“Our ambition is that all the day-old chicks intended for our processing plant are hatched on-farm” - Matthew Ward
“After the update of the Red Tractor Poultry Standard as from 1st of October 2019, permitting on-farm hatching, we started the implementation of the NestBorn-concept within our Cranswick integration. Since beginning of 2020, we have stopped completely hatching chicks in the Kenninghall hatchery, all 600,000 chicks a week are now hatched on-farm with NestBorn. Our ambition is that soon all the day-old chicks intended for our new processing plant in Eye, are hatched on-farm. NestBorn seems like a very natural way of doing this, with clear health and welfare benefits. Mortality and utilisation of antibiotics is significantly lower with NestBorn and we observe much calmer birds. In our trials we also observed clear advantages in body weights and the birds are more consistent and more even. It’s all about delivering a better product to our processing plant and having more reliable weights. We operate as a total integration and we see the benefits for the whole company.”
Matthew Ward
Agricultural Director Crown Chicken / Cranswick (East Anglia, UK)
