Tag: eggs

Norbert and Tímea – poultry farmers

Place: Csíkszentdomokos or Sândominic

Several times when we went to visit someone, I thought that we had arrived at the wrong place. Having arrived in a village and turned left onto a grassy cul-de-sac, I thought that my driver had made a mistake for a change. Instead, having called someone in Hungarian, he reversed his car and parked it on the opposite road. Next, we walked to where we had just been and entered a gate where a young couple were waiting for us. They were Norbert and Tímea, a married couple in their 30s and their young daughter.

Their house and the chicken farm were located next to each other, and both were fenced in to prevent the hens from running away and hindering foxes from entering the courtyard. The house and the surrounding property originally belonged to Nobert’s parents, and he had inherited it.

They had 5 goats, but they sold them because a male goat was aggressive when Tímea was pregnant, and she was afraid of getting hurt.

They stayed 7 years in the UK, working in hotels as cleaners in Brighton, learning the language and having a good time although they weren’t satisfied with the food they were eating. Both prefer a slow life and not earning a lot of money, meaning that they went back to where they came from, that is to the farm where Norbert grew up.

They don’t throw away food, they want to know where their food comes from, and they buy honey from local beekeepers. They have planted apple trees, which give shade to the chickens, and they also eat the fallen apples. They make their own bread, and they receive leftovers from some restaurants, but they aren’t allowed to do dumpster diving. The parents of Tímea have pigs, from which they can get meat, they buy milk from one of their neighbours.

They started raising chickens as a hobby, then they increased the number of chickens to 400, while now they have about 250. They have been raising chickens for 4 years and they are still learning how to do it. They can’t get advice on raising more than 200 chickens even though they behave very differently from 20. They buy 100 chickens at a time, costing about 1000 euros, but they can’t see which sex they have upon arrival at their farm. Anyway, the male ones are slaughtered and eaten when they are recognized. In fact, Tímea and Norbert kindly invited us into their house where they served us lunch consisting of soup made from the meat of some of their male chickens.

Foxes are trying to attack the chickens and sometimes they kill several at a time. Their three dogs stay with the chickens and that’s why they don’t have traps for the foxes. In addition, they don’t hunt.

Norbert works as an electrician at Csíki Sör brewery , but he doesn’t drink beer, he’s very occupied with fixing the machines, though. Tímea stays home with their daughter.

In addition to cereals, they only give the chickens vitamin D and calcium. A young female veterinarian is very helpful even though she knows very little about chickens, and she can identify what they need. The main diet of the chickens is cereals.

The hens may peck each other, if they see blood, they will keep on pecking. At dusk, everyone goes inside the small house. Next, they close the door to keep foxes outside. They stay inside at night on wooden racks, some of them stay in a corner of the house. The chickens produce about 1000 eggs a week. They have adjacent houses with straw on the floor where the chickens lay eggs and their owners pick the eggs twice a day. They have a separate house for the youngest chickens, that is up to 1 month.

In winter, they give the chickens hot water every 2 hours, while in summer they can drink from tubes with holes.

After lunch, we went to their egg house a few minutes’ walk from their house. It was located next to the food shop.

The egg house was called Szapona, which was a bad nickname of Norbert’s father. The egg house has a fridge with max 10°C and people can pay with cash. The egg house is monitored with 2 cameras. Of course, they can’t compete with commercial chicken farmers and the egg prices of this couple are somewhat higher than the shop prices. Some customers pay too little or too much, but, in general, it’s averaged out over time
Some people just want eggs, and they don’t care about where the eggs come from.

There is a great demand for eggs at Christmas and Easter.

The price of chicken feed has risen substantially after Covid, and they have been thinking about giving up raising chickens, but they keep on doing it. In fact, Norbert wants to be a full-time farmer and both want to raise rabbits for meat production.

They have Indian ducks for fun, and they eat snails, while their eggs and meat are inedible.

11/10/2024
Oilo Bide farm

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Going from the town of Orduña towards a place called Lendoño Beiti, which consisted of some scattered houses, we arrived at the Oilo Bide farm in order to visit the owner, Ainhoa Álava. She grew up on a farm and was used to domestic animals like horses, cows, and sheep. However, after having visited an agricultural fair in Barcelona in 2007, she decided to start raising snails.

At first, we followed her to a gigantic shoebox-shaped enclosure consisting of a metal framework covered by a translucent, waterproof, and green mesh. Rows of horizontal metal bars supported hanging file folders made of some kind of fabric, while tall grass was growing everywhere else. The snails, of which there were two types, were mainly residing on the hanging file folders where we could only see their exquisitely made snail shells. However, some of the snails were also residing on horizontal metal bars where they were fed a mixture of organic cereals. Some of the snails’ heads with their characteristic tentacles were outside the shells.

According to Ainhoa, the snails never escape and she doesn’t need to look after them daily. Instead, her hens need daily visits, else the hen-house will be a mess after a short time. In addition to feeding the snails and letting them stay in benign surroundings, they are sprayed with water mist every evening.

At night, the snails exit their shells and Ainhoa sometimes receive calls from families with children who want to see the translucent snails, purportedly a beautiful sight.

Although snails are hermaphrodites, they must mate with another snail of the same species before they can lay eggs. They start laying eggs in March at the start of spring and they are harvested in October, meaning that there were only a few left at our visit.

Like all varieties of raising animals, a lot more can be said. If you want to know more, these sites may be of interest: The living world of Molluscs and Heliciculture (wikipedia). Note that snail farming is called heliciculture because the snail shells have helical shapes.

Having visited the snails, Ainhoa led us the the chicken house where about 3000 Lohmann Brown chickens were staying. These chickens are known for their adaptability to various climates and that they recover more or less quickly if they get ill. All of them were inside a big building during our visit, but they would be let to go outside in a few weeks. She told my guide that they were young and they needed some time to learn where they should lay eggs. actually, the chicken house was built in 2011 and the raising of chickens is done by a combination of maintaining traditions and by means of high technology.

The chickens are growing slowly at their natural pace and they are only given organic feed. Likewise, they are not induced to lay more eggs than what comes natural to them. Only natural light is used such that they can follow natural rhythms of day and night.

The care of the chickens and the quality of the eggs are certified a Basque organization called Eneek.

Ainhoa often goes to fairs to show her products as can be seen on her company’s profile on facebook.

06/10/2014
Luciaren Etxea farm

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Miguel Gotzone originally worked as a mechanical engineer at a nearby plane factory when he and his family started raising chickens near their house. Now, 10 years later, he has quit his job and become a full-time chicken farmer.

He agreeably received us at his house before leading us to the place where he’s raising about 300 chickens together with a neighbour. In fact, they have a large space in which to roam, both inside and outside. Inside the chicken coop, there are boxes where they can lay eggs together with a rack of bars on which they can stand, besides entering and exiting as they want. The chicken coop is insulated such that the interior temperature ranges from 15 to 25 degrees C since the chickens won’t lay eggs if it’s too cold or too hot. Having entered the chicken coop, the chickens started pecking my feet instead of the ground, and the only remedy was to leave the building. Outside, some of them rolled around in the soil, which is good for their health, according to Miguel. Others stayed close together even though they had lots of space.

The chickens had to share space with a large, friendly dog which served to protect them against foxes, besides two Basque sheep which were eating leaves from a tree.

Outside, they can walk within a large garden divided in pens because two types of chicken are raised at this farm: brown Marraduna, which are Basque chickens, and ISA brown, which is a hybrid chicken.

Chicks are bought from another farm where the pedigree of the chicks are taken well care of. The eggs of the chickens are put in a hatching machine and live chicks are brought to this farm.

Feeding their animals high quality food only, the eggs which are laid by the chickens are also of high quality such that they are sold to top-of-the-range restaurants together with shops which sell organic products only. Miguel cracked a couple of eggs for us, holding the yolk in his hands and pinching it, while the yolk remained intact. Obviously, his eggs are out of the ordinary.

Before leaving, we visited a small house where Miguel’s wife Irene and the wife Gotzone of the neighbour Mikel were packing eggs. Miguel kindly gave each of us a package of eggs. Having brought it back to the hotel, a cook prepared a delicious omelette of them.

The daughter of Miguel and Irene, Lucia, and the daughter of Gotzone and Mikel, Lorena, followed us at a distance. They were able to speak English, but they didn’t want to practise during our visit.

This is an organic farm, and in case of illness, Miguel is only allowed to serve his chickens vinegar.

After about 3 years, the chickens are finished off and the meat is sold to restaurants which serve dishes from first-rate producers only.

29/09/2014
Sørli farm

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From Soil To Table went to Sørli farm, located southeast of Sarpsborg in the commune of Skjeberg, in order to have a look at organic production of eggs. When we arrived at the farm, we were received by Runar Sørli and Hanne Fjeldbraaten.

We were invited to join them for lunch in a nice, ochre-coloured timber house, which looked it was built at least 100 years ago. How wrong we were! I built this house 4 years ago, Runar told us. Then, we entered a pleasant and roomy kitchen where Hanne was cooking lunch. She was cooking chicken stew, making the room filled with a lovely flavour of sauce and vegetables in addition to stimulating the taste buds.

Hot food for lunch was commonly served at the farm, we were told. I started at 5 in the morning and a decent meal is required around noon, Runar said, between mouthfuls of meat, sauce and vegetables. We were also offered cold, fresh and organic milk straight from one of his 200 cows. A splendid taste, but more or less completely unavailable for the rest of us not having our own cows. Norwegian farmers aren’t allowed to sell unpasteurised milk because it’s dangerous, while cigarettes and liquor are sold all across the country. Well satisfied, after having eaten a pie with strawberries and coffee, it was time to have a look at the chickens.

The poultry farm was located a short distance from the farmer’s house. Runar, the farmer, is raising 7500 chickens at a time together with a few roosters. The chickens are producing eggs from arrival at the farm at the age of 14-16 weeks until they are 75 weeks, that is, a little less than one and a half year. Then, all the chickens are finished off, the poultry farm is cleaned, and a new group of chickens is bought from a company called Bjørk Hansen at Askim in the county of Østfold. The young chickens are laying small and delicious eggs for 2-3 weeks before they start laying normally-sized eggs. Changing a group of chickens leads to a period of about 2 months with no production of eggs. The chickens are eating organic fodder, purchased from a company called Norgesfôr (Norway fodder), consisting of wheat, rye and maize. The fodder is supplemented with some cereals from the farmer’s own harvest.

20/06/2010