The centre has 112 breeding chambers. These are divided between natural pairs and imprinted falcons. Due to the weather conditions in the region the chambers are all indoor and have controlled temperature, humidity and lighting.
The environment in each building is maintained by two air-condition systems which are independent of each other and provide us with 100% redundancy in case of equipment failure and allow us to perform regular maintenance on the systems even during the hottest part of the summer here in the Gulf. The air conditioning systems have built in dust filters and an air sterilisation system that we can use to maintain a clean environment.
Each breeding chamber has a nest ledge, Astroturf covered perches and a bath. To minimise disturbance the bath can be drained and filled from outside the chamber. The floor is solid concrete and has a built in floor drain for cleaning. The floor is covered in an artificial grass carpet to allow easy cleaning. We simply roll up carpet, trapping and dirt in it and then roll out a clean one. The dirty one is then steam cleaned and dried. Since the rooms in any one building are identical the carpets in each building will fit any of the rooms in that building.
In order to produce strong, fit birds all our young are "hacked" in hack pens. This allows us to provide a cool environment for them in the summer heat of Dubai which would be very difficult to achieve with a normal wild type hack. As a consequent of being cool they fly a lot more than they would in a wild type hack within this environment.
The centre has three hack pens, two outdoor and one indoor. The outdoor pens are cooled with desert coolers which use the evaporation of water over a card baffle to cool the air.
The indoor hack pen is fully air conditioned. The smaller outdoor pen is 100 feet across and is circular. The larger outdoor and the indoor pens are both 300 feet long and 100 feet wide and are shaped like a figure 8.
Our falcons are fed on quail which we produce in our own quail farm on site. The facility is able to produce 4000 quail per week. By being self-sufficient in quail we reduce the risk of bringing disease into the facility and are certain of the quality of the food used to feed our falcons.
The centre's incubation facility consists of:
1. A dry incubation room. The incubators contain no water and the air is kept very dry by means of a dehumidification systems built into the air condition system.
2. A wet incubation room. The air here is again dehumidified but the machines have water in them, the amount of water is controlled by sensors inside each incubator.
3. A hatchery. Eggs are moved here once they pip and we use one hatcher for each days piped eggs. Once that days eggs have hatched the machine is cleaned and fumigated.
4. A fumigation room. Here incubators, hatchers and brooders can safely be fumigated with formaldehyde gas to kill any bacteria.
5. A cleaning area for washing equipment.
To maintain a high level of hygiene in the incubation facility all eggs coming into the facility are disinfected by dipping them in a disinfectant solution at 38 degrees Celsius.