A double yolker is always an unexpected delight — especially in eggs fried or poached. It does, however, lose some of its impact when lost in the fevered whipping of an omelette, or the less challenging scrambled eggs (which is where omelettes that didn’t work, end up).
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But what about the eggs where you are disappointed when out pops a single yolker?
Talk about wrecking your morning ritual of a bright yellow cackleberry to pop on your piece of toast or bury under bacon.
Which brings us to 12 Good Eggs, where you get (almost) double the value for your money if you don’t mind buying eggs so large, they can’t safely fit in the standard egg carton.
Instead, these come on open trays, secured by plastic wrap, and they are whoppers. Just the thought of the Good Eggs layers dropping one of these monsters is enough to bring tears to your eyes.
Owner Kate Redfearn says, just like the fruit and vegetable market, the egg industry is a victim of marketing cosmetics — super large eggs, or those slightly misshapen, are rejected by the mainstream market because they don’t meet strict size, shape and colour.
But as Kate points out, on the inside they are not just perfectly good eggs, you get more bang for your bucks because they are so much bigger. In the trade these misfits are known as ‘ugly’. From contorted carrots to mega eggs, they taste the same, the benefits are the same, they just look different.
You could suppose, statistically, when you are collecting around 2500 eggs a day, as Kate does, you would be seeing plenty of double yolkers — and you would be wrong.
Using a vast amount of data the percentages never lie — only one egg in every 1000 is likely to be a double-up.
But Kate and her happy cluckers are rewriting those record books. She buys in young hens at the point of laying, and research shows it is the younger ones which are more likely to produce the doubles.
And they must be painfully good at the jumbo goog business because every time there is an Echuca Farmers’ Market (which would be the first and third Saturday of every month — and the fifth if there is one) she is there with countless trays overflowing with ginormous eggs.
“We run 3500 hens across 150ha — that’s about 60 times more space per bird than is required to be classified free-range and our hens have comfortable mobile homes/converted caravans that are paddock based and shifted regularly where they can sleep safely and lay their eggs,” Kate said.
“And they then spend their day roaming about the paddock enjoying the country air. The flexibility to shift hens is part of our holistic approach to land management as the soil is regenerated through rotational grazing which disperses nutrients across the farm.
“Hen health is optimised and consistent high egg quality can be maintained. Our supplementary feed is formulated by an experienced industry nutritionist and fills the gap in seasonal variations in paddock feed availability and hen health requirements.
“Our hens are moved to fresh ground regularly. This prevents manure and subsequent pathogen build-up and allows for healthy natural fertilisation of our paddocks.
“They have a wonderful free life, and in return give us great tasting, nutritious paddock eggs.”
The eggs are collected daily from the farm near Moulamein, in south-western NSW, and then whipped back up the Murray to Barham, where Kate has her factory complex — a hygienic and climate controlled environment where she and her support team clean, sanitise, weigh, grade, stamp and pack the eggs.
“Although we provide comfortable mobile homes for our hens to sleep and lay eggs, they are free to roam the paddocks as they please, which is why we have classified our eggs as ‘paddock eggs’,” Kate explained.
“As I mentioned, compared to the industry standard of 10,000 hens/hectare, ours is just 150 hens/hectare.”
Which brings us to the heart of the egg business — the colour of the yolk. All the best research tells us whether yolks are orange or yellow, none of that is any indication of nutritional content.
Darker yolks, for example, may be the result of the hen’s diet being higher in Omega 3, so the only real difference is purely aesthetic, in how good it will look on your plate when it’s cooked.
“The colour of yolks in any pack of eggs is likely to vary,” Kate said.
“Real free-range hens pick and choose what they eat and depending on that choice the colour of the yolk will change accordingly, so at certain times of the year, when there is little green feed in the paddocks, yolk colour will not be as deep.
“Our hens have comfortable mobile homes/converted caravans that are paddock based and shifted regularly. It’s where they sleep safely and lay their eggs. They spend their day roaming about the paddock enjoying the country air.
“The flexibility to shift hens is part of our holistic approach to land management. Soil is regenerated through rotational grazing which disperses nutrients across the farm. Hen health is optimised and consistent high egg quality can be maintained.
“Supplementary feed is formulated by an experienced industry nutritionist and fills the gap in seasonal variations in paddock feed availability and hen health requirements (winter is the worst time, hens need sunlight to lay eggs and that is in short supply during those months).
“Also, by moving our hens to fresh ground regularly because while the manure does help the soil, the constant movement prevents manure and subsequent pathogen build-up and allows for healthy natural fertilisation of our paddocks.
“Our hens have a wonderful free life and in return give us great tasting, nutritious paddock eggs.”
That’s the Moulamein side of the business, but Barham is where the egg business connects with the business world.
The factory is registered with, and audited by, the NSW Food Authority.
And while eggs might seem the farm product least likely to be in demand online, you couldn’t be further from the truth Kate points out.
“COVID really kicked off the online marketing, we already had a strong client base from farmers’ markets, from our farmgate and increasingly into local retail outlets, so people still wanted them — and we still wanted the customers,” Kate said.
“I have a friend in Barham who was already running an online campaign for her branded pork products and had a distribution system in place, so we truck the eggs to Melbourne and they get sent out from there.”
However, if you want to try Kate’s online option, your chances of a double yolker just slipped back to that one in 1000 because, in case it has slipped your mind already, the boomer eggs don’t fit cartons and if she tried the plastic wrapped trays people might find they are getting scrambled eggs with every delivery regardless of what they were planning to do with their order.
But wait, there’s more. Including the rest of the personalities completing the clutch of characters behind the 12 Good Eggs brand.
And that’s a story that goes way back, to when Kate’s great-grandfather turned up in south-western NSW before World War I and founded the family farm.
And today sees mum Kerri working closely with the head egg — along with the occasional input from the relatively recently hatched Henry (now five), although the breakage rate spikes a bit on those days — while Roger Knight, Kate’s better half, and her father Richard handle the main farm’s cropping enterprise.
Then there’s the crew at the factory — and let’s not forget the security team. Kate’s four Maremmas take care of the foxes, and the occasional raptor which dares show its face.
As annoying as the predators can be, Kate says the most important defence at 12 Good Eggs is the biosecurity plan.
“Like everything in farming, there’s always risk — the avian flu outbreak at Kerang well and truly showed that,” Kate said.
“Fortunately we haven’t had any problems like that, but if we did it could be devastating so we’re very strict about it.”
Her happy cluckers are all Hy-Lines (rated the world’s most prolific layers) and she regularly turns over numbers every 12 to 18 months — with the retired layers, still with plenty of egg potential, going into the backyard pet business — they even have an agent to help with their relocation.
But wait, there’s even more.
Because even with the farmers’ market, with the growing network of retail outlets and other sales here and there, there was still one, small problem.
There were still a few surplus eggs and as Kate explains, their commitment to minimising waste and ethical farm practices to produce the farm’s high-quality, nutrient dense eggs also meant they needed to come up with a sustainable way to use the eggs they couldn’t sell because of their misshappen shape and size.
“And that one had us scratching our heads, researching all sorts of options and then we had that light-bulb moment — dog food,” she said.
“Even better, we had four gorgeous guinea pigs to test our recipes,” she laughs.
Fooch, which is a crunchy treat for dogs, was the end result.
“Our aim was to develop a healthy and delicious premium product, one both dogs and their owners would love, which also aligned to our values,” she said.
“And we think we’ve ‘cracked it’ given the wagging tails and happy faces we see at the farmers’ markets we attend.
“So, you can treat the dog you love, and treat our planet at the same time, with Fooch crunchy treats.”