Canada: Chickens, egg production seen at ‘beak level’

They’re showgirls but they don’t really know it. They were born into the business.

But the young hens seem to like being on display at the new egg research and display facility at the University of Manitoba, performing for schoolchildren, university students, researchers, and egg farmers and, on this day, a Western Producer reporter.

On the “enhanced housing” side, the hens crane their necks out from their large, communal cages, perhaps curious about the camera pointed at their red-combed heads. They wander along inside their realm, between perches and feeding areas and the safe space of the nesting area. There’s lots to keep a hen busy.

Down a short hallway and through a door, the hens gather in greater numbers and can get up close and personal with human visitors. On the “free run aviary” side of the facility, the hens gather, clucking and fluffing, while the bravest and most curious walk up to the masked and covered-head-to-toe reporter, perhaps suspecting he’s hiding feed somewhere within his coveralls. Most people the chickens see are on the other side of glass, except for the workers who come in to “teach” them certain behaviours, like where to lay their eggs.

Rows of bright white hens perch on bars provided for their amusement, rest and socialization. The elevated perches provide a position of safety as flightless humans wander beside them at beak level.

“We’re so excited to show it off,” Crystal Jorgenson, communications specialist with the agriculture department at the University of Manitoba, said a few days after the Glenlea research farm’s new egg research and display facility opened, and a few months after these two flocks of young hens were brought in to be the inaugural birds.

“It took them a while to get used to people, but now they seem to like visitors.”

Officially named the Manitoba Egg Farmers Learning and Research Centre at the Bruce D. Campbell Farm and Food Discovery Centre, the facility attempts to combine three main things: research for academics, industry professionals and farmers; technical education for students and industry people; and awareness and outreach about egg production for the public.

It also produces many thousands of eggs that go into the commercial market after leaving behind the hens, barns and watchful researchers, students and members of the public.

“People just haven’t thought about where eggs come from,” said Claire McCaffrey, a communications specialist with Manitoba Egg Farmers, who toured the barns with the reporter. In the few days since the centre opened to schoolchildren and public, many questions have popped up about eggs and chickens, including whether each egg contains a chicken, which birds are the girls and which are the boys, and why chickens sometimes eat gravel and dirt.

Most people “think a chicken is a chicken,” said McCaffrey about explaining the basics of poultry production to people who might never before have seen a live hen.

For even the most informed and interested, seeing poultry production has become a rare experience. Biosafety protocols on commercial farms prevent visitors, including other producers. Many farmers haven’t seen another producer’s barn in years as they diligently avoid exposing each other’s flocks to diseases like avian influenza.

“We’ve never been able to have people out to an egg farm before,” said McCaffrey.

This facility provides visitors with close access to the hens and eggs through windows that reveal the inside of both styles of modern production: enhanced housing and free-run aviary. The smaller cages used in many older barns aren’t used here because they are being phased out of the industry by 2036 and aren’t being used in new barns.

Glenlea operations manager Jay Bourcier said opening the barn walls to a production system like the free-run aviary helps inform consumers what they’re paying for when they buy specially labelled egg containers.

“We can show them what they’re supporting,” said Bourcier.

Enhanced housing provides communal cages for the hens, with about 21 per unit here, in which they have a nesting area, perches, nail files on the feeders and other amenities not as available in traditional cages.

The two styles of production are both highly automated, with egg removal and manure removal relying on belt systems. Each side of the operation is as close to real farm production as possible, using the latest methods.

“This is the latest and the greatest in Canada right now,” said Bourcier. “To have value for the students coming through and going out into the industry, it has to mimic the Manitoba industry.”

The two systems allow for side-by-side comparisons of production results. There are also three rooms in which individual chickens can be studied. Chicken nutrition, bird behaviour, humane impacts and egg quality can all be studied in a scientifically valid way here.

“We can go all the way through to a human clinical trial,” said Jorgenson.

Researchers are already studying the birds, with plans for many studies that hadn’t previously been possible.

The hens are settling down, losing the skittishness common to pullets. They’re also getting crafty.

On this day when the door is opened to the free-run barn, three hens have made a jail break and are wandering around the walkway on the edge of the free-run area. They don’t seem to have any big plans for freedom. Most seem to be interested in getting back among the flock, but they found a flaw in their enclosure and went for a wander.

Working out the kinks in the new barn will take a while, but already the chickens seem settled, the researchers keen to get working, and the public filled with questions about where eggs come from.

Tags: Poultry, Production, egg, Avian influenza, hens, flocks, University of Manitoba