This story begins when I was 6 years old and I got my first 12 White Leghorn chooks. They used to live in an old abandoned Holden station wagon we had on our dairy farm near Bowral in NSW. Every night, I would shut the doors on the car to keep them safe, and in the morning my dad would let them out when he went to milk the cows. The chooks soon discovered that cows are messy eaters. After the morning milking, they took the opportunity to walk to the dairy and nibble on all the grain the cows had dropped at the front of the dairy. 

As I recall in those early days, the chooks were little rascals. They would lay eggs everywhere except in the nest. One of their favourite places was under the car they lived in. I still remember at age six asking the chooks where they laid that day. It was a great childhood adventure and began my love for chooks.

My ultimate dream was to have a chook talk. I figured if a parrot or cockatoo could do it, so could my beloved chooks. My sisters would make fun of me but I was determined and spent hours saying “Hello” then a little slower “Hellooooo” but no matter how hard I tried, I never got a  response. In my defence I was only 6.

By the age of 8, it was time to take these chooks a little more seriously. With my Dad's help, we built a small tin chook shed. It was state of the art. It even had a lockable door. I'm not sure which fox was clever enough to open the door, but it was lockable. We added on a mesh run, some old milk cans and filled them with hay for the chooks to lay in. At age 9 I would actually sit there for hours and watch chooks lay eggs. I'm not sure if they really wanted privacy or not but I was an inquisitive young boy who loved his chooks. I loved collecting each egg whilst it was still warm and as fresh as fresh can be. I would go grab the egg and just hold it.

By age 10 I had matured and discovered animal husbandry was crucial for healthy chooks and good egg production. I would keep a track of how much water (an old white ice cream container) the chooks drank each day. I would write down how many eggs I would collect and the weather each day. Being so high tech and wanting to become wealthy, I thought it was time to sell some of my eggs.

Living in the country everyone had chooks. But I was entrepreneurial and thought the local school teacher had no chooks. (He taught me and 15 other kids in the whole school, most of which were my cousins). That started my egg selling career. Eggs on the back of my orange dragster bike. I eventually had 3 customers which took my entire egg inventory and I was in business

And that leads us to today. I still love chooks and producing healthy fresh eggs from healthy chooks the old fashion way is something I am still passionate about.

Now instead of chooks in an old Holden Station Wagon, I have enlisted the help of my beautiful wife and our 5 kids We have 4,000 happy and healthy chooks that live in  four custom built chicken caravans built by our eldest son Matthew. 

For people who value quality food and nutrition