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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.
Steve DeWeerdt:
You go to cage-free production and there's just so many more things that just out of your control, from the bird behavior standpoint, from a health standpoint of the birds and just different challenges that we didn't see with cages.
Greg Schonefeld:
I'm Greg Schonefeld, and this is Eggheads. Today we're talking to someone who was raised in the egg business and had a pretty good handle on how things worked until shifting circumstances forced him to change his entire operation and a relatively short amount of time.
Steve DeWeerdt:
Back in 1974, my dad built his first barn with the help of my grandfather. I believe it held around 30,000 birds and built another barn in '81 and then another one in '91. So growing up, it's the only thing I knew.
Greg Schonefeld:
That's Steve DeWeerdt owner of DeWeerdt Poultry Farm in Michigan. He grew up working the barns and learning the business through his parents who built most of it themselves, literally.
Steve DeWeerdt:
It's crazy to hear the stories of them assembling the cages and helping do the concrete, and it was amazing how much work got put into it by them. It wasn't hired out.
Greg Schonefeld:
But despite growing up working on the farm, it wasn't always Steve's intention to join the family business.
Steve DeWeerdt:
My grandparents and parents both really encouraged further education and I tried college. It wasn't for me.
Greg Schonefeld:
Steve decided to return to the farm, but at that time they didn't have enough work to sustain him, so he came to his dad with a proposition, expansion.
Steve DeWeerdt:
In 2003, the barn we built was a belt system one of the first in the area and that held 220,000 birds. So we had more birds in one barn than what we had in the other three combined.
Greg Schonefeld:
And from there they continued to build on the operation.
Steve DeWeerdt:
2011 is when we built the egg processing plant, and so we went from having five or six employees to like 30.
Greg Schonefeld:
The DeWeerdts were humming along nicely until 2019 when they were thrown a massive curveball.
Steve DeWeerdt:
A law passed where Michigan became a cage-free state. And so it got through the house and Senate and approved. And so at that time we knew we had five years to change all the barns over to cage-free. And so that was a real defining moment. It was the time when you weren't sure, can we do this? Do we want to do this?
Greg Schonefeld:
The DeWeerdts did make the transition, but it was far from easy. And today Steve is taking us through the process from start to finish, including the race against time to switch their operation over to cage-free and the steep learning curve they faced, once they ultimately got there.
Steve DeWeerdt:
We started making plans around 2019 to saying, "All right, if we got five years to do this, we can't do it all at once. We got to phase it out, so we're going to have to do a barn this year." And then that takes a lot of work with our pullet grower. He had already started the transition from cages to cage-free, so you have to work with him really closely to find out when you can get birds, chicks and also coordinate the number of birds per house with him and just say, "Okay, this is when we're going to get our first flock, so if we're going to get that in 2021, we got to start construction in this month in 2020." And we laid out all those timelines and went to the lenders and talked to them and said, "This is what we're thinking. This is the next five years to stay in this industry. As we got to convert these barns, we couldn't stay producing eggs if we were to keep the cages in Michigan."
And so it was definitely a defining moment and for me whether or not we were going to do this or not. And I think back to those decisions and cage-free kind of really took off in that 2016, '17, '18 era and there was a lot of people that had built some barns and they learned a lot of things in those two to three years that really, I'm glad we could learn from them what their experiences were. So that helped make the decision as well.
Greg Schonefeld:
I'm kind of amazed. I mean, I didn't even think of all the pullet logistics side of things. I mean how much logistics goes into that and when you knew you had five years, but you were starting back in 2019 thinking and talking and planning and then a whole process to do it.
Steve DeWeerdt:
It's basically, it's the amount of money you have to lay out there just to build a single barn is tremendous. And so if we phased it out over five years, we could take the flocks that started producing in 2021, 2022 to start helping the cash flow the barns that we had to do in '23, '24 and '25. So I would say a typical barn from the time you break ground or move dirt to getting birds inside realistically is eight months. Can it be done quicker? Yes, but eight months is definitely a lot of time that you just can't say, "Okay, we're going to do three barns this year." It's just not possible. You have to decide what style barn you're going to put in, what equipment, what the ventilation looks like, how it lays out on the farm. And so during those five years, four or five years of this conversion, at that time we still had caged eggs as well as cage-free. So we had to keep those segregated on the egg conveyors the entire time. So it just took a lot of planning to make it all work.
Greg Schonefeld:
And you mentioned the investment too. You're making a big decision there as far as money, you've got it put on the line to go down this road.
Steve DeWeerdt:
Definitely. It was numbers that were hard to comprehend when you're used to a caged barn, you can put up a barn in the 2005 to 2010, '15 era. You kind of knew what the cost per bird would be, and it was a fraction of what it is to do a cage-free barn.
Greg Schonefeld:
So if it doesn't go into effect until 2025, but you kind of need to start the process earlier for the reasons that you've laid out there, did you kind of have cage-free eggs before demand was there or was that something you were able to find a spot for them in the interim? How did that work?
Steve DeWeerdt:
Yeah, there's always a market for them. I remember very vividly in 2021 what the egg market was, and they were definitely below the cost of production. The market was, and it wasn't a fun year to say the least. So yeah, there was just too many eggs on the market at that time and there was no real premium for these cage-free eggs because a lot of the people that committed to purchasing cage-free eggs also had that caveat of December 31 or whatever of 2024 is our last day of caged eggs. January 1, 2025, we will have converted. Well, they were not switching over as quickly as what we liked, I guess. And so the demand just wasn't there at that time.
Greg Schonefeld:
So yeah, the commitment was to buy them on that date, but the logistics of everything says, "Well, we can't just turn this on automatically one date, there's got to be a gear up." And so I guess maybe some of that burden fell on the farmer during that time, I take it.
Steve DeWeerdt:
Yeah, I think anybody, the purchasers for the retail end of it, they don't understand that, that it might take 15, 20 months of planning before this barn is actually producing cage-free eggs, and that's a barn. It's not like an entire farm can convert quickly, but if you're not familiar with egg production or agriculture, you wouldn't know that, right? You're just going to say, "Hey, I'm the purchaser for this retail giant and here's the date. Up until then we're going to sell all different types of eggs." So it just takes a lot of time.
Greg Schonefeld:
I mean, you also happened to do it in a time with COVID and other challenges, supply chain. I mean, it kind of a lot thrown on all at once.
Steve DeWeerdt:
Yeah, I feel like it's similar to when you have a newborn child where you just want to block out some of those first few months. It was like that with COVID. It was like it such a whirlwind from a timeline, from getting products, the shipping container issue, the ports, all those things. I just remember thinking, "How is this going to work out?" And you were a big part of that as well, in your company. And when you start out six weeks later than what you had planned on on a barn, that's a big hurdle to overcome.
And not to mention the next one was 12 weeks later than what we had hoped for and planned on. And it's just one of those things you just, thankfully, if you have the right partners, you're realizing that we can't miss this deadline. These chicks are coming, they're going to the pullet farm and they're going to be raised and if we're not ready for them, then someone else is going to get them. And then this barn could sit empty for a year, a year and a half, who knows how long before we can get the next batch of birds. So there's a lot at stake if we didn't hit the deadline, that's for sure.
Greg Schonefeld:
So obviously the transition involved a whole lot of work and stress, and I know that firsthand because I was there for a lot of it. And at this point we haven't even gotten into the adjustments that he had to make once the barns were actually up and running, which presented a whole new set of challenges.
Steve DeWeerdt:
Oh, man. I said to some people, "I think it'd been easier if you weren't in cage production before because then you don't know any different." But yeah, cage production was extremely simple. You're checking your water and your feed every day, multiple times, ventilation fans, air inlets, and from a labor perspective it's simple. And you go to cage-free production and there's just so many more things that just out of your control from the bird behavior standpoint, from a health standpoint of the birds and just different challenges that we didn't see with cages. And so it takes a lot more attention to detail in cage-free production because every flock is different and it doesn't matter if you have the same genetic strain birds in one coop, whether it's the breeders, we're different, different hatchery, you name it.
There's just, I'm not going to say every flock's drastically different, but there's just subtle differences in each flock. And when you find something that works, don't necessarily plan on that working every time going forward. And if you find something that doesn't work, it's probably not going to work on the next flock as well. But you just have to pay attention a lot closer to the birds and their behaviors and their aggression, the lighting when they're going into the nest, are they all going in nest piling and those of things that obviously with a cage, it's not a factor.
Greg Schonefeld:
I guess when you're talking about the differences, is it ultimately the eggs they're producing, the feed they're consuming, I don't know, mortality or they're injuring themselves or?
Steve DeWeerdt:
No, it's all of the above. Those are challenges that are just the norm in cage-free production. They consume more feed and they exert a lot more energy going through the system up and down and you name it, they're just burning a lot more calories, so they're going to eat more. There's always a pecking order with birds and it's tougher with cage-free to have the uniformity on the birds that you want and desire, but you just make changes, work very closely with your bird salesman and your nutrition company and your veterinarian and just kind of look at each flock and adjust accordingly.
Greg Schonefeld:
Do you have an example of, I don't know, maybe one thing that worked with one flock and then didn't with the next?
Steve DeWeerdt:
We have an aviary where we have had situations where birds just don't want to come down well, and you always just have to, after you house birds, you have to be mindful of if they're not coming down to get water, you'll see it right away, day two, day three, you can tell birds that are dehydrated. So we've had flocks where we've not had that issue where they move up and down, great. And the next flock, we have to actually take the birds and grab them to put them down right by the nipples.
And once they get that drink, then they're fine the rest of their life. But if you don't watch for that bird, it's not going to make it, whether it's scared to come down or doesn't want to jump onto the perches or you name it, that's just one challenge, for example. But you get several flocks in and, "Hey, yeah, this flock doesn't have an issue. They're drinking. They're all moving up and down, really good, going up great at night." And other flocks, you have to be really cautious. And after housing them and saying, "Okay, 80% of these birds are doing what we want, it's that 20% that aren't moving coming down. We got to get those birds down, get them water."
Greg Schonefeld:
This maybe shows how little I know about birds, but I guess I would just imagine that they know when they're thirsty like we do and that they would figure it out.
Steve DeWeerdt:
I think that's the hardest part is when you watch the birds, if you find one that's not drinking, you can see it. You can see it by looking at the bird, you can see it in its comb and it can be looking right across the aisle, right at other birds hitting the nipples. And it's like you see what they're doing. "You were raised on a nipple. You know what a nipple is, why don't you just jump down and go get water?" But that's just one of the strange things that we experience in cage-free, and it's not like every flock by any means. It's just we've had several flocks of brown birds and we've had a lot of white birds and brown birds are more challenging in their own ways. The biggest thing is obviously going up in the system at night, white birds really do well at going up on their own and when you're trying to train them to go up so that they keep your floor egg numbers as low as possible, you just don't have near the work with white birds as you do browns. But that's just my experience anyways.
Greg Schonefeld:
So just catching that as an example requires that extra step of observation. Did you know what you were getting into with that beforehand?
Steve DeWeerdt:
No, we had no idea what we were getting into. So it was a baptism by fire for sure. And I'm not going to say we were in it alone. I mean, the equipment manufacturer, they've got a lot of people that were willing to take calls anytime when you had questions. They had people here to help us, but when somebody comes to give you instruction, they're only there for a day, so you just have to take what they said and try to make the change. But yeah, at the end of the day, we learned a lot of it on our own.
Greg Schonefeld:
You also mentioned having some veterinary and nutritionist support.
Steve DeWeerdt:
Correct.
Greg Schonefeld:
Is that a big piece of the equation as well?
Steve DeWeerdt:
Yeah. In the past when it was cage production, it was kind of a as needed basis, and with cage-free, we decided it was a good time to just get on a routine schedule for visits and just do a lot more testing and necropsy just looking at the birds, not just any mortality, but the live birds. And we've got a scanner now that you can hook to your phone, Bluetooth that can scan the birds for their fat pads and transfer all that data you can send to your nutrition company, stuff like that. But you definitely need to rely on people that are much smarter, that have gone to school for bird health. You can't do it by yourself, so it's been a good choice for us to just have them out several times a year and look at all the barns and walk them and they make recommendations based on what they're seeing.
Greg Schonefeld:
And then also with the added observation, I mean, just in terms of operating these facilities, does it require a lot more people or certain skill sets that you didn't have before in your operation?
Steve DeWeerdt:
Yes and no. I mean, I would say the skill sets are the same, but yeah, it's more labor-intensive for sure. Like I said, a caged barn, you walk it a couple of times a day, it might take you an hour to walk a barn and now you're walking them multiple times a day, along with the fact that our flocks are much smaller today than what we had 10 years ago. So that was just a choice we made was to have smaller flocks. In cages it was pretty common. One person could manage a 200,000 bird building by themselves, and that was checking it, cleaning, sweeping, cleaning fans, changing fan belts, all those kinds of things. And now, I would say you dedicate one person per 100,000 birds to manage that flock.
Greg Schonefeld:
Listening to Steve, it's clear that when it comes to moving to cage-free, getting the facilities up and running is really just the beginning and on top of the incredible resilience and adaptability I saw during my time on the DeWeerdt farm, I also observed what was truly a family operation, and I wondered what it meant to Steve to see his entire family get involved in running the farm.
Steve DeWeerdt:
I don't think it's ever expected by Andrea and I to make the kids want to work and be on the farm, but we want them to do what they want to do and we're not pressuring them into it, but I think it's a good eye-opening experience to see what the day-to-day looks like and when they're able to do it themselves and help out, I think it gives them a glimpse of what their dad does and has done his whole life. So definitely, I mean, for my kids too, they're able to still see with grandpa every day on the farm if they come to work, and that's just something that I don't think many kids get the opportunity to do with their grandfather and relatives on a farm. So it's a blessing for sure to have them be able to partake in the work, but it's definitely not expected.
Greg Schonefeld:
Yeah, I think the other thing about just farming in general is it kind of teaches the real world consequences, like what we were talking about earlier about deadlines, there's just kind of facts of nature that you have to deal with. I think there's a certain grounding to reality, you and I don't know how much a kid takes that in, but that's one thing in general I appreciate about farming is the groundedness.
Steve DeWeerdt:
Yeah, for sure. And they experienced it as well as we did our last conversion last fall, winter. I mean, when the weather wasn't good and it was snowing and blowing and you still got work that has to be done, because you got these pullets coming. And they see that and they understand how much time it takes, the coordination, you throw all those things in the mix, weather delays, shipment delays, can't get the part you need, it's good. It's just reality for them, right? They need to understand that.
Greg Schonefeld:
Absolutely. That's good perspective. Well, if you look ahead, I mean, you said you growing up around the farm kind of really enjoyed some of the work around. Do you see that in the next generation?
Steve DeWeerdt:
Yeah, that's a great question, but like I said, it's one of those things that I think you know if it's a passion of yours and that for me as a teenager, it's something I enjoyed. I didn't really know what else I would want to do, and so I hope they can figure that out on their own that it's not expected of them and they can make that decision if it's something they want to try. I think it's a great introduction as a kid to be able to work on the farm and see the day-to-day, and that may tell them, "You know what? I don't want to have that same lifestyle that I grew up watching my dad have and the weekends and the holidays and all the things that come with a livestock operation. It's just, it's a lot." And so hopefully they can figure that out on their own, but there is no hope or expectation by any means.
Greg Schonefeld:
There's been, I think quite a few family farms that end up selling as part of maybe there's been more consolidation recently. What do you think keeps DeWeerdt Poultry on the line that it's been on?
Steve DeWeerdt:
Oh, good question. I don't know. I think overall, regardless of the headaches that come with it, at the end of the day, you have to enjoy what you're doing. And if you're not, then you definitely are in it for the wrong reasons. So there's more good days than bad. And like I said, I think going through this transition with your company as well as a partner through it, I mean, it wasn't enjoyable, I always say, "Hopefully we can look back and laugh and just grow from it and just improve moving forward."
Greg Schonefeld:
We've talked repeatedly on the show about the grit and tenacity of American egg farmers and the story of the DeWeerdt Poultry Farm really puts that on full display. The story also highlights the conundrum for farmers created by the cage-free mandates. Michigan farmers were required to be cage-free by 2025, but the logistics truly required farmers to meet that milestone ahead of that time. Before substantial demand for cage-free eggs really existed. Faced with an ultimatum, the DeWeerdts could have simply folded and closed up shop. Instead, they decided to forge a path forward and completely overhaul their entire operation.
And it wasn't just the cost and stress of building new facilities during a global pandemic, but the need to learn a whole new method of farming eggs after doing it a certain way for decades. Ultimately, Steve made it through and serves as an example for other producers facing similar decisions that while it may not be an easy path, it is possible to make the transition and thrive. And being on the farm, I found it really inspiring to see three generations of DeWeerdts contributing to the operation together. As the industry consolidates, it's great to see family operations like that continue to thrive. And having covered all that ground today. Just one question remains, Steve, how do you prefer your eggs?
Steve DeWeerdt:
That is a good question. I have a tough time answering that question because I feel like me and my brother, younger brother, were talking about this many years ago. I said, "If we could total add up the amount of eggs that we've eaten in our life, it would be an astronomical number. Because growing up when we were in school, my dad made eggs every day for us for breakfast over easy," and I said to my brother, I was like, "I just want a scrambled egg for once." Over easy, I was so sick and tired of it for so long, but as I've gotten older, I would say it's probably over easy again. But there was a period there in my high school days where I just was, "I would say anything, but over easy."
Greg Schonefeld:
Make sure you follow Eggheads on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and we'd really appreciate if you'd leave us a review. It would be a huge help to us as we continue to grow the show. You can connect with us on Instagram and LinkedIn too, and if you want to be a guest or have topic ideas, please send us a message. Until next time, I'm Greg Schonefeld and we'll talk to you soon.