The other day I photographed a mysterious looking unmarked semi trailer, and wondered what the hell it was.
It was no ordinary truck, with air conditioning units on the roof, and an equipment cabinet beneath the floor – was it an outside broadcast truck?
But turns out it wasn’t – this barely readable logo on the side being the critical clue.
I eventually worked out that the ‘7’ was actually a stylised ‘V’, so the logo read ‘HatchTraveller’ – leading me to the website of a Dutch firm that specialises in chick hatching and transportation equipment.
They describe the trailer I saw as.
This extensive, high-capacity trailer is designed to meet the needs of larger poultry companies that already have a significant transportation need, or those looking to grow their business in the future.
Measuring almost 47 feet in length, the trailer is composed of nine sections. Together, these are able to accommodate up to 183,600 day-old chicks at any one time, making this one of the largest chick transportation systems available on the market. Having this additional square footage can allow poultry companies to consolidate their transport fleet: maximising the capacity of each trailer can result in fewer journeys, helping to reduce operations costs.
This HatchTraveller model is equipped with a hybrid power system as standard, which powers the trailer independently of the truck’s main fuel supply. We note that the charging range can be extended with the use of additional batteries.
So what was this “chick transportation system” doing in the back streets of Pakenham? The big unmarked warehouse down the road was probably why – run by chicken processor Ingham Enterprises.
So what does Inghams do in that warehouse? According to animal liberation groups it’s a chicken hatchery.
Footnote: so why was I there?
So why was I doing in the back streets of Pakenham?
It happens to be the same street that Ventura’s Pakenham bus depot is located on.
I miss the chicken that are available in markets in China with all the “components” intact.
On my mum’s first trip to Hong Kong back in the mid-1980s, my dad’s family took her over the border by train to Shenzhen to deliver some gifts to relatives, and they brought home a whole live chicken for dinner.
The chicken in China is much better than the ones in australia!
WOW great post I really find this so fascinating having recently lost my father I can remember as a child when he used to deliver bulk stock feed from Barastock in North Melbourne (up to 10/12 tonnes to many small chicken farms around Victoria.
As well as the tanker of pellets together in the cabin of the old British Layland truck would be a large box of day old chicks on various occasions .
How times have changed since the good old days!
Thanks! Was Barastoc the complex beside the railway line at North Melbourne, now run by Irwin Stockfeeds?
No not Irwin stock feed that’s close to western mills adjacent to north Melbourne football field .It was where the flour mill which was once known as Kimptons at the Kensington end of Arden street over the river that was once Barastock