Chook. The Podcast

A sneak peek at upcoming guests during Season 2 of Chook. The Podcast.

For almost 40 years, Phil and Anne Westwood have run Freeranger Eggs in Grantville, 90 km south east of Melbourne. 
 
What’s super interesting about Phil and Anne’s operation is that growth has never been part of their business model. 
 
They have stayed deliberately small, deliberately avoiding automation including a total lack of autodoors and rollaway nest boxes. 
 
There were several motivations for this strategy. 
 
Firstly, the idea was to keep things small enough that a single person could run the entire business without the need for staff. 
 
Secondly, an intentionally smaller, truly free-range operation, as Phil describes it, is also able to maximise hen welfare sine the chickens are living in smaller groups. 
 
Thirdly, smaller flocks produce less manure with its associated impacts on the land, making the whole operation more environmentally sound. 
 
Topics covered include: 

What kind of living you can actually make with a one-person operation like Freeranger (listen to the end where Phil does share some figures)

Environmental impacts of running 10 000 birds per hectare, the maximum allowed to still qualify as a "free range" egg farm

What regenerative poultry farming looks like 

How native vegetation coexists with chickens on the Westwood's property

ISA Browns — how many eggs they lay, and how long they can live when cared for the way the Westwoods do, without lights

Whether you could run an economically-viable egg farm with heritage, coloured-egg laying breeds

Egg production in free range vs. caged systems 

Use of lights with laying hens (Impacts on health and longevity)

Mite and lice control

Wormwood as a natural deterrent against parasites, internal and external

Sawdust over straw as preferred nest box bedding

Diotomaceous earth 

Managing wild birds, goannas, snakes around chook food and nest boxes

Maremma dogs as livestock guardians

Use of mobile sheds 

What it's like running an egg farm solo

How to stay enthusiastic about hands-on egg farming after almost 40 years

Use of the Kangaroo Apple shrub around chickens 

What trees Anne would plant around a home chicken coop

Whether the egg industry is becoming more sustainable

Brendon Murphy presides over the Australian Facebook group dedicated to Cream Legbar breeding. 
 
In this conversation, we discuss:

How Cream Legbars were created in Australia

How to tell the difference between Australian and import bloodlines

Egg colour

Ways to work with faults like high tails and floppy or twisted combs 

Perhaps the most interesting thing Brendon shares in this chat is why some Cream Legbar chicks hatch with vaulted skulls, a defect Brendon says stems from how the Araucana, one of the breeds used to create Cream Legbars, was itself created in this country.
 

The level of detail in this conversation means this really is one for those of us seriously into this particular breed.

Roosters can be tragic figures.
 
The reality is, for every hen in a backyard flock, there is a rooster, her brother, that almost certainly didn’t live happily ever after.
 
Lisa Short, from the Victorian-based Rooster Warriors Rehoming, tries to make a small dent in this unfortunate aspect of chicken keeping by helping find homes for hundreds of roosters. 
 
Most of those roosters, she says, come from kinder and school hatching programs, which she'd like to see banned. 
 
From rooster dumping to crow collars and night boxes that allow roosters to be kept where you otherwise probably couldn’t, Lisa ventures into some uncomfortable territory in this conversation, in hopes of raising awareness.

Belinda Burgess tried having a regular job. She tried retiring. Neither stuck. 

Despite 12 hour days, 7 days a week, she says running a commercial poultry farm is a good job, a passion. Therapy, even.

She sells 30-40+ dozen eggs per week at the height of the season, and hatches hundreds of chicks per week. She sells year-round. 

Ask her how many breeds she keeps and she'll have to check. 

In this conversation, Belinda is beautifully candid. She shares what it’s really like selling hatching eggs as a business — the ups and downs and some of her major learnings along the way.

Whether it’s leg banding baby chicks at midnight or packing eggs at dawn…this chat will give you a feel for what it takes to build a successful operation.

Topics discussed include: 

How much Belinda pays per week in feed

The problem with hatching pullet eggs

Her most popular breeds

Why she's phasing out her chicken tractors

How she ended up with silken Araucanas

How to breed stronger chickens

How she accidentally killed 2 of her best hens with scratch mix 

ILT (infectious laryngotracheitis) and how her birds tested positive for it without having the disease

Marek’s disease

Quarantining birds

Challenges in dealing with egg customers

Her advice to someone considering starting an egg business