Whether you like them for brunch or in your prata, eggs are a staple part of many Singaporeans’ diets. With an annual production of over 128 million eggs a year, N&N Agriculture is both a thriving modern egg farm and one of the pillars of our local farming community.
N&N was the first to pioneer the production of pasteurized shell eggs in Singapore, and with a new quail farm and expansion plans in the works, things are looking sunny side up.
Various forms of technology are used to nurture close to half a million hens at N&N: Robot cleaners are used to wash the cages; feed trucks can be automatically loaded into silos and the eggs are inspected and packed with automatic egg handling machines. “Just as an example, cleaning the hen cages used to take 3 weeks to a month,” Chin Chew elaborated. “With automation, cleaning can be done in about 3 days.”
To ensure the safety and hygiene of its products, N&N puts a selected quantity of its eggs through pasteurization. This delicate process involves immersing eggs in a warm water bath at a controlled temperature range and duration, destroying harmful salmonella and bird flu virus without affecting the eggs taste or nutritional value. Besides pasteurized table eggs, N&N also produces a range of pasteurized egg products like Japanese-style ramen eggs, Tamagoyaki, poached eggs, hard boiled eggs and pasteurized liquid egg.
Besides being delicious, N&N's eggs are great for the environment as well. The farm has been repurposing the manure produced by its chickens into biofuel that helps to generate electricity for the farm. “This process is called anaerobic digestion,” Chin Chew explains. “Water is added to chicken manure and decomposed inside the anaerobic digester, producing methane gas. This is used to generate power for the farm.”