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The growing specialty egg market

Brunnquell barnThe egg market is changing as more consumers are looking for everything from cage-free to organic operations and John Brunnquell is moving to meet that demand.  The head of Egg Innovations, Brunnquell is contracting with farmers to build barns and supply eggs.  Currently he has 40 barns housing 20,000 hens each in Wisconsin, Indiana and Kentucky.  He is building 8 more this year and looks to build another 8 next year.  His goal is to have all of the operations cage-free, certified organic, non-GMO and either free-range or pastured.  That way he has the versatility to meet various consumer demands.  They market eggs coast-to-coast.

The newest barn is being built in Clark County, Wisconsin.  Like all of the facilities, the 520-by-50-foot barn will house 20,000 hens.  Two rows of colony nests with a conveyor belt run down the middle of the barn.  On each side is 20 feet of elevated, slatted floor where the feeders and waterers sit.  From there to the walls is flat floor with 25 small doors on each side to allow access to outside pastures on the sides of the building.  The pastures have dirt close to the building with alfalfa growing beyond that.  The chickens are allowed outside in the daytime as long as the temperature is above 60 degrees.  In the case of the Clark County farm, it will take three years to get the pasture certified organic so for now the eggs will be only free-range.  There are cases where synthetics have not been used on the land for three years so those operations could go organic immediately.

Egg Innovations contracts with a farmer for around 12 years.  The farmer provides the building, utilities and labor and gets about $120,000 per year for doing that.  Egg Innovations furnishes the chickens, feed and markets the eggs.  The barn is built to Egg Innovation’s specifications and the company purchases all of the equipment so the farmer gets the volume price.  Brunnquell says when you are buying for 8 barns instead of one, it makes a difference.

Brunnquell does not see the demand for specialty eggs slowing, “There’s a generation of consumers who are very concerned about the food they eat and they want to know where it came from and they want to have a sense that it is from more traditional production.”  To make sure their eggs are meeting those expectations, Egg Innovations keeps an eye on their operations.  “Last year we went through 160 on-sight audits through a variety of certifiers.”  They have full-time compliance people who work with the farmers to help them do things correctly.  “Some consumer on the West Coast is probably going to pay $6 a dozen for these eggs and she has every right to expect that some farmer somewhere in the Midwest did a great job of taking care of the animals.”

Brunnquell talks about the operation 7:08 mp3

 

Egg Innovations

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