I remember that there was nothing in the Farm, only the Name, and this adventure began with my Dad’s desire to have a business that ultimately could generate additional income for our house.
I was a child of barely 9 years old and I saw the Cunardo Farm as a great company, I remember as if it were yesterday as in a truck that had one day old chicks were taken away in cardboard boxes that when they arrived at the farm they were counted and arranged in a very small space, fully lit with 100 watt incandescent bulbs to help them warm up and allow them to breed. I really liked this activity that to my surprise the chicks at birth do not have feathers but yellow hairs that later when they grow up turn into feathers and touching them caused me an allergy.
The process took place very quickly and I remember our first sacrifice, I remember accompanying my Dad and my brothers to buy block ice very early in the morning and arriving at the farm where there was a production line made up of many people where some hung the chickens. Others peeled them, others took out the viscera, others put them in cold water and after a while they bagged them to later distribute them in the city of Barranquilla, now that I think about it carefully from this experience my vocation was born with becoming an Engineer Industrial.
So time passed and the farm grew little by little with sheds that made it possible to have chickens available for slaughter every week, at that time the farm handled 7 ages, starting from 1-day-old chicks to 42-day-old chickens for slaughter.
We had the capacity to have around 8,000 chickens in a continuous cycle, the business was going very well and I saw how the company was growing, we were always active and the collaborators were growing and of all the activities we carried out, the one I liked the most was going out to deliver the chickens to customers and invoice.
My brothers are going to live in Bogotá and my father and I remain in activity with the Farm, to all of these my father was a lawyer and economist and his main activity was not the farm, he had his law office and at that time he worked as Dean of Law of the Free University.
In view of the little time he had for his occupations, he decided to grow to complete 18,000 birds, I remember as if it were yesterday that he began to join sheds and to extend them so that the capacity will be reached. the farm went from 7 sheds to 4 but now bigger. Of which with the exception of the first of the 1000 chickens, they still exist and are in activity.
This was a step to the big leagues, an integration contract was achieved with a company in Barranquilla for the year 1995 that bought all the production.
We continue to move with the business and with other efforts and for the year 2002 another expansion was achieved with which the farm would have the capacity to accommodate 53,000 chickens that entered on October 10, 2002, the day my father died, it was not enough to see his dream in operation, that day the flame that moved us to be better people, a better family, better professionals went out, all his empirical knowledge of veterinary medicine, architecture, administrator, entrepreneur but above all to be an entrepreneur remained.
We continued with the business and for the year 2011, the contractual relationship for which these facilities were destined ends. Sadness invaded the whole family, my brother Jose Leader of the company after the death of my father did not know what to do with so many wishes deposited in this company, as well as with so many years dedicated by our collaborators to it.
We did not let ourselves collapse and with the help of my mother Lilian and my Brother Jorge, we started again this time with Pig Farming, using the deep bed method. It was really an apprenticeship for everyone, a new business, a new work scheme, but in the end it served to be able to solve the economic commitments of the company. This business only occupied 15% of the infrastructure that the farm had and as you will understand what is not used is damaged.
My brother Jose brings to the farm 200 black chicks of those that have peeled necks in order to obtain some eggs that they would serve with their sale to buy the concentrated feed of the cattle. This is how we started in laying poultry. The business started without any major setback and the chickens began to lay and the eggs began to be sold in the town’s shops. really, although it was a little, it was good enough.
From this initiative, we decided to introduce chickens for the year 2014 and we were alternating the activity with pig farming. When he evaluated this beginning, he did not stop thinking about the 1000 chickens that my father started with, it was the same number of birds with which we started poultry farming with commercial hens.
We began to grow in poultry farming, to adapt the infrastructure for this operation, to know the market, to reach wholesale and retail clients, to work with chain stores, to teach staff to this type of project and to adopt good practices productive in order to have a suitable farm to grow as the market requested it; By 2019 we had around 36,000 birds in lay and we are still growing with a goal of completing 75,000 birds in lay by December of this year 2020. Our production system is 30 years old, a farm without a controlled environment and hens on the floor with hopper feeders and automatic drinkers, we make use of natural resources such as arborization to achieve comfort in the birds as well as productive practices that help to obtain excellent results. Even today our collaborators who are our family, who in their majority have more than 25 years with us, have seen and have been participants in all this development and each one of them to thank my brothers, my mother as well as My Dad in Heaven to be infinitely grateful for believing and seeing opportunities at every moment to continue even in adversity ahead, even the dream is still active, we continue to grow and project this legacy as far as God allows us to want to go.
