IPPE: At Cobb, it all starts with genetics
William Herring shares an update on the latest R&D at Cobb and how it can help customers’ bottom line
24 March 2025
4 minute read
By: Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
William Herring, Vice President of Global Research and Development with Cobb-Vantress, recently spoke to The Poultry Site’s Sarah Mikesell at the International Production and Processing Expo (IPPE) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
William, tell me about your booth theme: “It all starts with genetics.”
Ultimately, it translates to what it means in customer performance. Over a short window of time, we've been pushing massive genetic improvements through the production pyramid. We're starting to see the results of our work and they are having positive effects.
Genetics are at the top of the pyramid and how those genetics transfer – whether it's breeder performance or male hatchability – is critical. Right now, we have an impressive male that's leading the industry on hatch and breeder performance and ultimately broiler performance.
When you think about the percentage of broiler chicken consumption, we have an impact. We touch almost every piece that gets distributed whether it's food service or fast food throughout the supply chain. It's a big responsibility and we take it seriously.
Last year you spoke about Proving Ground. What does it mean for new product development at Cobb?
Proving Ground is the cornerstone of how we operate our business and product development model going forward. Last year, we were at the start of the project for the construction of new houses and several retrofits. It's on the US East Coast, and we placed our very first elite pure lines there a year ago November.
The last week of March, if everything stays on schedule, we'll place our first large parent female flocks along with male breeders. That, in itself, is big for us and we'll be generating large breeder data that we can share with customers around our new product development pipeline.
Not only will we have the breeder data, but we're going to be generating many broiler eggs for customers to utilize and test within their system. It is a comprehensive system from beginning to end. Even though customers will be getting a taste of what some of those broilers are like, we'll take that product back to our own broiler facilities and grow those birds out to get the live data. Then they'll also go to our processing facility where we will do detailed meat quality work that will involve a detailed body composition.
We have a whole portfolio of traits that are important to profit and loss. It's a fun time for us. It's nice to be almost right there in the project. We’re just thankful that it's now part of our business model.
The data we are gathering is critical. I would say the biggest gap that it filled was on the breeder side. To generate substantial amounts of information that customers and future customers can be confident about, this is what they're going to get, and this is the type of performance potential a product will have.
This is the third year for the Cobb Research Initiative, what have you learned from your research and what's coming this year?
On January 28th, we made our official call for proposals for 2025, and we're really excited. Remember, it was two years ago, we did the initial call, and we executed nine projects with researchers from around the world. We're almost at the end of some of those multi-year projects. From some of the projects, we will be placing the technologies developed within our system for the benefit of Cobb and our customers.
They are doing exactly what we wanted them to do. We forged new relationships with researchers who are doing innovative work. There's a broad spectrum of things that we funded, but a lot of them utilize artificial intelligence and/or use camera technology incorporated with artificial intelligence, which has helped us to measure traits that have been difficult for us to get a good assessment on. From a genetics perspective, if we can't measure it then we can't improve it.
We're looking forward to the pre-proposals that'll be coming in a few weeks from this round.
Sarah Mikesell
Sarah Mikesell grew up on a five-generation family farming operation in Ohio, USA, where her family still farms. She feels extraordinarily lucky to get to do what she loves - write about livestock and crop agriculture. You can find her on LinkedIn.
