Merck Animal Health agrees to acquire poultry tech innovator TARGAN
Merck Animal Health, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co (NYSE:MRK), signed a definitive agreement to acquire TARGAN, a privately held agtech developer specializing in high-speed automated biodevices for commercial hatcheries.
The purchase price for the transaction was not disclosed.
The move marks a natural consolidation for Merck Animal Health, which has maintained an active venture investment in the Morrisville, North Carolina-based startup since 2017 and operates as one of its largest corporate shareholders.
The proposed acquisition is scheduled to close during the third quarter of 2026, subject to routine antitrust clearances and customary closing conditions.
Outside of the United States and Canada, the unit operates internationally as MSD Animal Health.
The acquisition integrates TARGAN’s proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning infrastructure into Merck's commercial livestock portfolio.
The division's lead system, WingScan, is an automated feather-sexing platform that captures high-resolution images of day-old chicks immediately after hatching.
Using advanced vision technology and real-time computing algorithms, the hardware identifies and sorts chicks by gender at a throughput pace of up to 160,000 birds per hour with an average accuracy rate of 97% to 99%.
