Futuristic “Windstreek” house is fully energy neutral

Robert Nijkamp is an innovator. The broiler grower from The Netherlands designed a very special, fully naturally ventilated and energy neutral “Windstreek” house. He permanently collects and connects big data in order to as effectively as possible manage his flock in this unique house. 

“We have been raising broiler birds on our farm for about 60 years”, says Robert. “In two regular houses (with daylight in the houses and a extrernal wintergarden), we keep 45.000 broilers.” 

All are slow growing Hubbard birds, raised under the “one star better life” label, which is a qualification of the Dutch organization for protecting animals. This involves that our birds are taken to slaughter at 56 days of age, when they have reached an average liveweight of 2.5 kgs. 

In the year 2010 we started thinking of another house. However, since we were convinced that innovation was essential, this new house had to be of a different design and “futureproof”. 

Hence, we got in touch with the Wageningen University in our country (WUR). This resulted in high involvement of the university in this special project. Moreover we contacted suppliers and also in close cooperation with a number of them, the Windstreek design was born.” 

The very unique house measures 23 x 90 meters. It offers space to 25.000 birds, also of the slow growing Hubbard breed. 

The most eye catching aspect of this house is of course its shape. Some people even think it’s a soccer stadium. Windstreek is the Dutch word for “wind direction”. That refers to the principle of its construction and ventilation system. 

On the one lateral side, the

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