Eggs and poultry
Eggs
Chickens are an extremely important part of our farm ecosystem. We rotate our chooks throughout the property after the cattle and sheep. The chooks scrat and scavenge bugs and other tasty morsels in the pasture and manure left by our cattle and sheep. They help clear up parasites, spread the manure of the other animals and, of course, fertilise the soil with their nitrogen dense manure.
A by-product of this relationship is delicious pasture raised eggs. Due to their varied diet, consisting not only of high quality chicken food, but also bugs and grass, the eggs they produce are naturally nutrient dense, and some of the tastiest eggs you can get.
Our layer hens come from large scale, free range egg farms as “spent hens”. The tiny profit margins of large scale commercial egg operations is such that once a hen is about 18 months old she is past peak production and is no longer profitable.
These hens continue to lay eggs on our farm for at least another 2 years. While they may not lay an egg every single day of the year, the improvements each hen makes to our pasture by far and away makes up for it.
Our eggs are available year round at The Tinshed Brewery, Dungog Providores and The Dungog Wholefood Co-op
Meat Birds
Alongside our egg producing birds, we also breed small numbers of heritage meat breed chickens. We breed Plymouth Rock chickens for their versatility as egg layers and meat producers.
Modern meat producing chickens are an incredible feat of breeding and nutrition, creating an animal that is capable of turning the smallest amount of feed possible into the most amount of meat possible in the shortest possible time. This comes at the detriment of the animal’s quality and quantity of life and also at great cost to the eating quality of the meat itself.
Our chickens are around 6 months old at slaughter, they spend their whole life on green pasture, scavenging, dust bathing and scratting about as all chickens should. This life results in the most incredible tasting chicken, completely different to the supermarket chicken we all know today.
We have chickens available seasonally, please get in touch if you would like to try one. We also have fertilised eggs and pullets available on request
