Hatched, Batched and Dispatched

Jan 1950

BRUNCH just wouldn't be the same without eggs. Scrambled, fried, poached, hard-boiled - no matter how they're prepared, the debate nowadays is centred on free-range versus caged. But back in the 1950s, when chicken farms were common in rural areas such as Choa Chu Kang, Seletar, Jurong and Punggol, few people were bothered over how cooped up the chickens were. In those days, local farms were able to meet the needs of Singapore's 1.6 million people and by the late 1960s, there were about 20,000 farms occupying 14,000 hectares of land. These traditional farms were phased out after Seng Choon Farm established itself in 1987 and turned to automation to expand its egg-packing operations.