RSPCA Approved Farming: The Rohde family Journey
South Aussie egg farmer Martin Rodhe has a deep love and commitment to the welfare of ‘his birds’.
The Rohde family have produced eggs in Tarlee, on the edge of the pristine Clare Valley, for more than 65 years.
We were lucky enough to visit Rohde’s Free Range Egg farm to see how they do things - from the laying sheds and open ranges, to their fancy grading machines and distribution - their whole set up blew our minds.
Martin Rodhe, Managing Director Rohde Egg Co
“Feed, water, being comfortable, all contribute to egg production. If everything’s running smoothly, it’s quite simple. It just takes a lot of care and hard work.”
It started back in the 1950s, when Martin’s Grandparents Ian and Jill bought a few layer hens for supplementary income to their cropping and sheep farm.
Over the years the business has continued to grow and transition through generations, with Martin’s parents John and Ange working tirelessly through the early 2000s to establish the Rohde’s Free Range Eggs brand.
There was a lot of uncertainty around the definition of free range at the time, which drove them to seek the RSPCA Approved Farming certification for a point of difference.
This involves a stocking density of no more than 1,500 birds per hectare, which provides each laying hen with at least 6.5m2 of personal outdoor space.
The business evolved to become Rohde Egg Co, with Martin Rohde now Managing Director and proudly continuing the commitment to higher welfare practices.
“Each day the shed shutters open up and the hens have all day to do whatever they please in the range areas,” Martin says.
“We want to grow but we’ve never really put a number of chickens on the board, that’s never been a driver to what we do.”
RSPCA Approved farms have nests, perches, litter for to dust bathe and enough indoor and outdoor space to move, with a strong focus on providing an environment for layer hens’ natural behavioural and physical needs.
Happy hens: RSPCA Approved team Krystal, Camilla and Janine watch over roaming hens with Martin and James from Rohde Egg Co.
Janine Chang-Fung-Martel, Head of Engagement at RSPCA Australia, says the standards also require enriched indoor environments, such as CDs and plastic chains hung on feeders to peck at, because even free range chickens choose to spend most of their time indoors.
“We’ve been in a longer-term journey with the Rohdes and you can see these guys are very interested in higher welfare practices,” says Janine.
“The vision longer-term is we’ll gave a lot more producers in this particular program and expand higher-welfare egg production.”
Rohde Egg Co farms more than 117,000 laying hens, chewing through around 15 tonnes of specially formulated feed to produce more than 70,000 eggs every single day.
As Oli discovers in the video above, this work is not for the faint-hearted!
The eggs are collected, graded, packaged, then delivered fresh to supermarkets, restaurants and hotels right across South Australia.
