Go To Work On A Egg...

'Buy free range eggs but don't make them in our back yard' so the locals are saying. I sense there may be some egg throwing before this is dealt with one way or another.

The next village down from us, Thornton-le-Beans, has a planning issue. With the demand for free range eggs on the increase the facilities for this are needed. North Yorkshire has a big hand in producing free range already.

There is a planning application in for a £10M, 237 acre free range egg farm which will have at least 12 acres of native woods planted. This is what we might think free range is all about but farmers don't walk around the land collecting eggs from wherever the chucks lay them.

The size of the land needed is in relation to the size of the barns the hens will lay their eggs in. In this case 3 huge barns each 264M x 26M in size, housing 64000 hens each. That's a total of 192000 hens. These hens are 'moved' on every 70 weeks when they are deemed past their best...

The hens will have access to roam the land between 8am to dusk each day which is more than a caged or barn egg producer gets. The issue with the locals is the views lost by the sighting of the barns, the extra articulated lorries using local lanes and what is sees as intensive farming.

This is what is needed to satisfy the supermarkets demands at a price their customers will pay. If we want free range or any type of egg we need somewhere to produce them. I'm not convinced it needs to be so large and all in one area.

I will continue to buy from the market stall in town who have a farm in the North York Moors that produce on a much smaller scale.