Farms

Parent Breeder Farms

Currently Noble Foods has three parent breeder farms, which can stock up to 80,000 females and 10,000 males. Fertile hatching eggs are laid at these parent breeder farms which are then transported to a designated hatchery. Each of the female breeding birds produces around 98 chicks during a 48 week laying cycle. To reduce the parent birds' risk from disease the most stringent bio-security measures are enforced at the breeder farms.

Hatchery

Once the parent breeder eggs reach one of 3 hatcheries they are incubated for a period of three weeks. When the chicks hatch they are vaccinated on site against the most prevalent poultry diseases then are transported in temperature-controlled vehicles to the rearing farms.

Rearing Farms

Noble Foods has 18 company-owned rearing farms and rears around 4 million pullets per year. Our rearing farms provide point of lay birds for both company-owned laying farms and for external sales to independent producers. Pullets remain in rear until they reach 16 weeks of age, at which point they are transported to the laying farm. On arrival at the laying farm the birds receive additional vaccinations which help to further protect them throughout their laying cycle.

Laying Farms

There are currently four different systems used for the production of eggs in the UK; Organic, Free Range, Barn and Conventional Cage with Noble Foods producing eggs from all four types. During recent years, more emphasis has been placed on free range production as demand for higher standards of bird welfare has increased.

Enriched Cages

January 2012 sees the introduction of new EU legislation for cage laying hens and, in accordance with these higher standards, Noble Foods has invested significantly to develop two state-of-the-art enriched colony cage production facilities.