A SOUTH west Queensland family have established a pasture fed chicken egg business and plan to have about 6000 hens feeding off oats and native grasses on their property.
Muckadilla’s Megan Mackay and Adam Sutton currently run Muckadilla Pasture-Fed Eggs and have 500 Highland Brown chickens laying eggs which are sold to Mitchell and Roma produce stores and recently at IGA.
The couple relocated from Darwin, with their children Addyson and Dane, in 2012 to be closer to family.
While they could only afford to purchase a 100 hectare property, now known as Bimbadeen, they didn’t want size to stop them from farming.
They recently sold their beef breeders to focus on a small backgrounding operation and decided to try their hand at chooks.
Their chickens are bred and purchased from Abbott’s Poultry in Biloela and delivered as pre-lay hens.
Another 500 are due to arrive at Bimbadeen in a few weeks and new hens will be progressively added as older ones are rehomed after 18 months.
Ms Mackay said they had decided to pursue chickens for the soil health benefits and sustainability for their business.
“We couldn’t afford bigger so we went smarter,” she said.
“Farmers often degrade themselves. A farm can be on one acre or 100 acres, it’s how it can be improved.”
While Ms Mackay said they had always had backyard chickens, farming with them wasn’t easy.
Each new batch of hens needs to be taught how to perch and access the laying boxes, which involved the family spending two hours on the first night placing each individual hen in position.
Mr Sutton has also made both of the movable chicken coops, one as big as eight metres long, which feature laying shelves designed on an angle so the eggs drop onto a conveyor belt making it easier to collect the eggs two to three times a day.
The coops are moved every few days around the property joined with two Maremma dogs, Alaska and Oddball, who protect the hens.
Not as easy as it looks
While it might not seem like it at first, pursuing chicken farming is “very labour intensive”.
Not only have the couple established special coops and individually clean and package the eggs themselves at Muckadilla Pasture-Fed Eggs, but they have also made a sick bay from a smaller chook pen to treat any unwell birds.
They also plan to install exclusion fencing.
Mr Sutton said the chickens were useful for eggs and regrowth control.
He said it was hoped that they would be able to put their cattle onto planted crops like oats to allow them to “mow it down” and then let the chickens finish it off, but they had to be wary of compaction issues within the birds’ system.
They collect about 450 eggs a day and Mr Sutton said it meant there was no excuse for not cooking a cake.
For more visit Muckadilla Pasture-Fed Eggs on Facebook.