Ethical chicken farming a win-win Formula

Red Barn free - range chicken and egg farm started from necessity but grew into a passion. In addition to eggs and whole chickens, it also produces speciality products Jay Ferreira reports.

- Jay Ferreira

Six years ago, Lindy Gordon-Brown was newly divorced with no income. She found herself in a position where she had to make a living off of her 11ha farm.

“I’m an animal lover and had farmed chickens before, so I thought chicken farming would be a quick way to make cash,” she recalls.

Lindy studied natural chicken farming methods taught by Herman Beck-Chenoweth, who is renowned for his free-range chicken farming practices, as well as learning from the Mormons.

“I wanted to learn to farm the natural way and to give the chickens as happy a life as possible,” says Lindy, now fondly nicknamed The Fowl Woman. “We use small, compact houses for small groups of chickens, which all venture out every day. Chickens don’t like to be in large groups.”

Lindy purchased her first 100 chickens in 2010, and her partner, Nebojsa Filip, designed and built the unique chicken houses.

“They’re our own design. They’re tunnel-shaped and have sleds underneath so we can pull them around with a tractor. All the side flaps open for ventilation, which we can also regulate.”

When it’s hot, the chicken house roofs are wetted to cool them down, and water pipes run along the ground so that the chickens can splash and cool off. She explains that in huge chicken houses, which are invariably long, narrow buildings, the chickens in the middle of the building seldom or never go out. “The doors are usually opened at either end but

Red Barn free-range chicken and egg farm started from necessity but grew into a passion. In addition to eggs and whole chickens, it also produces speciality products. Jay Ferreira reports. the chickens in the middle never push past the rest to get outside, yet this is considered ‘free range’.”