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.

H2Ozone unit

AgriSafe has also been used on multiple piggeries in Ireland & 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 County Down, said:

After installing AgriSafe to supply water to our 2,000 pigs after 2 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 & days to slaughter reduced.

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.

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, County 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 4th of January 2018 with closing date for applicants on the 2nd February at 4pm 2018.

The quality of the water produced by H2Ozone product has been verified by independent certification bodies including KIWA and ACS. Tests have also been run with several leading universities including Trinity College Dublin, University of Ulster, Bristol University, Exeter University and the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The water standards exceed those required under European Drinking Water legislation and the solution is CE Regulated.

H2Ozone recently raised €3m to drive expansion of its business into new markets including the French, Dutch, Belgian and South African markets.

As reported by H2OZone