Carbeen Pastured Produce: Chicken meat, eggs and lamb just a bonus for the grass farmers
PRODUCERS Rodger and Katherine Shannon are mainly in the business of growing grass.
Their passion for “regenerative” farming practices has led to the success of their Carbeen Pastured Produce business at Manildra, near Orange in NSW.
The Shannons produce chicken meat, eggs and lamb, supplying butcher shops and cafes, and also selling to customers through a buyers’ club.
For the fourth-generation farming couple, their business starts from the ground up. They aim to grow diverse pasture for a resilient and productive farming system, and have between 50 and 100 different grasses and legumes.
“Everything we do is to maximise the amount of grass we have on the place, and to utilise that grass for our benefit,” Rodger says.
Rodger and Katherine, and their two children, Charlie, 4, and Willamina, 2, run the property using a form of cell grazing.
“It’s holistic, planned grazing,” Rodger says. “We integrate as many species of animals into the system as we can. It boosts our grasses, spreads our fertility, increases our fertility and removes pathogens.”
When they first started holistic grazing, the Shannons had more sheep than cattle. They still run sheep, producing pastured lamb, but have reduced numbers from 700 ewes to 200, because they don’t respond well to the cell grazing system of small paddocks.
Two years ago they trialled meat chickens, and had resounding success raising them on pasture. They started buying about 60 birds every three weeks, and today are turning off an average of 180 a week.
The day-old meat chickens spend three weeks under lights while their feathers are developing, then live outdoors, with portable chicken homes.
“We’re providing them with grass and soil so they can scratch and get bugs,” Rodger says. “We want them to behave like they naturally behave.”
Birds are raised without chemicals or antibiotics, and the Shannons believe pastured chickens have higher nutritional value compared to shed-raised chickens.
“Exposing them to sunlight removes a lot of pathogens that they’re exposed to in sheds,” Rodger says. “They’re also eating the grass, and so they have a lot higher vitamin E, greater omega-3-to-6 ratio and folate.”
Katherine says because the chickens are moved on to fresh ground daily, it increases the “flavour, colour and texture” of the meat.
Chickens are processed at an abattoir in nearby Canowindra. Meat is sold through retailers in the Blue Mountains, Bathurst, Orange, Dubbo and a Sydney butcher.
The chicken feed is not organic because of the cost. “We looked at purchasing an organic feed, and it was just too cost prohibitive,” Katherine says. “We sell our whole birds at $13.50 a kilogram. If we were to add the cost of organic feed on to our feed bill then it would just become too cost prohibitive.”
The family doesn’t use any chemicals, artificial or synthetic fertilisers at Carbeen.
THE Shannons also run Pastured Produce Buyers Clubs. People in Orange, Molong, Dubbo and Gilgandra place bulk orders once a month.
“There’s a lot of families that want good quality, ethically and sustainably produced meat,” Katherine says. “We’ll drive our coolroom to someone’s driveway, and everyone will have a 30-minute pick-up time.”
In the future, the Shannons would like to introduce pigs to the farm.
“We want to be in a situation where we’re growing our own grain to put into our own pigs and chickens,” Rodger says.
Farm facts
CARBEEN PASTURED PRODUCE
Rodger and Katherine Shannon run Carbeen Pastured Produce on a 549-hectare property, Carbeen, near Orange.
They sell about 180 pastured chickens a week.
Supplying chicken meat is a seasonal operation because the birds would not survive a winter outdoors. Meat is available from September to June.
The Shannons also sell about 700 eggs a week to local cafes.
They recently stopped trading steers to focus on their chicken business, and still have 560 cows and calves on agistment.
For more information about the Pastured Produce Buyers Club, carbeen@pasturedproduce.com.au
