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Ten years ago John Ridout’s father sold the family dairy farm and indirectly set him on a path to organic free range egg production. After the farm sale, John, his wife Lizzie and their 3 young children found a house with a small acreage in North Dorset. They grew wheat and kept suckler cows and John undertook a considerable contracting workload.

In addition to their own land, the Ridout’s also rented 200 acres "all over the place" and had introduced sheep to the mix. However, John and Lizzie were keen to find some way to generate extra income at home so that John could reduce the contracting work and by 2003 they’d decided that hens could provide the solution.

As John explains, "We bought an APS mobile house and took delivery of our first 2000 birds in May 2003. In September of the same year we welcomed 2000 more into a second APS house. All the birds were Columbian Blacktail (CBT), contracted to Waitrose via Stonegate Farmers and I recall that the investment was about £20 a bird at that time."

"Our first flock were superb, although we had problems with feather pulling in the second. I’ll admit we were very green but we learned fast and had the enthusiasm and determination of relative youth to make it work."

In the spring of 2005 the Ridout’s received some news that was to have a major impact on their lives. A letter arrived from their landlord explaining that 150 acres was to be removed from their rented land area by the end of the year. It had been sold to a new owner who wanted to use the land himself.

"It was a big blow" says John "and made us re-evaluate our future. We seriously considered upping sticks and moving to Canada, we even had a farm lined up for us, but in the end we couldn’t bring ourselves to go. Then our luck changed. In September 2005 we saw a farm advertised in Farmers Weekly. It was a Duchy farm down in Cornwall and we were one of 120 applicants for the tenancy. Unbelievably we were offered the farm. We were delighted but then the really hard work began!"

"In May 2006 Lizzie and the children moved down to Liskeard as they needed to start their new schools. However, all the stock, including the hens were still back in Dorset and I was commuting between the two. We kept the birds going until the end of June and then started the massive job relocating all the stock, buildings and equipment. It cost us £5,500 just to take down the two hen houses and rebuild them at our new farm. I think we moved 3 artic loads of cattle and sheep and 4 or 5 loads of machinery."

The new farm was about 260 acres in total, so the Ridouts were able to expand their flock from 4,000 to 8,000 in four APS houses (they found another 2 houses second hand). They had to wait until December 2006 when the land had gone through 12 months of conversion before they were able to start selling their eggs as organic but this was a small price to pay for the premium they received for organic, CBT eggs.

"At that time, under the organic rules, we were allowed to buy free range pullets and take them through a six week conversion" says John. "Then, the rules changed and we had to buy in organic pullets. The price for pullets raised to organic standards doubled to £6.75 which suddenly made our cash flow very interesting! We had to look at the whole job a lot more closely and try to find ways of reducing the cost."

The Ridouts didn’t want to move away from organic production. As John says, "I’m not a sandal wearing evangelist about organic, but I do like the ethos and principals behind organic food production and I try to do the job as well as I can."

"So in the autumn of 2008 we decided one thing we could do to improve the bank balance was to rear our own organic pullets. I set about designing a mobile house and system in conjunction with Anna Bassett, one of our farm advisors who has a lot of experience with organic poultry standards and systems. The aim was to comply with the EU organic standards for pullet rearing, which would be required for all organic pullets from 3 days old as at 1 January 2012. "

The rearing house has one end designated as the brooding area, in which the birds are kept until they are 4-6 weeks old, with all feeding and management done by hand. This area is heated via a 6.5kw burner and partitioned from the rest of the house. At the end of brooding, the partition can be lifted and the birds moved onto a slatted area with mechanical feeding and nipple lines. The brooding area then becomes their scratch area. After 8-10 weeks the pop holes are opened so that the birds have access to range. Once the birds move into their laying houses, the rearing house is moved to a completely new bit of pasture.

John says, "The system seems to work well, although I think the birds could do with a bit more space. We’ve worked to the Soil Association maximum allowance for a mobile house of 16 birds per m2 but at 16 weeks it is a bit tight. We are moving the birds on a bit earlier to ease things. We’ve also had to work on light intensity, lowering it slightly to prevent feather pulling. Roof vents enable us to direct draughts straight to the roof but we do have to spend time finding and filling any draughts in the first month."

"We are now into our 4th rear and each time we move to a clean site. Even so, managing disease on a multi-age site like ours is not easy. We still have some birds on the farm which weren’t reared by us and our vet David Shingleton is confident that once all our replacements are home reared, any disease challenge will be greatly reduced."

"However, from the point of view of performance the birds are consistently 100-200gms ahead of their target weight and more importantly we save £2.00 a pullet and that includes labour and depreciation."

John acknowledges that the success of the rearing is very much down to Lizzie.

"I couldn’t have managed the farm move and looked after the hens without Lizzie. She has total responsibility for the brooding and a great job she makes of it. It makes sense for biosecurity as well as only she has contact with the young birds. In addition we have one full time chap; John Chudleigh who does a good job looking after the laying birds and he also helps Lizzie and I with the beef and sheep."

All of the Ridout’s chicken houses today get their energy requirements solely from wind and solar sources.

"We used to have to top them up from the mains," says John, but by investing in some deep gel filled batteries we’ve made more efficient use of our turbines and solar panels. I’m very proud of the fact we are totally self sufficient in power."

And what does John make of the current slump in the egg price?

"I do think CBT producers are in a relatively privileged position. None of us like having our egg price cut but whilst the price for CBT eggs is far from perfect, it perhaps is not as bad as it is for other free range producers. Having said that, it won’t stop us fighting for a fair deal. I’m on the liaison committee for CBT producers and can assure you meetings are getting very hot and difficult".

Overall, I think that what we have learned from keeping hens is that you don’t know it all and the minute you think you do, you’re in trouble! The old cliché that every single flock is different is true; you have to learn constantly and be prepared to react quickly!