Fresh, free-ranging conversations for backyard chicken keepers and serious breeders. Hosted by former foreign correspondent turned chicken breeder Jane Cowan.
A sneak peek at upcoming guests during Season 2 of Chook. The Podcast.
13 Apr 2026
Phil and Anne Westwood on 4 Decades of True Free Range Egg Farming
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
28 Mar 2026
Brendon Murphy on Australian Cream Legbars
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.
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