PROUDLY SOUTH AUSTRALIAN

Our Farms

For us to produce the best eggs for you, our hens need to be able to satisfy their innate foraging instincts as they did thousands of years ago under the canopies of the once vast forests. Interestingly, this foraging habit doesn’t mean chickens need to wander for miles and miles, in fact, when left alone, our girls tend to stay very close to “home”.

As a result, we have adapted our farming methods across three different models of hen habitat; free range, barn living, and cage living. As you’ll see on this site, each of these methods have different qualities but all are managed to give our hens an optimum existence.

And you’ll find our farms across South Australia, in the following locations:

  • Adelaide Plains
  • McLaren Vale

  • Roseworthy

  • Port Pirie
  • Port Germein

We know our forefathers would be proud to see how far egg farming technology has come. And because our mission is to keep ethical, and sustainable farming practices as the driving force of what we do today and into the future, we hope you’ll be able to continue buying eggs from the Days Eggs range with pride.

TOUR OUR FARMS

PROUDLY SOUTH AUSTRALIAN

Free Range Egg Farms

Days Eggs has free range egg farms at McLaren Vale, Adelaide Plains, Roseworthy, and the Southern Flinders Ranges, where our girls get to scratch around to their hearts’ content.

We’re often asked how big our range areas are and the simplest way to describe them is to say they’re as large as a footy fields. When you consider how small a hen is, that means our girls have plenty of room to roam around in, with plenty of space for dust-bathing and fossicking for worms and insects.

Of course, with demand for free range eggs growing, we have an important responsibility to make sure our farming practices are sustainable. At Days Eggs, we believe the key to sustainable, free-range egg production, is to balance land use so that our hens have areas large enough to roam around, while our neighbouring farmers have enough land for producing grain (which our girls need) and raising livestock to meet all the food security needs of our community.

Therefore, instead of tying up thousands of acres of farmland, we have created managed pastures, which we enrich by bringing in fodder, in the form of large hay bales of straw, providing interesting enrichment material, which the girls can fossick around and dust-bathe in. READ MORE

These bales also have the bio-diverse effect of improving the soil and providing seeds for the regeneration of grasses for the hens.
On that note, our girls aren’t restricted to staying outside. In fact, they can move freely in and out of our sheds to suit their needs with many often opting to stay indoors.

This freedom is important because despite the romantic notions about life outdoors for chickens, while ranging they are exposed to many risks, such as extreme weather conditions and wild birds of prey like chicken hawks. Apart from their housing, our native tree planting program has helped provide natural protection for our girls, by shading them from the harsh sunlight on hot days and providing extra cover from the prying eyes of predators in the sky.

Therefore, we’re very proud of our careful, balanced, and sustainable approach to free range egg farming.

Barn Laid Egg Farms

With our “barn laid” egg farms, we have designed and installed state-of-the-art houses to keep our girls protected from the searing heat of summer, while providing warmth in winter.

Our safe, spacious housing creates a comfortable home for our hens, who would otherwise be vulnerable to the extremes of weather that we get here in South Australia.

For example, did you know that chickens do not have sweat glands to cool them during times of high temperature? This means our air-conditioned housing gives them protection from SA’s famous, searingly hot summer days.

Likewise, if chickens get too cold, it distresses them and they can stop laying eggs. Our gentle climate controlled systems, that our girls enjoy, create a wonderful environment which tends to attract our employees who look for extra duties to perform inside the barns on really cold and hot days!

Along with automatic feeding systems that keep our hens happy and content, the manure we collect from these barns twice a week, keep many local farmers happy and content.

This rich, organic fertiliser is a dynamic source of nutrients for the production of broad acre crops in the area. And completing this virtuous circle, many of the grains and legumes grown by these farmers are then sold back to us in the form of nutritious feed for our hens.

It is biodiversity cycles like this that are a fundamental part of making farming on this scale sustainable.

PROUDLY SOUTH AUSTRALIAN

Cage Egg Farms

Within the range of Days Eggs farms, we do have a high-tech, pristine cage egg farm, in Napperby, near Port Pirie.

Our cage system is the only one of its type in South Australia, incorporating the latest in design for optimum hen welfare, with comfortable perches and scratch areas, in an air-conditioned, clean environment.

Our girls are kept entertained in safety, away from wild birds and inclement weather, which means they are free from stress and able to produce some of the largest and healthiest eggs available.

Another key ingredient in this “eggcelent” state-of-the-art production system, is the nutritious feed mix our girls get. Our nutritious mixture of seeds and grains has been developed in accordance with our expert Hen Nutritionists and Veterinarians.

As well as good food, our in-house Poultry Welfare specialist makes sure our hens receive the best possible care and enrichments.

When eggs are laid, our automatic egg collection systems then collect them in line with the very best food safety practices. For example, the eggs roll away from the hens as soon as they’re laid, to then travel along a conveyor directly into trays for cooling in cool rooms before packing. This is vital for maintaining freshness and quality.

Lower Light Egg Packing and Distribution Centre

This is the midway point between hen welfare and egg laying, and the process of getting our fresh, nutritious eggs to your local market or supermarket.

In 2018, this facility at our headquarters, was expanded to not only include extra grading and warehouse capacity, but also a UV sanitiser, an inline washing and sanitising plant, and an oiling plant.

Our high-speed, large-volume, computerised, egg-grading machine can grade 126,000 eggs per hour, which can then be safely dispatched to you via our 600-pallet warehouse and distribution load out facility.

Behind the scenes, Days Eggs has a team of expert Hen Nutritionists and more than 90 employees in South Australia, including an expert Veterinarian, and a Poultry Welfare specialist, who care for our hens, and oversee the safe processing, packaging, and distribution of eggs.

OUR PRODUCT RANGE