Measure & Monitor

To develop product standards, we examine the performance of our laying hen breeds in a variety of environments. This includes recurrent testing, field results gathered by our customers, and independent trials conducted by renowned poultry research institutes across the globe. By looking at these results, we can more accurately predict the performance of our laying hens and continue to make steady improvements in their performance year over year.

Within the R&D department, testing of pedigree laying hens is conducted in commercial poultry farms in approximately 25 locations around the world. We also test the offspring of our pure line cockerels in at least two different locations so we can incorporate the effects of different flock management, chicken diets, lighting programs, housing, and climate into the analysis.

Performance in alternative systems is a key feature of many of our products because we invest in replicating these environments and selecting the birds that do well in a cage-free housing system. We have invested in automatic nests and we make use of RFID technologies to track and trace the behavior and egg laying performance of our laying hens. We have partnered with renowned research institutes and are collaborating together in large research projects to improve welfare of laying hens all over the globe. Find out more on the Chickenstress project or the Imagen project.

In addition, we rigorously maintain our own database with field results sent in from egg producers all over the world. The information gained from this data is crucial in understanding how laying hens perform under different circumstances across the globe and is used to accurately predict how a flock will perform for egg producers under different circumstances (cage-free or cage housing).

The advantage of measuring real world performance is that we are able to identify the strengths of our layer breeds and the directions to further improve our layer breeds. Our goal is to make our contribution to sustainable egg production via genetic selection. Birds that stay fit and healthy, that are persistent in producing eggs whilst maintaining egg quality contribute to a more sustainable global egg industry and to better earnings for egg producers. Find out more about our efforts to breed the long-life laying hen.

By sharing your flock performance data with our experts, we can help you to gain insight in the performance of your laying hens. After reviewing the reports, our technical service team can follow up with specific support in poultry nutrition, lighting programs, biosecurity or flock health. If you want to know more about our technical support, visit our Technical support knowledge portal.

Independent trials are used to gain accurate, unbiased information on laying hen product performance across the industry. Trials include results in egg production, egg laying persistency, livability, egg quality, feed conversion, etc. in a variety of housing systems (cage and cage-free) for both white and brown layer breeds.

Our layer breeds consistently show strong results in independent trials all over the world. Notable independent trials include North Carolina State (USA), Gunma (Japan), and Ústrašice (Czech Republic).