Supermarket giant Coles brand free range eggs allow for 10,000
birds per hectare with each bird allowed «at least a square metre of space» outside and «minimum perching space» inside the sheds.
The Queensland government has stealthily scrambled its own free - range standard by increasing stocking densities to 10,000
birds per hectare.
To use the Australian Certified Organic Bud logo, egg farmers can't stock more than 1500
birds per hectare if they are set stocking or up to 2500
birds per hectare for layers on pasture rotations.
While smaller scale producers might stick to 1,500
birds per hectare as the recommended maximum, large scale producers are keeping their hens at much higher densities to cash in on the growing market for free range products.
Send your email to the Queensland government and let them know that 10,000
birds per hectare is not free - range!
«That's a big point of difference for us because at the moment, what they're doing is saying «if you've got 750
birds per hectare outside», inside they could have them crammed in like you wouldn't believe.
In a separate development, free range egg producers are threatening to go to the ACCC if the Egg Corporation persists in allowing free range farmers to run as many as 20,000 laying
birds per hectare, the equivalent of two birds a square metre.
Stocking densities would be set at 750
birds per hectare and beak trimming banned.
We run a stocking density of 600
birds per hectare [which is lower than the stringent certified organic stocking density].
To use the Australian Certified Organic Bud logo, egg farmers can't stock more than 1500
birds per hectare if set stocking or up to 2500
birds per hectare for layers on pasture rotations.
Conversely, the free range system allows stocking as many as 60,000
birds per hectare and the hens» feed could contain GMs and pesticides.
Macro, another of Woolworths» brands, lists a chicken stocking density of 1500
birds per hectare — the recommended standard for free - range.
Not exact matches
Part of a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, Yasuní has more species of trees in a single
hectare than all of the US and Canada combined and has more species
per hectare of
birds, amphibians, mammals, shrubs, and insects than anywhere else in the world.
The coastal region — with as many as twenty - eight thousand droppings
per hectare — is where the study found significant correlations between deer and
birds.
The latest finding from these researchers suggests that the
birds are returning the favor to farmers by eating an aggressive coffee bean pest, the borer beetle, thereby improving coffee bean yields by hundreds of dollars
per hectare.
[T] he standing value of timber dropped from $ 10,460
per hectare to $ 2,010
per hectare after two logging rotations, yet these forests retained over 75 percent of
bird and dung beetle species found in primary unlogged forest.
And interestingly applying 2,535 kg of pesticide
per hectare of land, while having 8.5 % of its known species (
birds, mammals and reptiles) considered «threatened.»
By Sebastian Anthony — What spans 1,600
hectares, cost $ 2.2 billion to build, and potentially fries hundreds of thousands of
birds per year?