The Hatchability Crisis
Over the last twelve years, US broiler hatchability has declined by 6 percentage points, leading to significant financial losses. Despite the severity of this trend, the underlying cause remains elusive, leaving industry leaders grappling for answers. In this report, we delve into the history of hatchability, review the leading theories, and propose practical, science-driven solutions to reverse the trend and improve the industry’s bottom line.
In recent decades, most aspects of animal agriculture have seen significant improvements in efficiency and productivity. However, hatchability in the broiler industry stands out as an exception. After decades of steady improvement since the 1980s, hatchability in the US began a surprising and sustained decline starting in the 2010s. This downturn has now persisted for over 12 years, leading to significant financial losses, including the annual loss of around 550 million potential broilers, which would be worth 6% of industry revenues. Moreover, this decline may increase the broiler industry's vulnerability to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and necessitate more construction of expensive breeder housing. Despite its severity, the reasons behind this trend remain elusive, leaving industry leaders grappling for answers.
The Cost of the Crisis
Hatchability, mirroring other trends in animal agriculture, improved throughout the late 1990s and 2000s. Prior to this, there is limited data, but some research suggests it may have been improving since the 1970s. But starting around 2012, after peaking around 85%, the trailing twelve month average of broiler hatchability began steadily declining each year, reaching 79% in 2024. The trend shows no sign of stopping, and hatchability may fall further in the coming years.
A reduction in hatchability means that more breeders are needed to produce the same number of chicks, substantially increasing the costs of chick production. Since 2012, the size of the US broiler breeder flock has grown 12 percentage points more than chicken meat production over the same time period, largely due to the decrease in hatchability.
This remarkable increase in the size of the broiler breeding flock relative to broiler production has important cost and sustainability implications for the industry. A 6 percentage point change in hatchability means that an additional 550 million broilers annually are not hatched, which would be worth 6% of industry revenues.
A less efficient breeder flock both increases the price of broiler production and makes the industry less sustainable. For instance, new breeding facilities must be built to house the additional birds needed to meet US production goals. One cost estimate of new breeder housing showed that, with high interest rates, labor shortages, and increased material costs, a four-house, 40,000 head breeder farm may come out to $3 million not including the land. Given these increased expenses, integrators in the US have begun to directly subsidize breeder operations, which represents a growing cost to the industry. Producers can’t control interest rates, but they can influence hatchability.
Aside from the more predictable issues that arise from decreased efficiency, broiler breeders have a significantly higher exposure risk to HPAI than broilers. As the breeder to broiler ratio grows, HPAI’s impact on the industry will become more significant. According to USDA APHIS, as of November 2024, there were 26 confirmed HPAI infections in commercial broiler breeder operations since the beginning of the 2022 HPAI outbreak.
Surprisingly, there is no consensus on why the US has been experiencing this hatchability decrease, although a number of hypotheses have been put forth by veterinarians and other industry stakeholders. Some people believe that the problem is isolated to the US, meaning that the underlying cause must be something specific to the US market, but unfortunately global data is too limited to confirm this hypothesis.
Understanding Hatchability
To understand the root cause of the Hatchability Crisis, it's crucial to understand exactly what hatchability measures. Hatchability is calculated by comparing the number of chicks that hatch relative to the number of eggs set for incubation. Given the length and complexity of this stage of poultry production, many different factors can therefore affect hatchability.
Roughly 40 to 50% of hatch losses are due to infertility. These infertile eggs take up valuable incubator space and waste hatchery labor. Causes of infertility on the breeder farm include feed or water imbalances, incorrect mating ratios, high stocking-densities, and even hot weather. Breeder flock age is another important determining factor of infertility, with expected hatchability peaking around 35 weeks before declining steadily. Genetic selection for improved feed conversion and weight gain in broilers can also trade off against fertility.
The remainder of hatch loss results from embryonic death during the standard 21-day incubation process. This embryo mortality is most common early in the process, while fertile eggs are being transported to the hatchery and during the first three days of incubation. Early-term mortality is heavily influenced by egg age at set. It can be common in broiler hatcheries to have hatching egg storage times of greater than one week prior to set, which is when hatchability starts to decline precipitously. Additional causes of early-term embryo mortality include suboptimal egg storage conditions such as poor temperature and humidity control, low quality incubation equipment, or poor transportation methods.
Embryonic mortality in the mid-term, while less common, is often caused by poor incubation equipment management, like incorrect egg turning or temperature. The remainder of embryo death occurs as the eggs get closer to hatching, and is primarily influenced by environmental factors like poor ventilation in the hatcher or incorrectly positioned embryos.
Unfortunately, there is no public data demonstrating that the Hatchability Crisis is concentrated in one particular part of the cycle. If this information was available, it would help point to a specific underlying cause of the Hatchability Crisis, because different potential causes influence hatch loss at various stages of development.
Possible Causes
Numerous possible explanations for the Hatchability Crisis have been proposed, although there is not sufficient data to say with certainty if there’s a single underlying cause, and, if so, what it is. A viable hypothesis must explain why the decrease started in 2012 and then steadily continued over the subsequent 12 years.
COVID Disruptions
One theory proposes that COVID temporarily reduced the demand for chicken meat, causing breeder flocks to be retired early and new placements reduced. Then, when demand returned, breeder flocks were older on average and were pushed to their limits, resulting in significant infertility issues. Relatedly, COVID’s chaotic impact on the supply chain may have increased the average egg age at set, leading to higher early-term embryonic mortality.
However, the theory that COVID caused the Hatchability Crisis does not fully explain the data. Though it is true that hatchability significantly decreased during and after the pandemic, the steady decline in hatchability started almost a decade before COVID.
Genetic Tradeoffs between Efficiency and Reproduction
The decrease in hatchability may also be an unintended side effect of genetic selection towards feed conversion rate (FCR) and breast yield, which are critical traits in broiler production.
Though there is no doubt that optimizing for yield and FCR can influence reproductive traits, the strongest argument against this hypothesis is that US hatchability improved in tandem with FCR and yield through the ‘90s and early 2000s. Thus, this hypothesis fails to explain why the ability to optimize for performance traits without significantly impacting hatchability suddenly shifted in 2012 and has yet to recover. Additionally, if the underlying cause was genetic, we would expect to see comparable trends in Europe, and other countries which use similar genetics.
US-Style Nest Boxes Increasing Floor Eggs
If genetic optimizations for improved feed conversion and yield have not led to a notable reduction in breeder fertility, increased breeder size could still indirectly contribute to the Hatchability Crisis by increasing floor eggs.
In the US, most breeder farms utilize individual rather than communal nest boxes. Typically, a hen walks head first into an individual nest and turns around before laying an egg. If the hens have grown larger while the individual nest boxes have stayed the same size, it may be difficult for hens to easily turn around, causing them to lay more eggs on the floor. These floor eggs are often not set, because they have a higher bacterial load, higher infertility, and up to 20 percentage points worse hatchability. If the floor egg percentage has been climbing because breeder hens have been outgrowing their nests, it is plausible that more floor eggs are being set to meet downstream placement commitments, impacting hatchability metrics.
This is a compelling theory, but is likely only a part of the puzzle. Though some industry stakeholders have argued the percentage of floor eggs has increased sharply over the previous decade, it is unlikely to account for the majority of the Hatchability Crisis’ 6 percentage point decline. For example, even if floor eggs increased from 2% to 12% of total hatching eggs set, we estimate this would cause a hatchability decline of only 2 percentage points.
Aging Industry Infrastructure
Difficult financial conditions or other economic incentives in the sector might be hindering the ability of breeder farms and hatcheries to re-invest in critical infrastructure like new facilities, improved disinfection equipment, or increased workforce training and development. Aging infrastructure and lower aggregate workforce skill could negatively impact things like age of hatching eggs at set, temperature management, disinfection practices, and breeder flock management, all of which could lead to hatch loss at different stages of the incubation cycle.
One virtue of this theory is that it could explain the difficulty of identifying a single underlying cause of the Hatchability Crisis. If hatcheries and breeder farms don’t have the capital or incentive to re-invest in their operations over time, it could result in challenges across many areas and influence hatchability throughout the incubation cycle. However, we are unaware of any industry shocks around 2012 that would have led to sustained lower capital investments. As such, this theory falls short in explaining why the decline started around 2012 in particular.
Enterococcus Faecalis
One theory, proposed by Dr. Donald Reynolds from the University of Nebraska, blames a specific microbe, Enterococcus Faecalis, for the mysterious decade-long drop in hatchability rates. This bug is often found in poultry environments but not generally considered a harmful pathogen. Indeed, not all E. Faecalis is virulent, but Reynolds’ research recently discovered the bacteria is often found in dead embryos and infertile eggs, and certain strains can cause significant or even total embryo loss of infected hatching eggs.
Since the bug is so common and not all strains are virulent, breeder farms and hatcheries may not take precautions to fight it, leading Reynolds to call it a “Trojan horse.” In order to fully explain the Hatchability Crisis, levels of virulent strains of E. Faecalis would need to have been slowly and steadily increasing over the last 12 years–data that was not collected because until recently methods were not available to identify virulent strains.
Identifying a Root Cause
Having spoken with dozens of industry participants about the Hatchability Crisis, it is clear that there is no consensus around one particular theory as to its cause(s). Often, these theories come from the experiences of a particular integrator or hatchery, but, as an industry, we simply don’t have enough shared data to identify a single underlying cause for the industry-wide trend.
In an effort to identify a potential cause, further hard data is necessary. Collecting this data may require cooperation and a concerted effort by the industry to encourage funding for academic and governmental research. As a starting point, here are some critical questions that only industry-wide data can answer:
Has hatch loss been concentrated in one particular part of the embryo development cycle, or was it caused by a decrease in fertility?
Have other countries experienced similar phenomena using the same or similar genetics?
Has hatchability decreased more in particular geographical areas within the US?
Has there, in fact, been a steady increase in virulent strains of E. Faecalis on farms?
This data could be gathered through an industry taskforce or through an intermediary in academia, government, or multi-stakeholder organizations like US Poultry or the National Chicken Council. The intermediary could collect and analyze sensitive operational data while maintaining producer confidentiality.
Until we have answers to these types of questions, the root cause of the Crisis will remain unclear, and the industry will continue to haphazardly explore each idiosyncratic theory. It is thus crucial that we collectively demonstrate the resilience, ingenuity, and collaborative spirit that has long defined our sector and come together to attack this problem.
Technological Solutions
While the industry works to unravel the underlying cause of the Hatchability Crisis, producers still have the ability to mitigate some of its effects by leaning into technological solutions to improve hatchability and target some of the proposed causes.
To mitigate the negative economic and sustainability effects of the Hatchability Crisis, the goal should be to increase broiler production per broiler breeder. Hatchability is an important aspect of this, but not the only consideration.
For example, floor eggs are not captured in hatchability metrics since they are often not set due to their reduced hatchability and diminished chick quality. By decreasing floor eggs, more broilers would be produced per breeder. Likewise, hatchability numbers do not reflect transportation mortality or poor chick quality, which can result in hatched chicks dying or being destroyed rather than placed on a farm.
Solutions Targeting E. Faecalis
If it turns out that E. Faecalis is the underlying cause of the Hatchability Crisis, there are, fortunately, some available solutions. One way to mitigate the effects of virulent E. Faecalis is through more effective disinfection procedures.
Agri Advanced Technologies (AAT) recently released a new technology, called “E-ggytizer,” which uses electron beam technology to penetrate the egg shell and destroy bacteria inside. According to AAT, sterilization methods such as formalin or UV light only disinfect the outer egg shell, whereas electron beams can penetrate through the egg shell without harming the embryo.
AAT reports that E-ggytizer boosts hatchability by 1-2 percentage points over formalin disinfection. Since E. Faecalis can be absorbed through the egg shell, electron beam sterilization may prove to be a particularly promising solution.
Another promising approach to combat virulent E. faecalis focuses on enhancing gut health in broiler breeders to reduce transmission from hen to egg. Recognizing the hatchability challenge, Arm & Hammer developed CERTILLUS HatchWell, a probiotic feed supplement specifically designed to boost gut health and strengthen resistance against E. faecalis. HatchWell operates through two distinct mechanisms to reduce hatch losses caused by virulent E. faecalis strains. First, it inhibits E. faecalis colonization in the breeder's intestine, reducing the risk of of infection through fecal contamination. Second, improved gut health strengthens the intestinal barrier, decreasing the risk of systemic infections contaminating eggs through the hen’s reproductive organs.
Solutions to Aging Infrastructure
To directly address hatchability, there are few things more impactful than effective and modern incubation equipment. We have all visited hatcheries where the temperamental nature of older incubation equipment is on full display—hatchery operators know which machines require frequent rotation of trolleys or other ad hoc interventions during the incubation cycle. Very few hatcheries can operate by “setting it and forgetting it.” These limitations create extra work for hatchery staff and translate directly into lower hatchability and chick quality.
Outdated incubators can have suboptimal ventilation systems, which struggle to maintain consistent airflow and proper gas exchange throughout the incubator. Temperature management is often imprecise or manual, with hot and cold spots creating an inconsistent environment for developing embryos. Ultimately, these outdated systems not only burden staff with constant monitoring and adjustment, but also represent a significant barrier to achieving optimal hatchability and high chick quality.
One of the most promising incubator investments a hatchery can make to improve hatchability is SetCare, a new setter by HatchTech. SetCare’s main innovation is to slowly increase the temperature in the incubator over the first few days of incubation. Early-stage embryos are more likely to survive this gradual heating than a more standard prewarming practice, decreasing early embryonic mortality by three percentage points. The resulting incubation process is increased from 21 days to 24 days, but this longer incubation time is economically offset by a potential 20% reduction in hatch loss compared to their standard incubator. HatchTech also claims that, because the embryos develop more robustly, first-week mortality rates and post-hatch performance also improve, further bolstering the economic case for this new technology.
If a hatchery can’t transform its operations from the standard 21 day incubation, there are plenty of modern incubators that substantially outperform older models, and simply upgrading to these newer models could do a lot to improve hatchability. The best solutions are now designed to limit manual interventions while maintaining consistent temperatures and an optimal atmosphere. While the upfront investment in these modern incubators can be substantial, they provide long-term improvements in hatchability, labor utilization, and chick quality. The Hatchability Crisis serves as an opportunity to reset and focus on setting up businesses for sustainable long term success.
Solutions on the Breeder Farm
Another approach to increasing broiler production per broiler breeder is intervention on the breeder farm. For the US market in particular, there are two promising potential interventions that producers should consider.
Dr. Rick van Emous, a researcher at Wageningen University, argues that producers may be experiencing a particular decrease in hatchability around 40-45 weeks of age, potentially caused by overmating. His proposed solution is to start breeder flocks out with a lower percentage of males and increase the percentage over time.
Standard practice in the US is starting breeder flocks with 9% males at placement, which drops gradually due to mortality and culls by 40 weeks of age. At this point, males are periodically added, a practice referred to as “spiking.” The high percentage of starting males may lead to “excessive” mating early in the hens’ lives, which in turn reduces their proclivity to engage in voluntary mating later in life. This is problematic because forced mating is successful only 50% of the time and can cause damage to the hens’ feathers or skin. Unhealthy and overmated hens also exhibit hiding behavior which can reduce fertility.
Van Emous’ proposal is to instead start with 5 percentage points fewer males and to gradually increase the number throughout the course of the laying phase. His research finds that late phase fertility is much higher in flocks raised this way. He attributes this to the hens being more likely to engage in voluntary mating because they have developed less fear of roosters early in their life. This intervention may be particularly relevant given that the average age of breeder flocks in the US may be increasing. For producers, this approach is both effective and economical—hatchability improves, fewer roosters are used, and the hens are healthier with less feather and skin damage.
The second promising intervention on breeder farms lies in modernizing nest box systems. While most countries have widely adopted community nest boxes, many US facilities continue to rely on individual nest boxes or undersized community nests which result in more floor eggs. Although individual nesting systems offer certain operational benefits, mounting evidence suggests they may be a significant contributing factor to the current Hatchability Crisis.
The Van Gent Nest system sold by Vencomatic Group has emerged as a particularly well-engineered communal nest box for mitigating this issue. It’s specifically designed for today’s larger breeder hens, and it has a demonstrated record of minimizing floor eggs. The nest is constructed with marine-grade plywood, which broiler breeders prefer. In addition, its solid wooden design makes it easy to clean yet able to withstand many years of breeder farm conditions.
The Hatchery of the Future
Since the goal is to increase the number of high-quality broilers produced per broiler breeder, the Hatchery of the Future may be one of the most promising long term solutions to the Hatchability Crisis. The Hatchery of the Future represents a fundamental shift from handling chicks to handling eggs, moving all vital processes to the pre-hatch phase, facilitating higher levels of automation and process control while eliminating stressful handling and transportation of chicks. This shift is possible due to the combination of technologies like in-ovo sexing, in-ovo vaccination, in-ovo feeding, and on-farm hatching.
On-farm hatching allows producers to reduce antibiotic use, increase productivity, and increase their supply chain flexibility. Some research suggests the technology may also be useful to help mitigate the Hatchability Crisis by extending the hatch window so that chicks that hatch very early or very late can still be utilized. Additionally, 2-5% of chicks do not survive transportation from hatchery to farm, so on-farm hatching also increases the number of viable chicks even at the same hatchability rate. Finally, on-farm hatching the breeder stock may provide greater resistance to bacteria like E. faecalis because the technology can improve gastro-intestinal development.
These production efficiencies are also seen with early feeding systems, especially those that reduce or eliminate chick handling. For example, hatchers like HatchTech’s HatchCare or Petersime’s X-Streamer can provide chicks with food, water, and light inside the incubator when they hatch. In addition, clever basket design allows for hatcheries to completely eliminate the stressful counting of newly hatched chicks. These systems also increase hatchability by extending the hatch window and reducing late term mortality.
Technologies like on-farm hatching and early feeding offer demonstrated benefits and are currently available for producers to leverage. Other aspects of the Hatchery of the Future have less of a historical track record, but they could show promise for hatchability improvements in the future, perhaps even above historical levels.
Sex-specific regimens of in-ovo feeding, vaccination, and probiotic supplementation can create a more robust and fertile future breeder flock. For example, recent research out of the University of Connecticut showed that in-ovo probiotic supplementation could improve hatchability by 5 percentage points. This could be particularly effective if the cause of the Hatchability Crisis is E. faecalis and probiotics could be created that specifically inhibit its colonization. It is also possible that cheaper in-ovo sexing could unlock sex-specific versions of this probiotic that are even more effective.
Collaboration in the Face of Crisis
The Hatchability Crisis we face today is a pivotal opportunity for the industry. The sustained decline in hatchability over the past decade is a real, substantial threat that we need to address head-on.
The path forward requires a two-pronged approach. First, the industry must come together to establish a comprehensive research initiative that can help identify the root cause of the Hatchability Crisis. Whether through an industry taskforce or academic partnerships, this collaborative effort is essential to moving beyond individual theories and toward concrete solutions. Second, while this research is ongoing, producers should continue to explore and implement the promising technological and management solutions already available.
The industry has historically shown remarkable ability to overcome challenges through innovation and collaboration. The Hatchability Crisis presents an opportunity to once again demonstrate this resilience. With concerted effort and industry-wide collaboration, we can not only address this crisis, but emerge stronger and better equipped to meet the growing global demand for sustainable protein production.
Have you successfully improved your hatchability? Are you a producer who wants to discuss how to improve hatchability in your operation? Have you created a technology to help improve hatchability? We would love to hear from you! Over the coming months Innovate Animal Ag plans to dig more into The Hatchability Crisis, and to share more of our learnings on the dramatic and mysterious fall of US broiler hatchability.