Fresh Texas Chicken

About two hundred thousand (200,000) pullets per year are placed on these farms which have specialized equipment and are totally "light tight", so that the photo period can be manipulated to control sexual maturity.  The weight of the pullets and feed amounts are measured weekly by the servicemen and women throughout the whole growing period.  During this time the pullets receive vaccinations for various diseases.  When the birds are about twenty-one (21) weeks old and weigh about 5.2 pounds, they are caged and loaded on live haul trailers and moved to a different farm.  Production begins for heavier pullets in about four to five weeks and, soon, all hens are actively laying eggs.  Peak production will come between twenty-nine (29) and thirty-one (31) weeks of age depending on the maturity  and uniformity of the flock.  A peak production of 82% is a good rate for egg laying.  Chickens lay "clutches" of eggs, laying eggs continuously for several days and, then, skipping a day.  This is why 100% production from a flock is not possible.  By the time a hen has laid her production period of about forty (40) weeks, she will have produced an average of one hundred and fifty-four (154) hatching eggs with average rate of 82.5%.  She will have produced One hundred and twenty-seven (127) baby chicks.

At placement on the pullet farms, thirteen (13) males will be placed for every one hundred (100) pullets.  They will be grown on a restricted diet similar to the hens but will be much larger in size in that of their female counterparts.  The males must be kept much lighter in weight than their genetic potential will allow or fertility will be reduced.

Eggs on the farms are placed in plastic flats and, then, transferred to metal farm buggies.  These buggies hold 5,200 eggs each and are on casters, so that they can be rolled around the farm, egg room and, then, loaded onto the trailer for transport.

"Holmes Foods is very progressive in their thinking on all things in the breeding area.  We're currently building new housing which is state-of-the-art as far as industry-wide.  They'll be drop ceiling houses, tunnel ventilated, computer controlled ventilation, automatic mechanical nests.  As cutting edge as there is in the country.  We are real excited about that."  -Joe Weber

"The current breeder hatchery dept came into being in January of 2002.  At that time most of the breeders and all the pullets were being grown in east Texas in the Nacogdoches area.  The hatchery was producing about 415,000 chicks per week on four days of hatch.

 

Since then there have been many changes.  Notable changes were the building of new breeder farms in the Gonzales area and the slow process of shutting down production in East Texas. The first new breeder farm came on line in December of 2002.  The houses were and still are state of the art with pan feeders and computerized controls to maintain optimal environment for the hens.   In October of 2008 we built or retrofitted  a total of 19 breeder houses and completely closed all egg production in East Texas.  

 

Beginning in May of 2005 we built 10 pullet houses and retrofitted two turkey brooding houses to get all our pullet production out of East Texas and moved to the Gonzales area.  These changes allowed us to eliminate a long and stressful move on all our pullets and have better control of our breeding stock.  The new equipment in the new houses allowed us to reduce the feed to produce a pullet by about 1.5 lbs and increased livability by at

least 1 percent.

 

The hatchery has undergone many changes during this time period also.  Beginning in 2005 we underwent a major expansion to allow us to grow for the future.  A 11,400 square foot addition included a new chick processing area with office, break room, and lab as well as expansion of two wings of the hatchery to allow us to be able to add additional incubators for future needs.  At this time we added 3 single stage setters as a trial.  This allowed us to begin hatching 5 days a week instead of 4 days as in the past.  Since then the single stage machines have proved to give us an advantage in hatchability and chick quality.  In 2008 we added three more single stage machines.  This gives us a capacity to hatch up to 715,000 chicks per week.  Future addition of incubators to fill up the building will give us a capacity to set over 1 million eggs per week.

 

Notable accomplishments in the hatchery are a steady improvement in chick quality as measured by 7 day mortality.  Over the last 6 years the mortality has decreased from a high of .98% to a low of .67%.  In March 2007 Inovoject was added to the process in the hatchery and since then the Inoveject team has become one of the top rated teams in the country.  

 

Jerry Elkins - Hatchery Manger
Rafael Romero - Hatchery Supervisor

The work in the hatchery begins when the eggs are received from the breeder farms.  The whole incubation process takes about twenty-one (21) days.  The first stage is incubation.  The eggs are transferred from farm racks to racks inside the incubators.  This process is referred to as "setting" the eggs.  The temperature, humidity and air flow are closely controlled inside the incubators to maximize the hatchability of the eggs.  The second stage of the incubation process begins after the eggs have been in the incubators for 17 to 18 days.  They are, then, placed back into farm racks and moved into another room to be transferred to the hatching machine.  Transferring involves taking the eggs from the plastic flats and putting them into plastic Hatcher trays.  Once in the Hatcher trays, they are rolled into the Hatcher for the duration of the incubation process.  The Hatcher environmental conditions are different from the incubator in that they are about 1.2 degrees cooler.  Twenty-one (21) days later they are removed from the Hatcher and are ready for processing.  Processing the chicks