The egg first
Posted by Webmaster | Filed under Food features, News Bites, Poultry, game and meat
WORDS Tania Connolly IMAGE Melissa Gollin
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Ancient philosophers, historians and scientists have debated this for centuries. Scholars are also divided as to whether remains discovered in Northern China as early as 5,400BCE, were from domesticated or wild chickens. What is confirmed, is that 87 chickens arrived in Australia via the First Fleet in January 1788, and now hundreds of millions are bred each year.
Obsessed with chickens, Melissa Gollin stocks around 100 rare birds on her 8-acre ‘rainbow egg’ poultry farm in The Patch in Victoria. ‘I want to produce eggs in an ethical way using pure breeds or first generation crosses of pure breeds,’ she says.
She focuses on chickens that lay different-coloured eggs. Marans and Welsummers lay a brown pigment over the top of the egg leaving the white shell underneath; Araucana and Cream Legbar hens place an iridescent blue pigment all the way through the eggshells and Croad Langshan eggs have a purple bloom. Melissa also crosses breeds to create green and khaki coloured eggs. Her colourful and unique eggs are in demand all around the area.
Regardless of the outside colour of the eggs, the colour of the yolk and its nutritional value is determined by the hen’s diet—the more greens it eats, the deeper the yellow colour.
On a commercial scale, Phil and Anne Westwood of Freeranger Eggs let their 1,200 Isa Brown birds (a common breed of layers) have full run of their 80-hectare sustainable property in Grantville, near Cowra in New South Wales. They’re kept in small flocks of 200 to 400 with separate paddocks, mobile roosting sheds and laying boxes filled with wood shavings. They hand pick an average 1,000 eggs a day.
Phil stresses that the hens’ diet is extremely important for tasty eggs. ‘We have a mash of natural grains that they have unlimited access to in the feeder shed, Phil says.’ With their untrimmed beaks, they are also able to easily forage in the shrubbery of the paddocks for insects, spiders and grubs. ‘You won’t have good eggs if chooks are fed pellets,’ he explains.
In Perth’s picturesque Swan Valley, Liz Compagnoni and her husband, Tom’s, 12-acre property, Comps Poultry, is fertile ground for their bird menagerie and hatchery.
They breed, incubate and sell rare and common breeds of chickens as well as ducks, geese and game birds.
Melissa is also involved in the Rare Breeds Trust of Australia. ‘I’d love to see more pure breeds in backyards replacing the commercial poultry hens which are more commonly purchased. Although the commercial hens are cheaper to purchase than pure breed hens, the support for small producers trying to make these breeds thrive here in Australia is really important,’ she says.
She’s also hatching dreams of programs in schools and aged-care facilities to keep people in touch with the natural life cycle and to expand into producing her own egg products like mayonnaise and remoulade.
She has her trademark ready to go and, with her passion for her feathered friends, the sky is the limit.
For the the full story, grab a copy of Sprout Magazine Autumn 2018 issue at your local stockists or online.
Published at the beginning of each season, Sprout is a celebration of local food, producers and cuisine. It is about living sustainably through promoting fresh, seasonal produce from local farms and encouraging people to make a difference by growing their own food and making sustainable food choices.