks we noticed a marked increase in their appetite. On following these pigs through to slaughter weight not only did we notice reduced mortality and very clean faced pigs, their live weight gain was up and days to slaughter reduced.”

AgriSafe units have been successfully installed by food processors looking for a chemical free alternative to cleaning and preparing their foods. Users of AgriSafe have reported reductions in processing time and reduced water usage as waste water can now be reprocessed through the unit. AgriSafe users include Northern Irish vegetable distributor Gilfresh and health food manufacturer Linwoods, which has installed an AgriSafe unit in its new sprouting facility.

Patrick Woods, Managing Director at Lindwoods said: “The sprouting process involves soaking the seeds and grains in water and the AgriSafe unit gives us peace of mind that the water we are using does not contain any harmful pathogens or bacteria.”

The AgriSafe system works by passing water through a series of filters, then through a helical UV reactor chamber where the UV light inactivates all bacteria, pathogens and microorganisms. Ozone is then delivered through a diffuser into the water reservoir as the final step in the natural purification process.

The AgriSafe system is also being used successfully across several other farming applications including:

Dairy: AgriSafe’s chemical free solution helps dairy farmers improved their Somatic Cell Counts (SCCs) and Total Bacteria Counts (TBCs), thereby reducing the risk of mastitis. The system has been successfully deployed on the 250 herd at Timothy Haffey’s dairy farm in County Armagh.

Beef: Several Beef finishing farms across the UK are using the AgriSafe solution. Peter Simpson, who is a beef farmer in Scotland, has over 1,000 head of cattle on the AgriSafe filtered, UV and ozonised water. The herd are responding very positively to the AgriSafe solution and gaining weight quicker. The cows are healthier and calmer with improved biosecurity as AgriSafe removes cryptosporidium, E-coli and other bacteria from the water the herd is drinking.

H2Ozone units retail at £4,500 (ex. VAT), with low annual maintenance costs of less than £150 per annum, including off-site monitoring of your system by H2Ozone’s engineers at their headquarters in Newtownmountkennedy, Co Wicklow. The DAERA grant can provide financial support of up to £1,800 to farmers buying the unit, which is classified as F27 under the Animal and Plant Health section of the recently published Farm Business Improvement Scheme. Applications for the grant are open from January 4 with closing date for applicants on the 2nd February at 4pm.