Animal health monitoring company Barnwell Bio closed its $6 million seed round, which will fund the development of new capabilities to better respond to poultry diseases that pose a threat to the global food chain, two of the company’s co-founders told AgTechNavigator.
Founded in 2024, Barnwell performs metagenomic sequencing on livestock wastewater, testing for certain bacteria, which would indicate the presence of a specific disease, like avian flu, egg drop syndrome, etc., said Casey McGinley, co-founder and chief operating officer of Barnwell Bio. Barnwell provides food producers with wastewater collection kits, which are then sent to the start-up for testing.
During the Covid pandemic, McGinley worked at Biobot Analytics, which tested wastewater for signs of the virus. This is where she met Barnwell’s other co-founders, Michael Rhys and Jake Byrne.
Barnwell Bio will use its seed funding to build the company’s analytical and AI capabilities as well as hire an in-house veterinarian to validate that the insights are relevant and actionable to users, Rhys explained.
The seed round was led by New York venture firm Twelve Below with participation from AgVentures Alliance, Alumni Ventures, Banter Capital, Daybreak Ventures, Dorm Room Fund, Max Ventures, and Planeteer Capital.
“We focused on poultry production as our starting point. And really what we are trying to help those producers do is better understand their barns, animal health risk, and microbiome to help them save money, save time, and have more confidence around some of the decisions that they are making,” Rhys told AgTechNavigator.
How Barnwell Bio is helping companies get the jump on diseases
Barnwell Bio is developing its technology at a time of heightened concern around livestock diseases, and how they could impact food supplies and human health. Federal and local agencies confirmed a case of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in Burlington County, New Jersey, according to a government release on Jan. 22.
Additionally, responding to a specific disease can be a complicated process, where food producers or vets have to sift through various treatment options, which Barnwell is simplifying with its technology, Rhys explained.
Food producers “have this really complicated set of problems that they are trying to navigate. On the flip side as well, there are also a lot of treatments and options available to them when they are looking to solve a problem that they might be having. But the missing link between all of those things is data, and what we are trying to do is give them a really robust set of data to help them make decisions around animal health,” Rhys elaborated.
Barnwell Bio provides veterinarians and food producers with this information through a dashboard, allowing users to check historical data and compare different barns for patterns, McGinley said. The software company is building out its analytics and data capabilities to provide deeper insight, she added.
“The more samples that we are analyzing, and the bigger our data set grows, the more actionable our results will become,” McGinley elaborated.
While livestock operating margins are tight, Barnwell is demonstrating a return on investment for its technology by improving treatment plans and detecting disease early, saving money in the long run, Rhys said. Barnwell is already working with Mississippi State University, West Liberty Foods, Vital Farms, and other food producers.
“If we detect something early, how much money are you saving by mitigating mortality, mitigating production losses for understanding treatment interventions? How much money are you saving by not wasting money on the treatment that might not be working, and instead actually maximizing your value and increasing your revenue by using a treatment that potentially is working?” Rhys elaborated.
He added, “We always try to gut check and work with our customers to understand — to make sure that they are getting that value out of what we are building."
