The van den Hurk family in the Netherlands is celebrating after winning one of the latest Cobb Champion awards for outstanding broiler performance. The awards were introduced last year to recognise annual world-class performance at breeder, broiler and hatchery levels in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Their Huna Pluimvee farm, south of Hertogenbosch, reared its first flock of 10,000 broilers in 1990 and
has expanded to a capacity of 180,000 birds in six houses, growing broilers to around 2.4 kg (5.3 lb).
The winning flock of Cobb500 broilers was hatched by Probroed & Sloot and grown to 39 days,
achieving 2.68 kg (5.9 lb) with an average daily gain of 68.7 grams and feed conversion of 1.51 –
adding up to an EPEF of 441.
Patrick van den Hurk, who is a technical specialist for company Coppens, runs the unit with his wife
Elvera who looks after the daily farm activities while her husband is away at work.
The presentation was made to Patrick and Elvera by Tore Mercan, Cobb Europe sales and technical
director at the European Technical Seminar, held bi-annually in the Netherlands. Martijn Gruyters,
senior technical service manager for Cobb, said the winners had one of the best broiler flocks of the
European region: “This really shows that our Cobb500 is competitive and ready for the Dutch market.”