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EliteHatch

Why Did We Build This Website?

Because after conducting thousands of hatchery audits across every climate, continent, and production system imaginable, one thing became impossible to ignore: there is a persistent and costly disconnect between what academia publishes and what actually happens on the hatchery floor. EliteHatch exists to bridge that gap.

The Bird Has Changed. Has Your Hatchery?

Poultry genetics have advanced at a pace that would be unrecognisable to anyone who entered the industry before the 1990s — and the rate of change has not slowed. On the broiler side, Aviagen — producers of the Ross, Arbor Acres, and Indian River breeds — and Cobb-Vantress, along with Hubbard, have driven selection programmes that deliver birds with dramatically higher growth rates, improved feed conversion, and greater muscle yield than any previous generation. On the layer side, Lohmann, Hendrix Genetics and their Hybro, ISA, Dekalb, and Bovans lines have achieved egg numbers and persistency of lay that were theoretical targets a generation ago.

The hatchery sits at the beginning of all of it. Every genetic gain achieved in a breeding programme has to pass through twenty-one days of incubation before it becomes a day-old chick. And a chick that has been mismanaged in the hatcher, pulled too late, held too long, or dispatched in poor condition will never recover that lost ground — regardless of the genetics it carries.

The birds have changed substantially. The hatchery management knowledge required to handle them has not always kept pace. And the research that does exist rarely makes it from the journal to the floor in any usable form.

Academia vs The Hatchery Floor

Having walked through thousands of hatcheries — from state-of-the-art integrated facilities in Northern Europe to single-stage operations running in 40-degree tropical heat with no backup power — Jason Cormick kept arriving at the same observation. The science of incubation is well documented. The peer-reviewed literature on embryo physiology, eggshell conductance, thermal gradients, CO₂ and oxygen exchange, and hatch window management is extensive and largely solid.

The problem is translation. A research paper written in a controlled university setting, using eggs from a single flock age on calibrated single-stage machines, does not automatically apply to a 200,000-egg multi-stage operation in Bangladesh running second-hand Petersime or Jamesway setters with a team that has never received formal training. The variables on the ground — altitude, humidity, power stability, water quality, flock age spread, egg storage duration, staff turnover — bear almost no resemblance to the conditions under which most published research was conducted.

This is not a criticism of the research. It is a description of the gap. And it is a gap that costs the industry an enormous amount of money every single day, in the form of reduced hatchability, poor chick quality, first-week mortality, and flocks that never reach their genetic ceiling.

What That Looks Like In Practice

Breakout analysis. Most hatcheries do breakouts. Almost none of them do them correctly. The standard industry approach — categorising unhatched eggs as Early, Middle, or Late dead — is better than nothing, but only just. It tells you something died. It does not reliably tell you why, or where in the process the decision that caused it was made. Early, Middle, and Late are points on a timeline, not causes. Treating them as causes leads to the wrong interventions, repeatedly.

The EliteHatch approach to breakout analysis is built around cause and effect, not chronology. Infertile eggs, early embryonic mortality, specific developmental failure points, late dead and pipped unhatched categories each point to distinct pressure points in the incubation process — egg storage, setter temperature profiles, CO₂ management, humidity, transfer timing, hatcher environment, and pull timing all leave their fingerprints in an unhatched egg if you know what you are looking at. Knowing how to read those fingerprints accurately, and connect them directly to correctable management decisions, is a skill built through thousands of repetitions across dozens of operations. It is not in the textbook. It is in the egg.

Fumigation and biosecurity. The shift away from formaldehyde is accelerating across all markets. Hydrogen peroxide, peracetic acid, UV-C disinfection, ozone, and electrolytic water systems each carry different efficacy profiles, cost structures, and regulatory considerations. Published efficacy data is one input. Understanding how those systems perform in a real hatchery environment — with variable temperature, organic load, and operator compliance — is another conversation entirely.

HVAC and environment. Incubation is a thermal and atmospheric management problem as much as a biological one. Setter room ventilation, CO₂ management, hatcher differential pressure, chick room temperature and humidity — the environmental targets published by Aviagen and Cobb exist for good reason. Whether your building actually delivers them, and whether your team knows how to verify that it does, is where theory and practice most visibly part company.

Hatchery vaccination. In-ovo and day-of-hatch hatchery vaccination programmes are now standard across most integrated operations. Getting them right — timing, technique, equipment calibration, and post-vaccination chick handling — directly affects both vaccine efficacy and chick quality. The protocols look straightforward on paper. Execution at scale, under time pressure, on a night shift, is a different matter.

What About Hatchery Training?

Formal hatchery training is available through several well-established routes. Genetics companies including Aviagen and Cobb run structured hatchery schools — typically held at their own facilities and representing a genuine investment in technical knowledge transfer. Incubator manufacturers including Petersime, Pas Reform, HatchTech, Jamesway, and EmTech offer equipment-specific training, often at their European headquarters. Vaccination suppliers similarly run programmes covering in-ovo and spray application techniques.

The practical reality is that all of these options require sending team members overseas — often to Europe. That involves cost, visa logistics, and time away from the operation. For many producers across Southeast Asia, South Asia, and emerging markets, it is not a realistic option for the majority of their hatchery workforce.

Usable online hatchery training content remains thin. What exists tends to be either heavily equipment-specific, produced by companies with a product to promote, or pitched at an introductory level that does not serve experienced teams looking to go deeper. EliteHatch is building toward addressing that gap — watch this space.

The Bottom Line

Thousands of hatchery visits across four decades produce a very clear picture. The underperforming operations are rarely failing because of bad genetics or broken machines. They are failing because of the distance between what is known and what is being applied — between the manual, the training course, the published guideline, and the decisions being made on the floor at 3am during a busy hatch.

That distance is where EliteHatch operates. Not in the lecture theatre. Not in the research paper. On the floor, with the team, in the building, with the actual birds.

That is what thirty years of doing this looks like.

About Jason Cormick — Hatchery Specialist

Jason started at the bottom. Not metaphorically — literally. Clearing drains, washing down hatchers, handling eggs, learning the rhythms of a hatchery from the floor up before most people in the industry had decided what they wanted to be when they grew up. Thirty-plus years later, that ground-level start is precisely what makes his perspective worth paying attention to. He has done the jobs he now evaluates. He knows what the 3am hatcher pull actually feels like when you are the one doing it, not the one writing the report about it.

That career trajectory — from hatchery floor to international specialist — took him through pedigree breeding operations, primary breeders, and eventually into supporting the world's leading genetics and incubator companies as they worked with their customers across Asia Pacific, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the broader EMEAA region. He has worked with Ross, Arbor Acres, Indian River, Cobb, and Hubbard flocks. He has worked with Petersime, Pas Reform, HatchTech, Jamesway, and EmTech equipment. In climates that range from Russian winters to Indonesian monsoons. In facilities that range from world-class to optimistically described as functional.

He is known — sometimes affectionately, occasionally less so — for a directness that cuts through the polite fiction that tends to accumulate around underperforming operations. Hatchery managers who have sat through a Jason Cormick debrief tend to remember it. Not because it was comfortable, but because it was useful. The observation that lands with a dry smile and zero ambiguity. The one sentence that makes a room full of people go quiet because nobody had said it out loud before, even though everyone already knew it.

Those who have sat through one of his training sessions will tell you the same thing with a slightly different emphasis. Serious subject matter, delivered in a way that actually lands. Over many years Jason has built an extensive library of custom animations, graphics, and 3D models specifically designed to make complex incubation theory accessible to the person on the floor — not the person with a PhD who already knows it. The result is training that a hatchery technician on day three of the job and a production director with twenty years' experience can sit through together and both walk away having learned something. That is harder to achieve than it sounds, and most people in this industry never bother trying.

Professional. Precise. Often cheeky. And whatever the setting — a hatchery floor in Dhaka or a conference room in Budapest — always enlightening, always entertaining.

info@elitehatch.com
Hatchery Consultancy & Support
01 · About

Hatchery Consultancy & Support.

elitehatch is owned and directed by Jason Cormick, Hatchery Specialist — 36 years across every region and every climatic condition on the planet. A renowned keynote speaker and trainer.

JC

Jason Cormick

Hatchery Specialist

36 years of hands-on hatchery experience, delivered on the floor in over 40 countries. Diagnostic-led, results-focused, and built around the operators who run the plant.

Global footprint

Work delivered across every region and every climatic condition on the planet.

02 · Knowledge Hub

the hub

Technical articles for the hatchery floor.

03 · Diagnostic Tools

the tools

Standalone browser tools for the hatchery floor. Each opens in its own window.

04 · Video Library

the library

An ever-growing catalogue of technical videos, added to regularly. Access scales with your tier.

05 · Membership

choose your tier

From free tools to a full corporate programme.

06 · Forum

the forum

Member discussions for the hatchery floor.

07 · Contact

get in touch

Email
info@elitehatch.com

Consultancy
Hatchery Consultancy & Support, delivered worldwide.

08 · Admin

control room

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⚠ CRITICAL — run this SQL once in the Supabase SQL editor to fix admin content saving. Without it, page edits, tool changes, and all admin settings only save to your device and revert for visitors.
-- Fix site_settings write permissions (allows admin edits to save to cloud) DROP POLICY IF EXISTS "settings admin insert" ON site_settings; CREATE POLICY "settings admin insert" ON site_settings FOR INSERT TO anon, authenticated WITH CHECK (true); DROP POLICY IF EXISTS "settings admin update" ON site_settings; CREATE POLICY "settings admin update" ON site_settings FOR UPDATE TO anon, authenticated USING (true) WITH CHECK (true); DROP POLICY IF EXISTS "settings admin delete" ON site_settings; CREATE POLICY "settings admin delete" ON site_settings FOR DELETE TO anon, authenticated USING (true);
Your real members from Supabase, synced across every device. To change someone's tier, paste the line below into the Supabase SQL editor (swap in their email and the tier you want — basic, pro, or corporate).
UPDATE profiles SET tier = 'pro' WHERE email = 'member@example.com';
One-time setup — run this SQL in the Supabase SQL editor to add the company / country / position columns so the full member database works:
ALTER TABLE profiles ADD COLUMN IF NOT EXISTS company text DEFAULT ''; ALTER TABLE profiles ADD COLUMN IF NOT EXISTS country text DEFAULT ''; ALTER TABLE profiles ADD COLUMN IF NOT EXISTS position text DEFAULT ''; -- Update the signup trigger so new members get these fields automatically: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION public.handle_new_user() RETURNS trigger LANGUAGE plpgsql SECURITY DEFINER SET search_path = public AS $$ BEGIN INSERT INTO public.profiles (id, name, email, tier, is_admin, company, country, position) VALUES ( new.id, COALESCE(new.raw_user_meta_data->>'name','Member'), new.email, 'basic', false, COALESCE(new.raw_user_meta_data->>'company',''), COALESCE(new.raw_user_meta_data->>'country',''), COALESCE(new.raw_user_meta_data->>'position','') ); RETURN new; END; $$; -- Backfill existing users who already signed up: UPDATE profiles p SET company = COALESCE((SELECT raw_user_meta_data->>'company' FROM auth.users u WHERE u.id = p.id),''), country = COALESCE((SELECT raw_user_meta_data->>'country' FROM auth.users u WHERE u.id = p.id),''), position = COALESCE((SELECT raw_user_meta_data->>'position' FROM auth.users u WHERE u.id = p.id),'') WHERE company IS NULL OR company = '';

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