An oyster processor in Baynes Sound is filling a gap created during the pandemic and generating new revenue from shells it has been sending to landfill.
Fanny Bay Oysters has been a fixture in the area for decades, shucking the product and – for the most part – simply dumping mountains of empty shells.
“Before, we would actually pay to get rid of them, they would go to waste, all the way to the landfill,” says the company’s quality assurance manager, Jeff Armstrong.
Armstrong says the company has begun experimenting with scraps of shell that have been crushed and used in growing new oysters. They were soon approached by landscapers who wanted old shells for gardening, and then by chicken farmers.
“We’ve had a lot of interest,” Armstrong says. “We just realized that this is a great way to produce extra calcium for the chickens.”
Production is ramped up to break down the shells and turn them into feed, which will be used to increase the calcium intake of the chickens, making the shells of the eggs they lay harder.
“It’s great for the chickens because it’s a great product and they definitely need it, you can see the difference right in their shells,” says Hilary Benesch, owner of Cat and Crow Farm.
Benes says she has had difficulty getting oyster shells from her normal food suppliers because of shortages that began during the pandemic.
“When we didn’t have it, we asked them when it would be available and they didn’t know, so we just had to make do for a few months,” she says.
Benes was surprised to learn that there was no previous supplier for the oyster shells.
“There are so many different oyster farms on the island and you see oyster shells everywhere. I thought, sure, it would be easy for us to keep up the supply, but when the feed stores were running short, it made me wonder, ‘Where is it really coming from?'” she says.
In addition to the chicken feed that Fanny Bay Oysters offers through Buckerfields, the company believes there may be a future in providing products such as oyster meal to cover driveways, parking lots and bocce courts.
“It was great to see it go from a potential waste to something that’s useful almost everywhere,” Armstrong says.
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