PRIMA user in the spotlight: Spring Glory Farm

Mr. Rukudzo Matasira is an egg producer from Zimbawe. Together with his brother Sipho and his team he is running a chicken layer farm in the village of Mutare. About half a year ago Rukudzo discovered the PRIMA application and has been using it daily ever since he downloaded the application. We are pleased that Rukudzo was willing to share his experience with PRIMA and how it contributes to becoming better every day.

How did you discover the PRIMA app?

We came to know about the PRIMA app during a seminar organized by our day-old chick supplier, as they were switching from Hy-Line to ISA Brown. They invited Peter Arts (Area Manager Sub Sahara Africa), to provide an update on the ISA Brown genetics. In this presentation Peter mentioned that it's quite important for poultry farmers to have insight in the flock’s performance daily, he mentioned Hendrix Genetics offered this application called PRIMA, and that it was free of charge.

Why did you choose PRIMA instead of other available applications?
We have been talking to another provider, based in India. And they were trying to design something that worked for us. The reason why I decided to use PRIMA is that it already had all the information presented in a way that was very easy and quick to understand, and then obviously the “sweetener” was that it is free of charge. We also wanted something that could give a graphical representation of the performance of our flocks, so it just ticked all the boxes for being a farmer-friendly application at an economical price.

Do you find the PRIMA app useful and why specifically?
I find PRIMA useful for a couple of reasons. First, we are using a manual process for data collection, and therefore we can only collect the information at one point in time. PRIMA helps us to do proper trend analysis of the flock’s performance, and this allows us to make strategic decisions.
Second, as the application can take this data daily, it starts to draw a picture of all the various key performance indicators. It really helps us to run the layer farm in a more efficient way. Third, I find it very useful because we're going through a process now where we want to add operations meetings to our normal routine. We want to use PRIMA for discussions rather than any other sort of Excel or whatever that we've been using.
Fourth, I think it's also useful to the extent that it had, at least when I was looking at Hy-Line breeds, PRIMA also had the standard data, flock data, and performance chart. That made it very easy to then compare actual versus standard performance. I think that this is a big plus because the other provider that we have been discussing with said that they didn't yet have all that information. There was still work to do and build that in. The fact that in PRIMA all the standards, also from breeds not coming from Hendrix Genetics, were available, updated, and ready to use was also a big plus.

What is the feature that is most useful for you about the app? Like the one that you use the most.
I think for me the one is usually seeing the production, the production shot, and just seeing where we are with the percentage of lay. This is where we should be. It's interesting that you say the feature because, for me, even the population, I look at that quite a bit just to understand where we are in terms of mortality. And then I must admit consumption is something that I should be paying more attention to. We have not been… That's been a problem. More on our side in terms of the data input rather than the fact that the app is weak. So, I'd say that those three are probably the ones I use I use most. For both the rearing and production.

Do you use it on a regular base and why?
Yes, I do use it on regular basis. I'm trying to check it every day. I think the only challenge, I would say, is if I use it on a regular basis. How regular that is? Not yet every day, but at least twice a week. And the reason for the lack of use every day is more that we've been having challenges with connectivity. Sometimes, the data input getting uploaded from the farm is a bit slow, so the data doesn't get updated as often as I'd like to, but we're trying to find solutions to that.

How would you judge the overall user experience? How do you find the app?
I would say… I think overall I'd say it's very good, I'll say maybe if I had to rate it, I'd say eight or nine out of 10. I think it's very intuitive. It's very easy to understand. It's very simple to follow.
You know, if you think about the complexity of how much information you're trying to get and what you're trying to get out of it, I think the way it's been designed is very, very user-friendly. It's very simple.
What future development of PRIMA would you like to see?

At this stage, there are 2 things that I would like to see improved, the first is the desktop application, allowing us to have even a better visualization of the production of the flocks. The other point is the excel file data extraction, if we would be able to extract the dataset ourselves without the need asking you to do it for us, which did work fine so far.

Do you receive enough support from our side when you had questions or issues to solve related to the app?
Yeah, I think you've been extremely helpful to us, being very responsive. We've had no issues where we've had difficulties. A big plus in the PRIMA app is that we know that we can always reach out and ask questions. So, the overall support has been really good.

Do you recommend the PRIMA app to other egg and poultry producers users located in your region/around the globe?
Yes, I do! I've gone as far as to ask all our key stakeholders within our business on the operation side to download the PRIMA app so that for instance, our nutritionists and our staff would do better feed. I've said to them, that if they want to check the data they have access to the data, this sharing data option is very helpful. Currently, our finance team is also on it and any opportunity I have had so far with other farmers, I'm advertising it.