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Eggs at What Price?

Thread - Free Henny Penny Now

On 15/10/2002, Toby Fiander posted:

Below is an article from ABC Science On-Line about egg production.  In NSW more than 98% of all eggs are produced by just a handful of major producers.  The business is cut-throat and competition fierce and any advantage cost wise is pounced on.  The article suggests particular components in the diet for battery hens - in reality, the diet is considerably more varied and rather less conventional than the article suggests, at least in the cases of which I know.

There are certain marketing advantages for free-range eggs, which have allowed them to bring a higher price.  The cost of production is higher than battery-produced eggs, partly because there is higher wastage from free-range eggs.

However, it now appears from recent research that battery hens produce better eggs, which means, sadly, that there may be a choice between animal welfare and product quality.  The cage size for battery hens is larger than it used to be and production is less cruel to the hens than it used to be. Nevertheless, I will probably still buy free-range eggs, as I have for some time now.  I don't think the sky will fall if I buy the other kind, but there is something rather horrifying about a battery of caged hens that I cannot quite put my finger on.

 ABC Science On-Line - What makes a good egg

Caged hens produce better quality egg shells than free-range chickens, according to new Australian research.

Associate Professor Julie Roberts at the Poultry Research and Teaching Unit, The University of New England, began her research into eggs and egg shell quality in late 1999. She presented her findings to the Asia Pacific Poultry Congress held in Queensland this week.

Good, consistent diet and care of the bird appear to be the chief ingredients needed to produce quality eggs for the commercial market.

Normally caged hens receive feed based on grain mixtures including wheat, sorghum, barley and triticale. Some mixtures also include soy bean meal, providing extra vitamins and minerals.

The right amount of daylight and even letting chickens drink carbonated water in hot weather can also improve shell quality.

"It is found to be particularly helpful if the birds are heat stressed," said Professor Roberts. Chickens, like dogs, pant to cool down. "They open their beaks and flap their throat region. It causes some changes in their blood chemistry that causes them to lose carbonate."

The bulk of the egg shell is actually made up of calcium carbonate.

Vaccination for diseases at the optimum stages of the hens' growth and letting the birds moult are two other important aspects for egg laying management.

The optimum thickness for an egg shell is 300-400 micrometres. If they are too thin, they break before they get to the consumer. The egg industry is losing up to $20 million annually from broken and contaminated eggs.

There are 2.5 billion eggs produced in Australia every year, with 93 per cent coming from modern intensive caged layer hens. The rest are barn-laid or free- range farm eggs.

Australians consume about 156 eggs each year.  [presumably per person - TF]

The quality of eggs coming from caged hens might be the best, but Professor Roberts still believes there is room for other methods of production, like free-range.

"The challenges of the free-range and barn situation is to keep the eggs clean," she said.

"If they're not clean, they're not sold. It's a commercial issue. There are a lot of wasted eggs."

Danny Kingsley - ABC Science Online

Peter said:

>  .... are battery hens connected with chicken wire?

Toby replied:

I have noticed certain metal corrosion marks on the feet of a few chicken who have been in cages all their lives.  As to whether the chickens are involved in any galvanic reaction, other than providing the moisture for the process to proceed, I am uncertain.  However, the pictures that animal welfare groups tout around show worse situations than I have seen and they are rather off-putting.

There seems little doubt that conditions for at least some chooks used to be pretty terrible.  When I was at the Department of Agriculture, my boss was on the Egg Board, which has since passed into history.  Being pretty level headed and not easily panicked (he was later head of Fisheries), it was he who led several of the raids on people producing without quotas.  There were a number of rather distasteful things he described in later discussions.

The conditions I have seen, while not particularly pleasant, do not seem to be inflicting pain on the chooks, which is the implication of the photographed situations.  However, the space for each chook has been about doubled in the last decade, I think.  Something that at least producer seems to be on the one hand proud of and almost in the same sentence disparaging about. His production would be the most profitable and innovative operation in NSW in my opinion.  What he feeds to chickens would have been suitable for humans before it processed it into feed - it is just that he has found a way to do this within the law (and safely, if there was any doubt) and with commercial advantage.

George added:

First, for a discussion of, and brief film about, the battery hen component of agribusiness check out
http://www.animal-lib.org.au/lists/hens/hens.shtml
> The conditions I have seen, while not particularly pleasant, do
> not seem to be inflicting pain on the chooks, which is the
> implication of the photographed situations.
I think emotional (as well as physical) pain is considerable. Copied from animal liberation web-site,

"" Cages are kept in huge artificially lit sheds. The hen stands on thin sloping wire - her feet and legs crippled. She cannot perch, preen, scratch in the dirt, dust-bathe, spread her wings, or escape to a quiet place to lay an egg - all activities known to be extremely important to the behavioural needs of a hen.

"Nesting motivation in the hen is strong. Hens will push through weighted swing doors and run the gauntlet of water baths and blasts of air to reach a nest." - (Duncan & Kite 1987)
"They will learn to use trap nests even when they end up being deprived of food and water as a consequence." - (Duncan 1978) ""

Podargus added:
Far be it for me to pick up on a finer point, but the article seems to be saying that the egg *shells* are better quality, not a big deal for your brekky egg as this will have been sorted out before your friendly providores sell them to you.

Snip
> The  article suggests particular components in the diet for battery hens - in
> reality, the diet is considerably more varied and rather less conventional
> than the article suggests, at least in the cases of which I know.

I am not sure what they use these days but meat meal was in the past an important component of the ration.

> There are certain marketing advantages for free-range eggs, which have
> allowed them to bring a higher price.  The cost of production is higher than
> battery-produced eggs, partly because there is higher wastage from free-range eggs.

As a lifelong (well almost, since about 5yo) poultry keeper, and whose father had a poultry farm at Enfield (now Strathfield South), I'm not sure what you mean by wastage.  The differance in egg wastage would be IMO small. Other costs, such as feed to egg conversion are higher and there is usually some extra cost in labour.  I would be intrigued to see a financial breakdown - capital cost of the intensive battery system, versus the less costly capital of the free(er) range system.  I might add that only about a quarter of the one acre property was under pens, and he had a small lucerne patch.

During a visit with some school students from Seven Hills (Grantham High) to the then Grantham Poultry Research Station I was chatting with the director. He informed me that they did not research the *best* way to keep poultry, rather the best way to do what the industry was doing.  In other words, if the industry was using cages, they would look at cage sizes, appropriate rations etc for that system.  He further suggested the the b*best* way may well be to go to say Dubbo where land and wheat was cheap, and put a fence around a couple of hundred acres and throw in a few bags of wheat each day.

 > However, it now appears from recent research that battery hens produce
> better eggs, which means, sadly, that there may be a choice between animal
> welfare and product quality.  The cage size for battery hens is larger than
> it used to be and production is less cruel to the hens than it used to be.
> Nevertheless, I will probably still buy free-range eggs, as I have for some
> time now.  I don't think the sky will fall if I buy the other kind, but
> there is something rather horrifying about a battery of caged hens that I
> cannot quite put my finger on.

I agree, the idea of battery hens is repugnant to me.  Having said that I'm not intelectualy sure that it is necessarily the case.  I am reminded of a so called free range broiler establishment here.  Large sheds are provided for the stock and the doors are left open during the day, but only five or ten birds will be seen outside.  This may relate to the fact that they would be intensively reared for the first weeks of their life and do not have enough time left to learn about the great outdoors.

My poultry, which these days good be called truly free range, even roosting in trees, only getting feed from me, have then to run the gauntlet of eagles, goannas, carpets snakes and the odd fox.  Very few make old age.

Margaret Ruwoldt wrote:
>As to whether the chickens are involved in any galvanic reaction,
>other than providing the moisture for the process to proceed, I am
>uncertain.
Dunno about galvanic, but I do know that chooks in pens tend to be galvanised into flappery when you open the door.

Thus one of my cousins has found steady employment as a chook catcher. She has a talent for nabbing the unproductive chook out of a pen without upsetting the several other birds cohabiting in the pen.

These pens are not free range, but very much an improvement on the battery concept. At least they have some room to move, enough roosts/nests to lay eggs in and some dirt to scratch in.

I used to buy Mrs McKechnie's free range eggs at Coles and Safeway; these days, Farmland owns Mrs McKechnie's and Safeway has its own brand which has also absorbed some smaller producers. Either you pay the Big Two conglomerates or (in my case) you find a local market-garden-type farmer who sells free-range eggs on the side.
Podargus responded:
>   However, the pictures that animal welfare groups tout
> around show worse situations than I have seen and they are rather
> off-putting.
I have been aquainted with the insides of chooks since early childhood; where were the child labour laws when I was dressing (interesting word) poultry for the festive season?

Years ago we lived at Riverstone and often attended the weekly sale held at McGraths Hill.  For a while we bought some superannuated chooks to be turned into soup.  Eventualy I called a halt to the enterprise as they were a devil to clean.  The various bits were decidedly lacking in strength and there were other odd bits that didn't appear to me to be normal.  If you know how to dress an animal it is not a messy business but this was an awful experience.
> What he feeds to chickens would
> have been suitable for humans before it processed it into feed
As I said before we had a poltry farm in my youth.  One of the feeds that my
father sometimes procured was broken Weet Bix or equivalent.  Quite a tasty
snack I can report.
Toby Fiander replied:
> Far be it for me to pick up on a finer point, but the article seems to be
> saying that the egg *shells* are better quality, not a big deal for your
> brekky egg as this will have been sorted out before your friendly providores
> sell them to you.

The point you make about egg shells is quite correct (or course), but as I am assured that a good shell generally means a good eating egg, too, except in circumstances where there are serious imbalances in the diet.  My contact assures me that this NEVER happens - I generally take his fowl advice with a grain of salt....

Meat meal is apparently used sparingly by those whose operations I have some contact with.  It is rather expensive compared to the other organic material used.  Wheat is also expensive compared to the feed material used, although there appears to be some baked wheat flour involved.

I do not pretend to be an expert, merely the water engineer passing the shed where the preparation is done, and an expert witness (about water and soil) at a related Court case during which some of the feedstock preparation process was explained to the Court.

Wastage from free-range eggs relates to dirty shells, which are unsalable, at least to supermarkets which are the largest buyers of eggs.  I expect that there are also eggs that are damaged or not found when laid.  The few chooks I have kept seemed to be quite protective of their eggs - perhaps they knew my intentions.

I have had other clients who are in the broiler business.  The smell of ammonia from this operation is the over-powering memory I have the sheds.
Gerald Cairnes added:

I have spent a lot of time vaccinating poultry years ago in cages and I think the bloody system is diabolical. Not much I could do about it as I was working for my old friend Rob Shapcott and they were his clients. Both of us felt the same way but at that time the RSPCA had no power over the System so complaints were pointless anyway.

At this time I was also training and selling dogs to catch birds (without injuring them) which escaped and ran around under the cages, near impossible for a mere human to catch. These birds tended to spread disease from one row to another. Frankly a lot of the disease problems seemed to be a consequence of the cage sytem itself and free ranging would not have caused any more difficulties in my opinion. The cage system does reduce considerably the intestinal parasite problems which are significant but at much greater cost in other ways. It also allowed for controlled medication for some of the diseases created by the cage system itself so the chemical supply houses did well out of it.

and :

Hi Margaret and Toby,
I think the faeces and ammonia create a lot of the problems of corrosion. Some more advanced sheds overseas used moving belts under the cages to constantly remove the droppings to the outside of the shed. A great improvement in atmospherics at a great cost.

The pens you refer to used often to be the preferred way of handling the brood stock i.e. the genetic blood lines and the multiplication flocks which produce the commercial birds on sale. They do that because it is a much less stressful existence.

and to Podargus:

 I think the lack of interest in the outdoors with open broiler sheds has more to do with the continuous availability of food, chickens will eat to capacity and tend not to stray far from the food.
 Podargus replied:

You may be correct.  These days mine are only fed on grain, so their wide ranging foraging may be to do with balancing their diet.

Still, the layers that I mentioned in an earlier case, would when on occasion we decided to keep them for a period took many weeks to get into foraging around, despite being with our own poultry.

The point I was trying to make about this particular broiler establishment is that it heavily promotes the fact that they are free range.  In practice they are not.
Gerald added:

I meant to comment on the point made by Margaret earlier that "opening a door could send the birds into a flappic" or some such word. For a few years in the 60's and early 70's some of the strains of broilers were so flighty that a sparrow flying across the shed, a car backfire or a someone sneezing near the shed could send 50,000 birds to one end in a great heap smothering thousands. Been there trying to save as many as possible but this was usually futile as the ones pulled away usually ran straight back in again.

What we had to do when poking 50,000 birds in the bum (vaccination, shock horror GM fowls) was quietly erect netting partitions along the shed until all the birds were broken up into smaller groups to prevent pile ups. I think the later strains were selected for temperament and they became more manageable.