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, avoiding all automation. No autodoors. No rollaway nest boxes.
Why?
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
- 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
