René Heijnen graduated in 1987 as a Doctor in Veterinary Medicine at the University of Utrecht. He also has a Post-graduate on Poultry Nutrition from Wageningen University.

René started his experience in a veterinary clinic in the Netherlands. He started of as an allround veterinarian, then worked two years in the dairy and pig husbandry.

From 2002 to 2004 he worked in a veterinary practice and continued to work as a swine and poultry practioner. At the practice he set up and expanded a serological, parasitological and bacteriological veterinary laboratorium. René conducted pathology work on all species, mostly swine and poultry.

In 2004 he started to work for Cehave-Landbouwbelang Voeders BV where he was responsible for al poultry medicine activities, supporting account managers poultry (layer hens, turkeys, broilers, broiler breeders), supporting account managers swine, supporting research and development swine and poultry nutrition at CCL-nutricontrol and analysis of broiler farms both veterinary as technical.

In 2007 he started at the export company within the Cehave-Landbouwbelang Group – Vitamex.
His main responsibilities were:

• Commercial and technical responsibility for sales in Russia & South-Africa
• Technical assistance in poultry medicine and husbandry to the sales managers of eastern-Europe and Africa.

In 2009 he joined De Heus Koudijs. René started as an export manager, responsible for the CIS states, with focus on Ukraine.  After one year he moved to the technical support department to become an International Poultry specialist with focus on Russia.

In 2019 René joined Ecoptica in Russla and in 2022 he started as an independant poultry consultant at Vetworks.