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We heard this quote from one of our veterinary partners, Dr. Liz Beilke of West Liberty Foods, who is managing the health of dozens of poultry barns across the Midwest. For vets and operators with years of training and experience, intuition is a powerful tool. But for an increasing number of disease challenges, getting to the bottom of the issue continues to be a process of trial and error. Or as another producer’s veterinarian put it, a process of “whack-a-mole.”
The Barnwell Bio founding team heard many of the same concerns in our previous roles. We come from the company that started and scaled our nation’s Covid-19 wastewater monitoring infrastructure. While there, we heard a lot of the same pain points that we hear in the poultry industry - a yearning to understand pathogen dynamics better, not getting the right data from existing solutions, and customers who were trying their best to navigate constrained resources.
We find the poultry market at a crucial nexus. Rising disease pressures coincide with consumer demand for birds raised under newer management practices, like cage-free environments and limited antibiotic usage. We also know that each barn is unique, and there is an opportunity to manage each barn depending on its individual needs.
As on the human health side, the missing link here is data. And Barnwell’s data addresses these issues and more in three key ways: catching disease issues early, evaluating the impact of treatments and interventions, and providing broad-based microbiome intelligence unique to your barn. Our goal is to make producers more profitable and give them confidence in the tools they use to keep their animals healthy.
To that end, we are both thrilled and humbled to announce that we’ve raised $6M to bring that reality to producers and veterinarians everywhere. Thanks to AgFunder and AgTechNavigator for sharing our story.
What follows are some examples of our work on how we’re advancing the way poultry producers understand the health of their flocks. It hopefully goes without saying, but none of this is possible without our incredible customers, collaborators, team members, and investing partners, all of whom took a bet on Barnwell Bio and deeply believe in our mission. For that, we are forever grateful.
Mississippi State and Early Detection of Pathogens
We are lucky to partner with Dr. Luis Munoz and his team at Mississippi State University (MSU), working across two of their commercial broiler barns. The broiler industry has seen significant changes in the last few years - a large decrease in antibiotic usage from top producers has coincided with increasing broiler mortality industry-wide.
With this context, we started weekly monitoring with MSU. They have historically seen elevated mortality from kinky back (spondylolisthesis) in these barns, most commonly caused by Enterococcus cecorum. Our metagenomic sequencing detected a notable E. cecorum spike before any clinical symptoms appeared—soon after we flagged this, birds began showing paralysis and kinky back, which PCR/16S testing confirmed a few weeks later.
This weeks-long detection window demonstrates the value of routine monitoring, allowing producers to make informed decisions about litter management, vaccination strategies, and between-flock protocols for broilers, or to intervene within the current flock for longer-lived birds like layers and breeders.
Amick Farms and Intervention Assessment
Dr. Jason Sousa from Amick Farms partnered with us to tackle a frustrating yet all-too-common problem: why were some breeder barns on the same farms being hit harder by Focal Ulcerative Dermatitis Syndrome (FUDS) than others? And with a long list of probiotics and feed additives that might help, which ones would actually work for them?
An early win came from monitoring the effects of a litter amendment and observing its impact on the microbiome. What we found was somewhat unexpected - it drove down Staphylococcus levels briefly, for about a week after application. This insight helped Dr. Sousa determine where this type of product might be most impactful. Rather than in breeder houses, where it was initially applied, it may be better suited for use in pullet houses just prior to vaccination. Utilizing it there to improve the health outcomes for chicks could tremendously improve the return on investment.
Layers and Barn-level Microbiome Insights
The egg industry is currently undergoing massive changes as cage-free, pasture-raised, and organic egg options grow in popularity. Our layer customers are at the forefront of these shifts, working to stay ahead of the unique challenges that these types of operations can bring, particularly increased bird interaction and environmental exposure.
For some of our healthiest operations we work with, the focus isn't on acute disease but on subtle issues "stealing at the edges" - things like roundworms and Focal Duodenal Necrosis (FDN) that can quietly impact performance. We've used microbiome data alongside existing diagnostics to explore how management changes and interventions can influence the broader barn ecosystem.
With other partners focused on proactive flock surveillance, we've helped them see the whole microbial picture before things go wrong. When a sudden mortality event looked like cecal cores but diagnostics told a different story, it underscored how easy it is to miss what's really happening when you're only looking at one suspected cause at a time.
Proactive Biosurveillance at Scale
By tracking pathogens, production metrics, and broader shifts in microbial profiles over time, we're helping turn day-to-day observations and hard-earned institutional knowledge into early signals. The goal is simple but powerful: move from reacting to surprises to recognizing warning signs while there's still time to act.
-Casey, Jake, and Michael
