House of Raeford Farms will celebrate the grand opening of its new, state-of- the-art chicken hatchery on June 15.

House of Raeford is West Columbia’s top employer and one of the largest job-providers in Lexington County. The new hatchery is in Monetta, and it will serve the House of Raeford plants in West Columbia and Batesburg.

LINK: Read more about House of Raeford in West Columbia and Lexington County

The new hatchery will officially go into service June 22. It is a 63,000- square-foot facility that features advanced technology designed for optimum production efficiency. The facility is fully automated to allow for the highest levels of bio-security, quality control and operational analytics. The new hatchery will employ 20 people, and is expected to produce more than one million birds per week.

About House of Raeford Farms, Inc.

It is one of the nation’s top ten largest chicken processors, providing ready-to- cook and further processed chicken products to the food service, retail, and export markets. The company is family-owned and operated and based out of Rose Hill, North Carolina with additional facilities in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina.