This certificate photograph shows a display of Sunrise Eggs at the Annual Show in Newcastle. It’s dated February 1940. The stall is decorated with advertisements produced by the New South Wales Egg Marketing Board:
From scientifically – fed hens. Tested for freshness. Graded for size and weight…and branded. You get new laid eggs perfect for eating and cooking in the new orange and blue carton.
By the end of the nineteenth century most people in Australia kept a few fowls for home use. Chickens needed a chicken coop or house in which to lay and sit on their eggs, where they were shut up at night, safe from predators, such as foxes. The chickens fed on kitchen scraps and spare grains, and any seeds, insects or the morsel they could find in the yard.
At this time there was still no attempt at commercial poultry farming. Even in the first decades of the twentieth century the few commercial egg producers were a novelty and their production was considered a hazardous livelihood. Vet Science was yet to become involved in the industry, facilities were primitive and methods of husbandry trial-and-error. Nevertheless, as the population of cities increased egg production grew with farms being located close to the suburbs to ensure fresh first-grade “Suburban new-laid eggs”. Eggs which arrived from country areas were stale or of unreliable quality.
During the economic depression of the 1930s egg production increased as large numbers of the unemployed took up poultry farming. Controlled egg production increased during the Second World War so too did the importance and relevance of the Egg Marketing Board. Scientific breeding, improved poultry nutrition and the introduction of the inhumane cage system further increased production by the 1960s.
Newcastle Annual Show certificate photograph, 1940
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Post by Margaret Simpson, Curator
