With four-and-a-half decades of experience, Bain Poultry Supplies Ltd. is Ireland’s premier poultry house manufacturer and installer, boasting a strong presence island-wide. We travelled to their base in Keady, County Armagh and caught up with founder Tommy Bain and Online Marketing and Office Support Manager Andrew Grant to find out more about the history and current well-being of this exceptional long-serving family operation.
Established 45 years ago in an ideal location along the border to service markets north and south, Bain Poultry Supplies Ltd. are innovators and market leaders in poultry house manufacturing. Supplying cost-effective, modern, convenient and comfortable poultry houses, they provide absolute customer satisfaction on each and every installation. This is why their houses and cages can be found in literally every corner of the island, from Ballymena to Cork.
Synonymous with the poultry sector in Ireland, Bain Poultry started out by supplying their own manufactured cages to farmers all over County Monaghan, which they did for decades until the enriched cage was introduced by EU bird welfare laws.
Today, as agents for Tecno poultry cage manufacturers in Italy, they supply and install cages as well as providing a comprehensive parts and backup service.
All houses – be it broiler, duck or free range – come with a choice of cladding (such as tin, GPR, timber or composite) while second-hand house disassembly and erection is also offered alongside the supply and sale of various poultry related parts and equipment. Bain Poultry Supplies also specialise in enriched cage sales, with 24/7 breakdown cover available on all aviary cage installations.
The layer and aviary cages supplied offer complete comfort and convenience to both birds and producers alike, with nothing left to chance. Features such as litter and claw shortening devices, inspection trolleys and intermediate walkways, nest areas with curtains and perches, manure drying and removing equipment, self-cleaning ventilation systems, internal feed troughs, nipple-type drinkers with drip-saving cups, lift systems and Niagara systems allowing for simultaneous collection of eggs from all levels and flat feed chains ensure a user-friendly experience that can be tailored to a customer’s exact preferences or requirements.
Tecno systems are available with a wide range of alternatives, options and sizes and can be computer-controlled. The industry has come a long way since Tommy Bain started out in the early 1970s, although his dedication to ensuring complete customer satisfaction has remained an unwavering constant.
Throughout the history of the business, the Armagh man has always strived to improve his products and to provide a better service. “I started off fitting belt systems for poultry houses,” he recalls. “I worked for Charlie Lambe, who owned 10,000 birds in wooden cages and he went to a poultry show in England and was the first man in Ireland to buy a belt system. That system has never been replaced since.
“I took on the fitting of these belts for him and had another man alongside me. We travelled all over Ireland and fitted belts for him for five years. Forty years ago, taking advice from my brother-in-law, I started to accommodate people by putting in poultry houses and cages for them. I got a better belt agency from England myself – we put a roller on every row and you could clean out as many rows as you wanted at once. We never changed the design on that roller until the day the cages closed down.”
Tommy set up his own manufacturing shed in Keady and began manufacturing his own rollers, cages and houses 25 years ago. He was the first in Ireland to offer 15,000-bird units and had steady business all over the country north and south. He estimates that he probably built around half a million cages!
“For 20 years there was no competition and it wasn’t until later years that people started to import them from abroad. When I looked at it again in 2012, when you had to put in a new type of cage, I found that I couldn’t compete with the foreign cages, so we had to stop manufacturing. I went to Steve Taylor, who was an agent for Tecno, and we successfully did two 20,000-unit cages – made from timber opposed to steel and passed for the grants.”
Bain Poultry took on the Tecno agency and seamlessly moved forward. Now, Tommy has three teams of men out on site and this goes up to five teams during the summer. “Joe Renihan from Keady also runs a team of men for me,” he notes.
Advancements mean that customers are almost spoilt for choice. “They can go for a timber house with cladding on the outside, which will last a lifetime, and we’re also doing a modular panel with Kingspan insulation bonded into the sides, while we’ve recently put up our first steel house near The Moy. Tyrone has become a very important local market, along with Cavan, Monaghan and Armagh.”
In his 70s now, Tommy is no longer out in the field working but he is still a key part of the business, overseeing sales, measuring, calculations etc. He is joined in the day-to-day running of the family business by brother Bobby, brother-in-law Jim Morton and son-in-law Andrew Grant – Online Marketing and Office Support Manager. With a lot of new generation farmers networking, Andrew is ensuring that Bain Poultry Supplies maintains a strong presence on social media “On our Facebook page, we have updates and images of installations and new technologies. We’re also going to be updating the company website,” he reveals.
“We’re the longest-established poultry house installer in Ireland and there is a real interest amongst young farmers in changing over to poultry,” he adds. “We are also keen to further pursue the environmentally-friendly aspect with modular insulation and heat management and ventilation systems to decrease electricity usage and overheads and to reduce the carbon footprint going forward, with less waste materials.”
Final word to Tommy, who proudly points out that – although embracing social media is a must – positive word of mouth has been Bain Poultry Supplies’ most powerful advertising tool over the decades: “When we come in, we always do a very nice house,” he concludes. “It wouldn’t be long until five or six others view that and we’d sell more houses as a result of the good workmanship, style, overall appearance and practicality of the house. All of our advertising in the past has been done by word of mouth and that’s how we came to be so well-known.”
Almost half a century on from its inception, Bain Poultry Supplies is still spoken of favourably across the poultry sector. This company boasts an illustrious past and, by all accounts, it appears that there are a few more chapters remaining to be written in this particular success story.
Bain Poultry Supplies Ltd.,
95 Annvale Road,
Keady,
County Armagh,
BT60 2RY.
Tel: 028 37538196
Mobile: 07710712701
Email: [email protected]
Web: bainpoultry.com
Facebook: /Bain-Poultry
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 4 No 6, July/August 2016
