Eggs.
They’ve been a staple breakfast food for centuries, and have been a topic of much debate in more recent years.
Should we all be eating free run or free range eggs?
Are brown eggs healthier than white?
How are the chickens on poultry farms treated?
Are eggs you get in the store full of hormones and steroids?
I could go on and on.
Last week I had the opportunity to visit Burnbrae Farms and tour the processing plant, visit three barns all showcase different living systems for the chickens and become an egg-spert on eggs!
Burnbrae Farms is located in Lyn, Ontario and is a family owned and operated company that has been producing eggs for over 70 years. Burnbrae Farms is one of Canada’s leading egg producers and has grading stations across the country serving all major retail chains across Canada except here in Atlantic Canada.
We started our day by touring the egg processing plant, which was amazing. I put together a quick little video to give you a better idea of what eggs go through as they are processed. This video doesn’t capture every step, but it’s a nice little behind the scenes look at what goes on:
The plant tour was really interesting, and I was taken a back again and again by how many eggs were there! In each room I would think to myself, “I’ve never seen this many eggs in one place before!” and then we’d move to the next room and I’d think that all over again. It was crazy!
It was also really impressive how automated the entire system has become over the years.
After our tour of the processing plant, we headed to the barns where we were able to view conventional, enriched, and free run housing.
This is where things got really interesting.
Conventional Housing
When it comes to conventional housing, we’ve come to expect chickens being crammed into a tiny cage where they have no room to do anything, and I will admit, seeing into a conventional housing barn with somewhere in the neighbourhood of 55,000 chickens – it’s a bit over whelming. This is the type of housing that is being phased out over the next 20 or so years.
But when you learn why they went to this type of housing it makes a lot of practical sense. They brought them inside to protect them from avian illnesses, they put them in smaller groups (generally groups of 5 or so chickens) to keep the flocks small to avoid hen picking (yes, it’s a real thing) and battles for power. These chickens have access to food and water 24/7, their manure falls under the cage onto a belt (not the cages below) that keeps them clean, and their eggs fall onto another conveyer belt for collection. The cages are arranged in “floors” so to speak (which I think is what makes it appear overwhelming to an outsider), but those hens are well cared for.
Someone checks on every single chicken, every single day. If they come across a hen who is sick or injured they tend to them. Studies have shown the biggest downfall to this type of housing is that the hens don’t have anywhere private to do their laying.
This housing system provides one of the smallest carbon footprints of any type of animal agriculture.
Enriched Housing
To address the issue of privacy, enriched, or furnished housing was born.
In enriched housing systems the chickens are in larger cages with more chickens (around 16-17 chickens/cage here), they have a private area where they can do their laying (if you look in the photo above, it’s on the top left side, those red strips that look like a cash wash close off a section of the cage), and perches. In these cages they still have food and water 24/7, their manure falls beneath them onto a belt keeping the cages clean, and you can see the eggs fall onto a separate belt.
In these systems there are a few more issues with hens fighting over pecking order due to the larger number of chickens/cage, but they are still in relatively small social groups, they have more room to express natural behaviours like nesting and perching. This type of system takes a bit more time to care for compared to the conventional, but overall it is still a clean, safe system for the farmers.
Free-Run Housing
Before heading into the free-run barn I had an image in my mind of what I was expecting. With all the open space I expected hens to be all spread out enjoying the extra room and having a grand time.
In reality, the chickens do have more room, but they still stick together in little flocks and aside from the chickens on the floor and a few that were moving about, most of them seemed to be pretty happy hanging out in one spot – which isn’t much different than the other systems.
Ramps have been installed in the aviary because hens would rather walk up and down than fly!
These chickens also have access to water and food 24/7, perches they can use (the barn we were in even had a little chicken swing installed!), private nesting areas, but also offers the ability for the chickens to take dust baths
and allows them lots of room in which to move around. One of the interesting things I learned is that chickens really aren’t all that interested in moving around all that much. When they are placed in the system, they will stick pretty close to their “home” unless something scares them. So while these ladies have more freedom than others, I’m not entirely sure they are all that interested in using it, they still appeared to really stick to their flock.
Of the three housing systems, I saw more evidence of feather picked chickens in the free-run barns, where the struggle for power in the pecking order is more prevalent. The birds were all still in good condition, but it was easier to see who the lower order birds were.
It’s also easy to see how this is the dustiest system as they are unable to keep the manure completely separate from the birds, and with the chickens all out in the open, is is more difficult for the farmers to care for them, as chickens will flock together and even climb on top of one another out of curiosity when the workers are in the barn.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that this type of system has the largest carbon footprint of the three.
Free Range Housing
There were no Free Range housing systems at the location I visited so I didn’t get to tour this style of housing. Here the barns are open concept allows the hens the ability to go outside weather permitting.
Chicken & Egg Facts
[Tweet “Egg Facts & Myths – how much do you know about #CanadianEggs? @eggsoeufs @burnbraefarms”]
No matter where you shop in Canada, the eggs you are buying are local and fresh and make their way to the store in less than 5 days!
Brown eggs and white eggs are exactly the same nutritionally. The only difference is the breed of the chicken who laid it.
In nature, chickens are found in flocks of around five.
Chickens are tropical birds and therefore prefer a warm, tropical climate.
The colour of the yolk is directly related to the hen’s diet. Wheat-based diets, which are more common in the western provinces, make pale yellow yolks. While corn-based diets make for a darker coloured yolk.
Eggs contain 6 grams of protein and 14 essential vitamins and nutrients.
Eggs are always free of added steroids and hormones.
Canadian eggs are produced according to some of the highest on-farm standards in the world.
Most of the nutrition is found in the yolk – don’t skip the yolk!
Liquid eggs are REAL eggs! They’ve simply been shelled to give you the added convenience of not having to deal with messy egg shells. {I’ll admit I was guilty of being skeptical as to how “real” liquid eggs are!}
More resources you can check out:
- The Journey of The Egg (video)
- A Guide To Buying Eggs
- What Do Egg Farmers Feed Their Hens
- Take A Virtual Farm Tour of Egg Farms (including Burnbrae Farms)
- Visit the Burnbrae Farms website
- Burnbrae Farms Animal Care
What are my thoughts after visiting the farm…
I often get eggs from my friend who does have a flock of her own chickens, and have for a while felt myself drawn to the free run, or free-range eggs when in the store when I am purchasing. But after being to Burnbrae farms, honestly I don’t think I’m going to worry about that anymore. I’m not convinced that the free-run or free range eggs in the store are that much better, or that the hens themselves are treated or live that much better of a life. I can see why they are moving away from conventional housing, and I think we’ll see many egg producers moving to the furnished systems as they look to upgrade to meet the new requirements. And I’m okay with that.
One thing I will look for is eggs with added omega-3’s (from chickens who have been fed a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids). Prior to this visit I figured the difference between regular and omega eggs was too little to make any real difference, but you really can make a sizeable difference in your omega-3 intake by incorporating these into your diet. And for those keeners who know that flax is rich in ALA which our bodies have to convert to EPA and DHA (and that conversion rate is only 5-10%), when flax is fed to chickens, they convert it to EPA and DHA at a higher rate than we do, making it a better return on Omega-3’s than if we were to consume the flax ourselves.
For all things eggs (recipes, tips, tricks, and information) please follow @Eggsoeufs on Twitter and Instagram and like Get Cracking on Facebook.
Thank you to the Egg Farmers of Canada and Burnbrae Farms for inviting me to learn more about the entire egg process, it was a really interesting and informative day!
Disclosure: The Egg Farmers of Canada invited me to Burnbrae farms and covered my transportation expenses. I was not required to write this, or any other post about my trip, but genuinely wanted to share what I learned with you all. All opinions are as always, entirely my own.
Interesting learning more about chicken housing and the way our eggs are processed.
Brief information of life cycle of egg. Good Work
Sorry for the link, it required me to post a link although I don’t have a blog.
I just want to say this post comes at a good time after the whole Gray Ridge Eggs incident, we’ve banned their eggs from our house. I’m glad to see there’s another company out there that we can rely on for proper eggs and treatment of the hens. There’s never any reason hens should be mistreated so kudos to you Burnbrae for setting an example!
Nice to know how the eggs are processed. This is very insightful.
i just love eggs