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Eggheads is the go-to podcast for egg industry professionals who are interested in leadership and innovation in the egg world. Host Greg Schonefeld explores the evolving world of modern egg farming, from the latest in cage-free innovations and organic certifications to navigating the economics of large-scale production. Whether you're an egg producer, supplier, or involved in poultry genetics, this show provides the insights and expert discussions you need to thrive in the industry. Crack open the science, strategies, and stories behind the egg industry’s biggest challenges and opportunities.
Max Obers:
We really want to help farmers improve the wellbeing of their animals and also the performance of those animals. So that's our interest and we always like to show what that effect of light can be.
Greg Schonefeld:
I'm Greg Schonefeld, and this is Eggheads. When it comes to lighting a hint house, I think the average person would figure, all right, string up a few lights, plug them in, and you're set. But in reality, lighting doesn't just help chicken see. It influences how they behave, where they move, whether they stay calm or become aggressive, and ultimately, how well a farm performs. And part of the reason for that comes down to something most people have never thought about. Chickens actually perceive light very differently than we do.
Max Obers:
With their eyes, they can see a wider spectrum that we as humans can. They can also see more frames per second than we as humans can.
Greg Schonefeld:
That's Max Obers, the CEO of HATO Lighting, a company based in the Netherlands that specializes in agricultural lighting solutions. Today, most of their business is in poultry, but the company started more than 50 years ago with a focus on a very different type of organism.
Max Obers:
There were two guys named Hans and Ton who started the company. That's also the reason why the company is called HATO. And they actually started with lights for mushroom cells back then. So there was very high ammonia levels in those cells and very high temperatures. So they created the light that you could use in the mushroom cells and you could leave there for 20 years with no problems.
Greg Schonefeld:
Max's grandfather, a mushroom farmer himself, was one of HATO's first customers. And his son began working in the business as a teenager.
Max Obers:
They had mushroom cells at their house, so my father installed the lights there.
Greg Schonefeld:
Later on, as the mushroom market became saturated, Max's dad realized they needed to broaden their customer base.
Max Obers:
And there they started selling those lights into the poultry industry. And there it was actually very interesting because he started selling more and more and more of those lights without actually knowing why the poultry industry was buying these lights.
Greg Schonefeld:
And as he spoke to more and more farmers around the Netherlands, he realized something that would completely change the course of not just their business, but egg operations everywhere.
Max Obers:
Then he found out that the light actually has quite a big influence on the behavior of these animals. And this is about 30, 35 years ago. And at that point, he started to be involved more in the business. He purchased half of the business and later he purchased the full business, and then we started to develop these lights for the poultry industry.
Greg Schonefeld:
Today, HATO sells lights to poultry operations around the globe, and they've expanded to other areas of animal agriculture as well. Max joins us to explain all of the different ways you can influence animal behavior through lighting, some of the science behind it, and why there's so much more to lighting that meets the eye. Okay, pun intended.
I understand that what we know today is that a lot of it comes down to how the chicken perceives light, and that that's kind of the key. Can you talk some about how chickens perceive light differently than humans?
Max Obers:
So there is two main differences. We as humans, we have three cones in our eyes, so we can see blue, green, and red color, but the poultry, they have four cones. So they can also see blue, green, red, but they can also see UV. And so with their eyes, they can see a wider spectrum that we as humans can. They can also see more frames per second than we as humans can.
But the big difference is that the poultry can not only perceive the light via their eyes, but they can also perceive light via the brains by the hypothalamus and pineal gland. So when you have a light intensity above five luxe, then they can perceive the light by the brains. So even a chicken that's blind, you can still influence it by changing the lights.
Greg Schonefeld:
Interesting. So how does that impact what you do with lighting?
Max Obers:
Yeah. So with the spectrum, we always try to bring as much as possible natural spectrum inside the house. So we always say, okay, if you have a white light, that's actually a combination of multiple colors. And the wider the spectrum is, so the more closed comes to the actual sunlight, the better it is. And then there is multiple different colors that you can use to mitigate certain behavior in houses. I think a very common practice that's used nowadays a lot is blue collar. So if you want to populate your house, depopulate it or do vaccination and you have your full house only in blue light, so monochromatic blue, then you will see that all the birds in the house is sit still and they're not moving.
Greg Schonefeld:
So that's just a light that kind of calms the bird and yet people can see and you can walk and do whatever you need to do in the house under that light.
Max Obers:
Exactly.
Greg Schonefeld:
Okay.
Max Obers:
Exactly. There are some people that say that the poultry cannot see the blue light. So for them it's dark and for the people you can actually see to vaccinate or catch the birds or whatever you need to do. But that's not true. So the poultry can actually perceive blue light much better than we as humans can. It's not scientifically proven why it is that they're sitting still, but the theory that a lot of people use is the blue color. It simulates a dark night without clouds and a full moon. And the natural instinct of the poultry at that point is that they sit still because they're afraid if they start moving that the predator will take them.
Greg Schonefeld:
It makes sense. I could see where a full moon would be a scary night for a chicken.
So now that we understand much more about how a chicken perceives light, you can start to see why lighting becomes a tool, not just for visibility, but for influencing behavior inside the house. And what's interesting is most of this understanding is relatively recent. Not that long ago, lighting was basically just on or off. Today it's something producers can fine tune across multiple dimensions.
Max Obers:
If you go a few decades back, the only thing that you can do is you can put the light on in the morning and you can put it off in the evening. So then that's the only thing you can play with. Then dimmable lights were introduced in the market. So nowadays, almost everyone is using dimmable lights. So you can decide when to put it on, when to put it off, but you can also play with the light intensity. You can dim it up slowly in the morning to simulate the sun coming up and you can dim it down slowly in the evening and you can play with that light intensity. Then there is a few parameters you can play with, you can decide when to put it on and off and what intensity of the light you're using. But nowadays, it's going to become much more complex because there is a lot of different kinds of spectrums that you're using, but you can also change the spectrum.
So now you can decide when to put it on and off. You can decide what light intensity, but you can also decide on what light spectrum you want to use. Do you want to use a more cold white spectrum during your production or a more warm white? But the main difference and the main takeaway from that would be the warmer the light, the more calm the birds will be in the house and the more cold it is, the more active they will be.
Greg Schonefeld:
Is there a reason you'd want your birds calm sometimes and more active other times?
Max Obers:
So normally when you speak about laying hands in production, it's common to use a more warm white light. They are more calmer in this way. But if you use more cold white, they are more active. So if they're an act production or you have places where you don't want eggs on the floor, that's something that could work for that. But also for your pullets. If you use cold white light at the beginning, you see them to be more active. So there is better development of muscles and bones in that period. So that is also a way you can play with it.
Greg Schonefeld:
How does lighting affect production then? Does a calmer bird also produce more eggs or gets injured less?
Max Obers:
Well, we always say that a bird who feels better also produces better. So in terms of if the wellbeing of the animals is better, they will also give you better production results. And then there is actually a lot of things in the light that play a role in that. If your birds are overactive, when there is a lot of activity or when you have issues with piling or packing, of course that's going to hurt your production numbers. If you don't have enough light on the floor and you have an aviary house, then you will see on your dark spots on the floor, you will see X on the floor. So you always need to find the right balance of having enough light, have the light distributed evenly across the house, but also don't give them too much light and be... Otherwise, the birds will be too active and you'll see other challenges in your house.
Greg Schonefeld:
I mean, cage-free is where the birds can roam around a lot more and all that. I mean, did lighting take on a lot more importance with cage-free versus caged environments?
Max Obers:
Absolutely. Yeah, and it still does today. So in cage-free environments, people know the light is going to be extremely important. So if you don't manage it well in a cage-free environment, it's going to cost you a lot of money in terms of do active birds, eggs on the floor, et cetera.
Greg Schonefeld:
Okay. Yeah. And then I think people have started to put in conventional a little bit more lately where the market was totally cage-free the last 10 years, but lighting matters in those environments too, right?
Max Obers:
Yeah. So in the conventional housing, the light matters too. And there you can actually, because it's a little bit easier to see the differences, we always suggest people to just try a lights at one house and they see what the difference of the light is. And they can compare mortality rates, feed conversion, and egg production by different houses, and they will see significant differences in that. Yeah.
Greg Schonefeld:
Okay. So you tell them just to try it and you know that they'll come back for more?
Max Obers:
Yeah. I mean, that's what we like. I mean, we are never too much interested to sell a light, but we really want to help farmers improve the wellbeing of their animals and also the performance of those animals. So that's our interest and we always like to show what that effect of light can be.
Greg Schonefeld:
So on top of wavelength and intensity, birds are extremely sensitive to flashing lights that humans may not even sense. And that sort of strobing effect is very common when farms are using what are called AC lighting systems.
Max Obers:
The thing that we have seen as well is if light's controlled by AC, then the light is normally going on and off very fast. And we as humans, we cannot perceive that by our eyes, but the birds, they can see more frames per second, but they can also perceive the lights by the brains, fight hypothalamus and pineal gland. So it is light going on and off, creates a stress factor for the birds in the house. So there we have also seen in the last decades by eliminating this flickering of the light and going on and off, we also help while being in the house of the birds, but also in this way, they will perform better. And we do that with DC lighting.
Greg Schonefeld:
Okay. The AC has this natural flickering that people don't see, but the birds do see. And so you've moved to DC to eliminate that.
Max Obers:
Yeah. Actually, you can have AC light with flickering, but on a certain frequency that the birds can also not see it. So when it's over 120 hertz, then birds will not be able to see it either, but you can still influence them with a flickering light because they can perceive it via the brains. So our belief there is when you take it completely away, there is a stress factor less for the birds. And we strongly believe in a flicker-free environment. You can do that with AC light as well, but with DC, that's easier.
Greg Schonefeld:
And is that common in the market or uncommon?
Max Obers:
I would say in Europe, it's very common. I mean, we are in a market here for a few decades and everyone is very familiar with DC. In the US market, I would say it's a little bit on your concept, but also there people see good results with it. So this is a fast-growing.
Greg Schonefeld:
And are there other trade-offs between AC and DC?
Max Obers:
Yeah. So for the bird's performance, DC will be better. Lifetime of the products will be longer with DC. The trade-off is that the installation of DC is a bit more complex. So where you can, with AC, you can make one long line with lights and it's pretty straightforward how to install that. With DC, you can only have a limited number of lights on one line, and then you have to split the line. So in terms of installation, it's a bit more complex.
Greg Schonefeld:
Is the lighting more kind of dispersed instead of continuous?
Max Obers:
So what we always do is when we sell lights somewhere for a project, we make a light plan. So we make an exact simulation of a house. We say, okay, these are the places where we have to position the light in order to get the light intensity and distribution on the floor that we would say it's best for the performance. So that is what we do. And then we say, okay, the lights need to be positioned at these coordinates. But you can say, let's say you can make one string of 21 lights, but then that's the maximum that you can do with this DC light. So then you have to make a new string of 21 lights directly after that. But the coordinates and the positioning of the lights will not be influenced by that.
Greg Schonefeld:
I understand a big part of your goal is to get the birds to lay eggs in the nest. What are some things that you do to make that happen? Is that about the positioning or the intensity of the light or is it like all the above?
Max Obers:
All of the above. Normally the rule is if there is a dark spot in the house, that's placed where you will get X, if that's not the nest itself. So when you have a floor housing and you have nests in the floor housing, what we normally always recommend if you go from the walls to the nest to the entrance of the nest, the light intensity should decrease approximately 20% by going into the nest. Because then in this way you stimulate the birds to go into the nest and position the racks there. If you will see that close to the walls, it's a bit too dark, then you will get a lot of X close to the walls. Or in the corner of the house, if the light intensity is not high enough at those places, then those will be the places where you get X on the floor.
So in those activity areas, you want to distribute the light very evenly, but also going towards the nest, you want to decrease the lighter density slightly, and this way you motivate them. And if you speak about an aviary, a good takeaway there is that you make different dim zones in the house. So in the evening, you have your eye lights, the lights in the aisles, you have your lights under the system, you have your lights in the systems, and if some houses you also have the perch lights above the system. And there we dim down first the under system lights, the eye lights, then the in system lights, and lastly, the bird's lights. And this way, you can train the birds to go into the systems in the evening. So you will see if they're from pool, it's trained this way by the different light groups that you have, and you dim them down, let's say in 15 minutes, but you do first, you follow this pattern, then you will see that all the birds go automatically into the system, and that's also something that's going to help a lot.
Greg Schonefeld:
So lighting and cage-free farming can be really important, and that's for obvious reasons. The birds have a greater range of motion, and they'll naturally gravitate to areas that feel more comfortable to them. But as Max explained to me, traditional cage farming presents its own kind of challenges.
Max Obers:
If you look at a traditional cage facility where it's still most hands in the world, they are in cages. You have to challenge with your light that the light intensity on the different tiers is never the same. The chickens sitting close to the light, they have very high light intensity, and the chickens in the lowest tier, they have very low light intensity. If you want to give the chicken in the lowest tier, let's say 30 lux of light intensity, then the chicken close to the light maybe has 250 lux or 200 lux.
So those birds in the case, they get crazy. So the farmers, they tend to dim down those lights very deep because otherwise they get issues with the chickens sitting close to the light. And if you then start measuring your egg production on all your different tiers in the system, you see that you're losing egg production in the lowest tiers because those chickens almost get no light there.
So we develop solutions that give a more even light distribution, all those different tiers. And in this way, you have less activity problems in the cages close to the light and you have higher egg production in those low steers.
Greg Schonefeld:
Interesting. Does that require basically putting in more lighting or not necessarily?
Max Obers:
No, for this one, not necessarily. We designed the light that's shining the light into the aisles itself, and it has a coating to protect the light to shine directly in the eyes of the chicken sitting close to it. So in this way, you get a very even light distribution without increasing the number of the lights in the house.
Greg Schonefeld:
So when it comes to lighting, I mean, I'm really getting that there's two major factors. It's how you position the lights and then also maybe the quality of the light that you produce and kind of how that interacts with the bird. If you're going to go into a house and assess whether it has good lighting or issues with its lighting, what's your approach?
Max Obers:
So normally then we have a light meter. We do an analysis of the house, we measure it. Then we can see the actual spectrum of the light. We can see the color rendering index, we can see the amount of red color in the light. We can see the light intensity at different places in the house. So in that way, we can also see what the distribution of the light is in the house and we can measure flickering. So all these things can be measured, and then we can give an analysis and say, "Okay, well, this is actually the light environment here is perfect." So there is no need to change anything or there is some things that can be changed by changing the positioning of the lights or changing the full light systems.
Greg Schonefeld:
I guess once you have your lighting set up right, what can go wrong from there?
Max Obers:
And especially if we speak about laying hands when they are in production, you want every day to be the same. So you want to have an automated program that repeats the same day every day and not decrease the day length or start playing with the spectrum when they're in production. One thing, if it's important to keep your lights clean, the farms tend to be very dusty. And if the lights get too dirty, then of course there is less light intensity coming out of the lights. So I would say that's definitely a thing to look at to keep them clean, but for the rest, your light program should run. And we always advise not to interfere too much with it when you're in production.
Greg Schonefeld:
Interesting. So really it's about cleaning them. And then how long does it last? How long do the lights last? Do you have to replace them often?
Max Obers:
So on the most solutions that we sell, we provide eight years warranty, but I mean, in most of those lights, you can use them for 10 years easily. If you cannot reach a certain light intensity, let's say you want to reach 40 lux on the floor, but at some point your lights are not able to do that anymore. Well, that's the time you have to change the lights to make sure that you can reach the required light intensities. And that's also a good thing to know about lights, especially with LED lights. They're not going to fail at one point. So normally you see with LED lights that they lose a little bit of the power over time. So depending on what kind of quality light that you have that goes very fast or that takes a very long time. What we normally do when we sell lights at the beginning in an installation, we supply 30% more light than we say.
So if you need 40 lux as a light intensity on the floor, we actually provide 52, 30% more to make sure that when you, after eight years, you're still able to get that 40 lux on light intensity on the floor.
Greg Schonefeld:
So we've gone through the tech side of things now, but Max also mentioned some regional differences between their European and American customers. I wanted to dig in a little bit on those differences to get a better sense of where their business is and where it's going. So from three or four people starting off maybe 35 years ago, you said now 200 people, and you started in the Netherlands. Of course, you have product in the US. How far globally do you guys reach?
Max Obers:
Yeah. So in the US, we have a warehouse. In the Netherlands, we have our headquarters, we have local assembly in Pakistan, and we have factory in China for production. So that is the facilities that we have with our dealer channel. We reach almost every country in the world.
Greg Schonefeld:
What's the biggest adjustment you had to make coming to the US with your product?
Max Obers:
I think the market setup is completely different in the US. And in Europe, you see much more smaller farmers that are and a big distribution channel with installers and companies that distribute different brands of equipment. In the US, it's a much more consolidated industry where you see that maybe 30 companies in the egg industry, they probably have over 80% of the complete egg production in the market. So it's a different way of working. It's a different size. The size of the houses is much different than we see it in Europe. And also that when you're using lights and you have a certain amount that you can, if you cannot make one full string of lights, if the house is getting bigger, those installations will be more complex. So that's definitely a difference. So we're making solutions for the US market to also make that part a little bit easier.
Greg Schonefeld:
I saw on your website that you don't just do poultry. You also work in dairy and even fish. Can you just touch briefly on that? I mean, I guess lighting affects all different types of animals and there's ways you can create benefits by managing that correctly.
Max Obers:
Yeah. So we do it. We are investing heavily in dairy cows at the moment. What we see there is that it's extremely interesting where poultry, they have four cones to perceive lights. Dairy only have two and swine as well, by the way. So they can mainly see blue and green. They're not sensitive for the red part on the spectrum. And what we have seen, and that's also scientifically proven with dairy cows by extending the day to 16 hours of light, you will increase milk yields of the cows. And with a specific spectrum that we developed for those dairy cows, we decrease melatonin production of cows and increase IGF-1 hormone, which is hormone helping to produce milk. So by changing the light environment in a dairy house, we see huge increase between three and 10%, depending on the situation of milk yields, which is enormous for dairy farmers.
And that's only by changing the light. And there it's interesting because you see in the poultry world, people know the light is important for the performance, but in the dairy world, this is a completely new concept and it's new to the farmers. So it's a different way of approaching the market, but very interesting when you install it in houses and see the reactions and production differences.
Greg Schonefeld:
Wow. Is that something HATO pioneered in dairy?
Max Obers:
In dairy, it's something we started doing that research about 10 years ago in dairy to see the differences. There are some universities that have been doing studies on long day lighting, so extending the day length in those dairy houses. That's not something that they have been doing before that. And that spectrum, that's definitely something that we pioneered. Yes.
Greg Schonefeld:
Okay. Interesting. So you're taking the same approach as the early days, and it sounds like you guys are a pretty research driven operation.
Max Obers:
Yes, research driven, but also making it as practical as we can. So there is of course theory on how things should work. And then there is also how can you make that and put it in practice because it needs to be affordable. So you cannot put something in the market that people find too expensive. It needs to work and it needs to have the desired effect. And if you start speaking with farmers who are using the products, that's where we always believe you learn the most and not so much from the scientific papers.
Greg Schonefeld:
If you look at your future expansion, do you see looking more globally or going after more types of species? How do you see that part of your future?
Max Obers:
Yeah. So within poultry, it's the biggest part of our business at the moment. There we are expanding also in the broiler industry. We are expanding it geographically in different areas of the world, like for example, Brazil is a market. We have very low market share, but we are growing there and the same goes for continents like Africa and Southeast Asia. And we also have a diversification strategy. So we invest in the dairy cow products, but also as you mentioned, fish. We started a joint venture last year for salmon production, and there we have lights that are used in the water, and those light are mainly used to decrease maturation of salmon, which is also a very different industry, very different results, and very different light applications as well. So super interesting.
Greg Schonefeld:
When I had the ventilation guests on Craig and Ross, they mentioned that when you're as specialized as they are in ventilation, you have to be diversified.
There's such cyclicality in all parts of animal agriculture, and it doesn't surprise me that a company as specialized as HATO would see diversification as a big part of their future success. But given their focus on research, I wanted to know from Max what new things HATO had coming down the pipe on the tech side that might be of interest to poultry.
Max Obers:
So we are working on solutions to make installations easier for farmers, but if you're going to look a little bit more in the future, we already have solutions that can change spectrums and you can do a lot. You can go from cold, wide, warm, wide, anything in between. You can add red color, you can switch or add blue collar, and we know how it works and how you can use it in a farm. But if you're not using that in the right way, you can also decrease your production values. If you start playing with a light in the way that it's not supposed to be, that's not going to help. And we believe that we need to make the right programs for a different kind of application. So when we know someone is in a certain housing type or a certain genetics type, then we would like to preload programs.
Or say when there is packing in the house, then we can say, okay, there is packing in the house, so you click on packing and the lights will change to what we advise is going to work in that scenario. And if you're going to look at the future in five years and further, we like to change the lights in the house by things that we observe in the farm. That's something we cannot do today, but that's something we are working on to do within the future.
Greg Schonefeld:
Interesting. Okay. Yeah. And I mean, it makes sense you've put all the research behind everything that you do and then you can kind of take all the different variables and the different flocks and design these pre-made programs. You mentioned also earlier the potential for sensors one day that could kind of adapt to what the birds are doing real time. Can you talk a little bit more about what that would look like?
Max Obers:
Yeah. So what we do now in terms of innovation, and we invested in that, it's called Optifarm. So that's an AI tool, artificial intelligence, and it's collecting a lot of data in the house. So there we have learned and we see that every flock is different. If you have one farm 12 houses, you see different and all the equipment is identical. You still see that every flock in every house is different and reacts differently. Optifarm is an artificial intelligence tool. It's collecting data from the water lines. So it's collecting data from the water meter and from the climate computer. So then the tool knows how active the bird should be on the water lines for every 15 minutes of the day. When they're less active or more active than they supposed to be at that time, then it knows, okay, something changed. And then it's going to see what's exchanged positive or negative.
And this tool gives very good analysis with daily reports on actual performance in the house, but also things that changes and it indicates, okay, if you want to improve your performance, then you have to look at your light intensity. Or if you want to increase performance from all the houses that you have, you have to look at house number three between four o'clock and six o'clock in the morning, and you have to look at your ventilation, or it's caused by a CO2 level in the house or outside temperature. So this tool is going to help a lot and give insights into that. So we are collaborating with this to get insights and also see, okay, if we know that certain, if the birds are not active enough on the drinkers, can we, for example, increase light spectrum to compensate for something else that did not go well on us?
Greg Schonefeld:
Huh, interesting. So the future could look like, okay, I'm putting in a new house, it's brown birds, 20,000 birds, and you've got this pre-designed program that in general optimizes for brown birds with 20,000 birds. But then as you said, even if you had 10 buildings consecutively all experiencing the same weather that day, all with the same equipment in them, you're going to see variation and something like what you're talking about here could adapt that based on what's going on in the barn.
Max Obers:
Yes, exactly. So if you have those 10 separate houses, then a tool like Optifarm could say, "Okay, in house number three, we see the biggest challenges." And probably you see then also a difference in behavior in that house, but it also does a root cause analysis. So it tells you the reason why you see a different behavior is caused by this or it's caused by something else.
Greg Schonefeld:
What I find interesting about lighting is that its impacts are invisible at face value. In the old days, all you did was flip on a switch, and that was perfectly logical until we came to understand how big of an effect lighting can have on animal behavior and egg production.
To truly get this variable right in a farming operation, you have to take the steps to understand the science behind lighting. And as Max laid out today, that requires understanding how a chicken perceives light in the first place. Now take lighting, add ventilation, nutrition, genetics, processing equipment, and you start to understand the amount of different considerations producers need to make when setting up their layer operations and how difficult it can be to diagnose the problem when things go wrong. What I appreciate about HATO is that they've worked to understand the science at a detailed level and have the tools to figure out what's gone wrong with your lighting systems and what you can do to fix them.
That sort of service is indispensable to a farmer, especially as so many in the industry continue to troubleshoot and fine tune their cage-free setups. And now that I know more about lighting chicken houses than I ever imagined I would, just one more question remains. How do you prefer your eggs?
Max Obers:
I like them boiled.
Greg Schonefeld:
Is that a dinner or a breakfast thing for you?
Max Obers:
I could eat that all day.
Greg Schonefeld:
Nice.
Max Obers:
Yeah, I just like boiled egg as a snack.
Greg Schonefeld:
Excellent.
Max Obers:
You can bring them and eat them whenever you want. Yeah.
Greg Schonefeld:
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a colleague or friend. Word of mouth really helps us to grow the show. And to make sure you don't miss an episode, follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Until next time, I'm Greg Schonefeld and we'll talk to you soon.