Family-owned fourth-generation US food and agricultural company Perdue Farms has decided to incorporate the on-farm hatching concept NestBorn into their broiler production and supply chain. This approach includes hatching day-old chicks in broiler barns instead of hatcheries.

In the summer of 2023, a demonstration NestBorn Egg Placing Machine was placed into operation by Perdue Foods near its headquarters on the Delmarva peninsula in order to efficiently transfer larger volumes of preincubated hatching eggs into broiler barns. It was the first time a NestBorn machine, which picks up candled and vaccinated eggs from setter trays in an automated and gentle way to then place those egg directly on the floor of a temperature-controlled broiler barn, was installed in the US.

The advantage of hatching directly on farm is that access to feed and water is immediate, lowering the risk of hungry and thirsty chicks. Additionally, hatchery handling and day-old chick transport are also eliminated, which means potential discomfort of the newly hatched chick is avoided. 

After more than one year of demonstration and validation in a “deep litter” context, Perdue Farms and NestBorn have agreed – in a preferred partnership context – to further deploy the NestBorn on-farm hatching solution. In its first phase, two NestBorn Egg Placing Machines – constructed and supported by automation company Viscon – will be deployed in the US, increasing the number of on-farm hatched chicks in Perdue’s operations.

“In our mission to responsibly raise animals for food, we always are looking for continuous improvement of animal welfare,” said Bruce Stewart Brown, chief science officer for Perdue Farms. “A few years ago, we started to investigate the feasibility and potential benefit of on-farm hatching in our operations. We started taking pre-incubated eggs to broiler barns, instead of using the hatcher. We concluded that NestBorn is an additional asset for our broiler operations that will help further our efforts around the highest animal care and in our commitment to no antibiotics ever.”

On behalf of the Belgian-based NestBorn company, General Manager Erik Hoeven said, “Since the official launch of NestBorn in 2018, chicks have been hatched on-farm with our concept in more than 10 European countries. We are very pleased that we found a visionary poultry company in Perdue Farms, who helped us to fine-tune the equipment and methodology for the specific U.S. barn conditions. We hope that favoring the barns instead of the hatchers for the final 2 or 3 days of the hatching process, can offer alternative solutions for Perdue in terms of future hatchery designs and investment strategies.”

Source: Perdue Farms