WINNIPEG – When Henri Lambert finally found out how he was doing, he was on top.
The St. Claude, Man. chicken producer won the trophy for the most efficient operation at Hog and Poultry Days, held recently in Winnipeg.
“I didn’t know if I was doing a job,” Lambert said. “I asked my feed representative, but he didn’t want to say too much.”
So, he and wife Gertrude entered the contest, held this year for the first time, with Feed-Rite in Manitou, Man. as his sponsor.
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“I was surprised, especially for the big award. I never thought that I was going to get that,” Lambert said after posing for pictures with the trophy.
“I’ve been in the business for so long, so it feels really good.”
Lambert’s quota is 16,800 kilograms per seven-week cycle. He kept his own records over the years to keep track of feed conversion, rate of weight gain and mortality rates, but he always wanted to know how he stacked up to others.
Prices more important
“We don’t really discuss what kind of records we’re getting,” he said. “We discuss more what’s the price of chickens or what’s the price of feed more than what kind of a job we’re doing.”
Lambert thinks he won because of high scores in the feed conversion category.
“It’s a smaller operation. I guess I’ve got a little bit of an advantage” with feed conversion, he said, explaining he can get more fresh air to his chickens in a small barn.
Lambert has been producing chickens for 28 years, along with some cattle on grain, on 320 acres. He started farming in 1963, and first raised turkeys. But he found them difficult.
“They are asking to die,” he said, describing how fussy his turkeys were.
“But chickens are not like that. They are really easy to raise.”
Lambert won the under-23,000 kg per cycle category. Other winners were Claude Jacques, also of St. Claude, in the 23,000 to 38,000 kg per cycle class, and Neil Olmstead of Carberry for over-38,000 kg per cycle.
