DUFROST, Man. – The Millenni Egg Corp. barn echoes with the whine of drills as workers put the final touches on towering rows of steel cages eight storeys high and 162 metres long.
On Sept. 7, it will fill with the cacophony of 150,000 hens owned by a dozen producers.
“If they’re happy, they sing,” said Frank Friesen, a farmer signing his egg quota over to the barn.
After inking a 10-year loan for $3.5 million for the project, the farmers are counting on hearing the birds sing.
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The farmers spent two years visiting show rooms and egg barns in North America and Europe to find a durable design efficient enough to weather changes forecast for the Canadian egg industry.
Some of the storm will come from south of the border. As tariff walls come down, Friesen feels the barn will be ready to compete with cheaply produced American eggs.
But the barn, the largest in Canada, was born out of farmers’ convictions that the egg industry is growing and the growth will come at a lower price.
In 1969, when Friesen first built his egg barn at Gretna, Man., 95 percent of Canadian eggs were sold to consumers in the higher-priced table market.
Today, processors buy 20 percent of eggs, making liquid and dried products for a fast-food, health-conscious culture here and abroad.
Processor demand is the growth area and those eggs are priced 30 to 50 percent lower to compete in the world arena.
Most of the eggs from the Millenni barn will fetch a blended price weighted to the high end of the market.
But 25,000 of the hens will produce eggs outside the quota system, going directly to a Winnipeg processor at lower world prices. The farmers are gambling they’ll save enough on feed, freight, power and labor to ride out the lows in fluctuating world prices.
“If I have one bird not making much, but the other bird doing well, I can stay in business,” Friesen said.
The farmers have gone even further, buying shares in a new-generation co-op that plans to spend $4.5 million building a plant in Winnipeg with an Ontario processor.
Another group of farmers plans to build an identical barn beside the Millenni Egg project.
But others have looked at expansion for processing and declined.
Friesen said he thinks the supply management system can accommodate both choices.
“I’m not ever going to think that this is the way it’s all going to go.”
