The largest egg farm in Latin America, Granja Mantiqueira, produces 2.7 million eggs a day from 4 million hens. They start laying eggs at 110 days and have about 95 weeks of productivity before being shipped to the slaughterhouse. 26 hens share a small cage, and are given an unlimited supply of food and water. Food is 80-85% cornmeal, with some soy, calcario (lime for eggshell development), and meat powder. The facility is highly automated, with food, water, and humidity is controlled automatically, as is the removal of eggs and excrement. The eggs roll down the floor of the cages to a conveyor belt that delivers them to an egg elevator connecting all six levels of hens, and then eggs are rolled to another conveyor system that takes them hundreds of meters to the sorting, cleaning, and packaging building. The plant is located in a rural part of Mato Grosso as there is an abundant supply of cheap cornmeal here. At this time all of their production is for the Brazilian market. From here the aging hens are shipped 1300 km to a poultry slaughterhouse near São Paulo.
The Egg Farm Manager explained that the biggest egg producer in the world is probably Rose Farm in the USA. In Europe all egg producers are now required to keep chickens in enclosures that allow more movement, a program that he called "happy chickens", but this raises egg costs through the cost of labor and facilities, and is not required in Brazil. In years when economics have allowed export, they have produced brown eggs for the African and Portuguese market (brown chickens, not white), white yolks for Japan (less corn, more millet in food), and put hatch-date stamp on each egg for sale in the Middle East.
- Filename
- STNMTZ_20130905_15039.tif
- Copyright
- ©2013 George Steinmetz
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- Contained in galleries
- Feed the Planet
