Trees please chooks

Greene and his business partner Steve Smith run about 6,000 free-range layers - a small farm by industry standards.

He told Rural News that contrary to the usual fashion of giving free-range hens open grassed pasture, chickens are not grazing birds but are foragers whose ancestral habitat was the forest floor. Greene believes his birds are much happier than those kept on pasture.

"Anything that flies over here, they perceive as a predator. So, if we get a low-flying aircraft or the Westpac helicopter or something go over, they get a terrible fright," he explains.

"In this environment, they're much more comfortable because they've got all that canopy above them which protects them from predatory attack."

Greene says they have mainly used poplars because they have no low horizontal branches that might encourage the hens to roost in the trees.

Chicks are brought in at one-day-old. Once they have become accustomed to using their indoor layer boxes at about 18 weeks, they are given complete freedom to wander in and out, and forage outdoors to find what they can.

However, they are only fed in their sheds. Feed is never spread outdoors because that would attract wild birds such as sparrows and create a salmonella risk, says Greene.