MANILA, Philippines – AI is now helping decide when chickens are ready for the market.

Bounty Fresh Group Holdings is using artificial intelligence in its poultry farms as part of a broader push to produce chicken more efficiently and reduce the amount of manual work needed inside poultry houses.

“One of our problems is how to attract good people into our company,” Bounty Fresh Group Holdings president and CEO Kenneth Cheng said.

In the past, checking whether chickens were ready for harvest was a labor-intensive process. Farm workers had to enter poultry houses, catch birds, and manually weigh samples. Cheng said doing that for just one house could take one to two hours.

“So in a farm with 20 houses, it would take a lot of people and a lot of time,” Cheng said.

Bounty’s solution? AI-powered cameras.

“What we do right now, although we’re still expanding this, we’re putting cameras on top – AI cameras – that would constantly take pictures of the bird when they’re younger to older and then they can predict when they can be harvested,” Cheng said.

Most of Bounty’s customers have strict size requirements, with some asking for chickens weighing between 1.1 to 1.2 kilograms. That leaves only a 100-gram window, but according to Cheng, the AI cameras are now precise enough to estimate chicken weight within a 2% difference.

The system did not work overnight. Cheng said it took about a year to train the AI to estimate bird weight accurately from images. By using cameras, Bounty can monitor chickens more constantly without requiring workers to physically enter the poultry houses as often.

This is something the poultry giant is actively trying to limit as every entry into a controlled farm area carries biosecurity risks. Workers have to follow strict sanitation rules, including showering and changing clothes, before entering the coop. Reducing entry lowers the risk of introducing pathogens or infections that could threaten livestock.

It may sound like science fiction, but the technology is real and already yielding results. For a farm of 1.5 million chickens, Bounty now just needs 25 people; before they’d need up to 200.

“Right now, we’re working with 25 because all our farms already have a high degree of automation. But then, we can pay them more. We can pay these 25 people more, and then we can give them a career rather than working in other industries,” Cheng said on Thursday, June 25.

Bounty has a strong partner in its AI push, as it recently partnered with VITRO, the data center arm of PLDT. The partnership centers on Bounty co-locating its disaster recovery infrastructure in VITRO Santa Rosa, helping protect the poultry giant’s critical systems and data from disruptions while supporting real-time visibility across its farms, plants, and distribution network. (READ: [Finterest] Want to invest in data centers? Watch out for PLDT’s VITRO REIT)

The company is also exploring other smart farming tools beyond AI cameras. Cheng said these include sensors that can monitor bird sounds, as well as systems that track temperature, humidity, ammonia, and other conditions inside poultry houses.

‘Right-sizing’ production, more restaurants

Bounty’s technology push comes as the group navigates a tougher operating environment.

Cheng said the company is still growing compared with 2025, but acknowledged that 2026 has been more difficult than expected. The Middle East crisis, which raised concerns over oil prices and inflation, forced the company to adjust its plans.

“As a whole, compared to 2025, there’s still growth. We always knew 2026 is a little bit tougher. So we are ready, but then noong nangyari ang Iran war, hindi namin nakikita ‘yun e ( the Iran war happened, we didn’t see that coming). So we had to right-size,” Cheng said.

For Bounty, right-sizing meant scaling back production from earlier expectations, though not below last year’s levels.

“There was an oil crisis, and then inflation spiked, so people are a little bit cautious on spending,” Cheng said in a mix of English and Filipino on the sidelines of Bounty’s 40th anniversary. “We lowered our production, so we right-sized. And when I say right-size, when you look at it, it’s still more than 2025.”

Cheng said Bounty remains “committed to invest” in the Philippines, although he did not give capital expenditure figures. After all, Bounty was still a closely held family company and has no intentions to go public any time soon.

Aside from Bounty’s recent acquisition of The Bistro Group, the company is looking to grow its homegrown Chooks-to-Go and Chooks Diner network. Bounty restaurant group head James Carreon declined to give a specific store expansion target, but admitted that the number being discussed internally is “really high.”

The expansion comes even as other chicken restaurant brands are under pressure. Shakey’s Pizza Asia Ventures has said it expects to close 15 to 20 Peri-Peri stores this year, with more possible closures ahead.

But Bounty’s view remains expansionary, especially in areas where it believes its brands have yet to reach enough customers.

“There are a lot of municipalities and provinces in Northern Luzon that we’re still looking at. We’re also looking at the Bicol Region for expansion. The number is as high as we can imagine,” Carreon said. “For as long as there’s a Filipino family not getting their chicken, we’ll be there.” – Rappler.com