In 1948, while attending a poultry convention, Albin Norling bought an incubator with a 20,000 egg capacity. Al and Albin decided to install the incubator in the back of the processing plant as a means of keeping the facility running year-round instead of seasonally to process turkeys for the holidays. That year they hatched 35,000 poults. By 1950, the company had a total of five incubators and was hatching over 1 million poults annually.