Venture Award Recipient 2022
Nominated by Southwest Iowa REC
VIDEO

Hen Haven’s layer facilities began operation in the 1990s, supplying shell eggs to the breaker industry. Seeing the future need for cagefree eggs, the owners remodeled nine layer barns and added new processing machinery to sell eggs to the cage-free breaker market.

Freebird Holdco LLC purchased the site in 2021 and renamed the company, Hen Haven. At the end of November 2021, the site suffered a fire, causing a catastrophic loss of one layer house, the processing plant and the biosecurity facilities. Just as the company started to rebuild in February 2022, highly pathogenic avian influenza hit, and the site was depopulated. During that time, the determined Hen Haven team worked tirelessly to shorten the cleanup period, repopulate the barns and resume operation. Hen Haven has also added two additional layer houses to the facility. The recent challenges demonstrate the Hen Haven team’s dedication to delivering top products and services to their customers and partners.