Eggs – A good part of a healthy diet
How do you like to eat your eggs? More
people are eating eggs as they are versatile and easy to prepare. Busy families
chose eggs because they are affordable and nutritious.
My name is Dianne McComb and I am an egg
farmer. My farm is located near London, Ontario, Canada where we care for
25,000 laying hens and grow crops on our 300 acre farm. I share the
responsibilities of caring for the hens with my brother and sister-in-law. One
of us is in the henhouse every day to be sure the hens have enough fresh air,
food and water. My hens are housed inside a big barn with fans to move the air.
Hens are kept inside where they are safe from predators, outside diseases and
the cold weather in winter or the hot weather in summer. Inside they have
enough room to all stand up, move around and eat or drink.
In their units we
can monitor if there is a health issue with a hen or if she is being picked on
by her room mates. Hens can be mean toward one another. Have you heard of
“Pecking Order”, that is what occurs with any group of hens where one is
stronger and more aggressive than the others. If one hen is more dominant she
may pick with her beak on others to the point where they are injured. They must
be separated and we have a plan to care for the needs of each by moving them
apart to different units.
Laying hens are like athletes they work
hard for us and need good nutrition which they get from a balanced diet of
corn, wheat, soybeans, vitamins and minerals. In my area we grow corn, wheat
and soybeans which are mixed together with the vitamins and minerals at a feed
mill. An important mineral is calcium which is to help the hen form the shell
around the one egg she lays every day. That’s right only one egg a day! Think
about how many eggs you see where you buy your eggs. Lots and lots of dozens of
them and a hen lays only one a day. This is why we need so many hens to produce
the eggs your family eats.
An egg yolk, the yellow part of the egg, is in each
hen when she is a chick. When she is mature at 19 weeks she drops the yolk
inside her body into the oviduct where the albumen starts to form around the
yolk and thin membrane envelopes this yolk/albumen which is then covered by the
shell. This process takes approximately 26 hours to complete. A healthy hen can
lay up to 330 eggs in a year which is normally how long she is kept in my barn.
Eggs are gathered daily (you see Flat Aggie
helping) they come from the hens in the barn along a belt to a conveyor, over a
machine and into plastic trays. The trays are made into piles of 6 trays each
and the piles are placed on a pallet which is then moved into a large cooler.
Twice a week eggs are picked up from my
farm and taken to a grading station like the one shown on this Youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjDQ8QXB7cg.
Eggs are washed, candled over a bright light to see there are no cracks or
other imperfections, then they weighed and by weight it is determined if they
go into Ex Large, Large, Medium, Small or Pee Wee cartons. Not the size of the
egg but the weight is how it works. You see young hens lay small eggs and older
hens lay the larger eggs. A hen is a living creature so the egg she lays may
not be the same as the last. The time it takes the egg to get from the hen to
the store is 4 to 5 days, so eggs in the store are for the most local and
fresh.
Eat lots of healthy eggs to give you the
energy needed to do your best every day.
Have a Grade A Day!
