Nan’s chooks are happy campers
Photo supplied
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It’s the age-old question, pondered by Dan, Dane and Nan Tubb of the Happy Chook Farm at Mole Creek.
By Lorraine Clarke
FOR THE Tubbs, it was the chickens that came first when they moved to their 145 acre farm 5 years ago, wanting to give a good home to a few laying hens.
Love for their feathered friends soon grew into a small commercial enterprise, where happy hens live a long productive life in expansive green pastures shared with a small herd of Murray Gray cows and a flock of pure-bred Suffolk sheep.
Dan was once a diesel mechanic, then a workplace health and safety consultant in the NSW mining industry, before cutting loose to the good life in Tasmania.
‘The work is much harder and the pay is much less, but it is so much better here,’ said Dan. ‘I get to work outside with chicks, lambs and calves in the rain and snow.’
Nan and Dan’s towering son Dane was a Townsville truckie, who is now happy to have his feet planted on the farm. He is followed everywhere by several bottle fed lambs, and shows his softer side as he holds some fluffy new chicks destined to join the laying flock in a few months. ‘I just love the smell of them,’ he said.
The motto of the Happy Chook Farm is to treat all their animals with respect. ‘Be kind to them and they’ll be kind to you,’ said Nan. ‘The hens all have their own personalities. We use nothing artificial at all. ‘No chemical treatments. We don’t trim their beaks. We don’t use artificial lighting in winter to force them to lay.
‘We allow them to moult naturally.’
Hen housing on the farm is re-purposed, insulated caravans and coaches, rotated around the pastures. There is sawdust on the floors for the hens’ comfort, and to keep the eggs clean.
The Tubbs buy day-old Ginger Ham chicks, chosen for superior laying qualities, from a Victorian hatchery. 500 new arrivals live in a 49-seater coach retrofitted with heat lamps. This bus is their lifetime home, with wooden perches and privacy-curtained nesting boxes installed for when they begin to lay.
Hens lay for two years, after which they are donated to the Trowunna wildlife park to perform the final service of feeding the quolls and Tasmanian Devils.
‘Nothing is wasted here,’ said Dan. ‘We are bowerbirds. We don’t throw much away.’ Every morning the hens descend ladders to roam pasture and bushland, free to peck, scratch and forage all day.
A few roosters have been introduced for predator control. When eagles or crows fly over, the roosters sound an alarm that sends the hens scurrying for safety under their vans.
Happy Chook Farm eggs can be found at several outlets from Mole Creek to Deloraine and Launceston Harvest Market, where Dane loves to share the oversized ‘dinosaur eggs’ with town children who never had the chance to see a double yolker.
