Here at Shady Patches Farm, we don’t keep chickens to produce eggs, or meat, or feathers. We keep them as an essential part of our farming enterprise. While all of our animals are important to our overall strategy, the position our chickens fill is key. Chickens in their natural state scratch around, searching for bugs and grubs. When they follow ruminants, particularly cows, they scratch the manure pats apart, eating any grubs, and reducing flies, particularly buffalo fly. The manure is also combined with the mulch, becoming ‘ground armour’, and allowing grass to grow over the whole area, rather than only in between pats. This is important for future grazing, as cows will not eat grass that has grown out of their poop – and who can blame them? When the pats are scattered, the pasture is fertilised over a large area, making it all enticing to cattle.

Grazing several varieties of animal over the same area is important for other reasons, also. Each animal is affected by individual pathogens. So cow worms are not the same as sheep worms are not the same as chicken worms. When you run different animal species over the same area, the pathogens are left without a host, and soon die off, and with time, the load decreases. Chickens run under orchards after fruiting also clear up the fruit fall, removing pests such as fruit fly and even mice. In the process, they also fertilise the fruit trees and eat any weed seed.

So all in all, chickens are a regenerative farmers close friend. But when you have chickens, you also have eggs, and then… you need to do something with them. Sounds easy but think again.
Ever wonder why free range eggs are so expensive? Did you know that in Qld, it is illegal to sell eggs if you don’t have a safe food producer number? No matter who you are, kids selling eggs for pocket money, grandmas selling their excess eggs, farmers putting a sign outside their gate – all illegal. And how much does it cost to become an egg producer? Well, not too much – only $591 per year, oh, and $316 per hour for an annual audit of your facilities. But that’s not the expensive part. In order to process eggs (pack eggs into cartons), you pay a whopping $1858.65 annual fee. So lets break that down. We have 350 chickens, so that means each chicken costs us $8.80 per year to house – before the audit, the cost of which could be anything. Put another way, we need to sell 362 dozen eggs (allowing 2 hours for the audit), in order to pay the government for the privilege of producing eggs. If you’re not safe food endorsed, you are not allowed to do anything with them. You can’t give them away, sell them, or even feed them to the pigs (because that is swill feeding). As an egg producer, you are supposed to throw your dirty eggs away. We are lucky, because we have a compost heap, and as far as I’m aware, it is not yet illegal to feed egg to microbes – but I’m certain, in this over legislated environment… it’s coming!

And it doesn’t end there. At Shady Patches, we believe in nutritious food. We keep our chemical inputs to a minimum, and use other methods to control pests, disease and weeds. So when we were told that we need to wash our eggs with chlorine if they have even looked at a feather, we were flabbergasted. Egg shells are porous, and once their natural bloom is gone, they are open to all elements, whether that be bacterial contamination, or chlorine, so after washing, eggs are re coated, generally with wax, to protect the precious shell contents. Even certified ‘Organic’ eggs are washed and chlorinated. In Queensland, as it is a safe food requirement, the chlorine wash is exempt from the organic certification. I don’t want to eat chlorinated eggs, and I’m certain there are other people out there who would agree with me so.. we keep our eggs as clean as we can. Our eggs are not washed, but are laid, collected, sorted and packed, and only the clean ones go into cartons. They haven’t been washed or adulterated – they come to you straight from the chickens…. Um.. well… bottom.
Unfortunately, we are not yet safe food approved, but we’re working on it, so stay tuned!