Borger Free Range Pigs and Eggs

Rebecca and Bert Borger produce free range eggs and more recently, pork on their Northland property. In 2003 the Borgers packed up their secure life in the city and moved to the country to go farming. Bert was a policy maker for DOC and Rebecca also worked at DOC and later trained as a schoolteacher. Rebecca had done Agricultural Business at Massey University, but neither of them knew much about the practical aspects of farming.

The Borgers found the Paparoa property, loved the landscape but didn’t have much idea of what they wanted to farm. Together they turned the old cattle block into one of this country’s largest free-range egg farms.

Today, the Borger’s have six sheds which house their nine thousand chickens, which in turn lay around two and a half million free range eggs each year. The Borger’s Brown Shavers are justly called egg machines.

The whole farm is 400 acres. Most of it is hilly with the only real flat bit (a former airstrip), the location of the chicken sheds.

Despite some early teething problems, the Borgers have managed to stick to the idea of producing healthy free-range eggs without resorting to wing clipping or chemicals.

The egg farming started as a 50/50 partnership with Rebecca’s parents, but they have since bought them out. They had always wanted to own land and taking up egg farming allowed them to get an early cash flow. Apparently they had money coming in from egg sales after just two months of getting the chickens in.

The decision to go free range was not hard. Ethically they just felt caged hens was not a good thing to be doing. They also strongly believe that free range egg farming is the future and that more and more consumers will be demanding humanely produced products. They are contracted to FRENZ and do deliveries to them twice a week. Bert takes his van full of eggs to Pukekohe where FRENZ then sell them on to the market.

They get in 16 week old Brown Shaver chicks. The chickens lay regularly for about a year. After that their egg production drops so Bert and Rebecca sell them off as home backyard layers. The ones that they can’t sell off end up going to an abattoir and get made into stock as they are not good eating chickens. They don’t eat any of the chickens themselves, but they do eat plenty of eggs.

The chickens are kept in flocks of around 1500 per shed. Each shed is set on two hectares of land split into four paddocks. The chickens have access to at least one paddock at all times. They come and go as they please scratching around outside for insects, and dust bathing and sun bathing etc and going back inside for grain and water and to lay eggs.

Bert has planted lots of trees in the chicken runs to provide shelter from hawks which are a constant problem.

The chickens take up about 40 hours a week. Every 5 hours there is a job to be done.

The chickens’ diet mainly consists of grain. Bert says the biggest barrier to going organic is the cost of organic feed.

Bert and Rebecca currently have 100 sows and finish around 1500 pigs per year. They started off with a few pigs running around and they seemed to enjoy the property and they enjoyed them, so they built up numbers.

With the poultry, it’s a seven day operation – and Bert says pigs are very similar. “You’ve got to feed them every day so if you’re going to be here every day of the week, every day of the year, you might as well incorporate other livestock that require that sort of attention”.

They’ve got a Tamworth base pig and put a Duroc across it. Bert favours the breed because he says they do well outside and are good foragers. They are also able to farrow outside. The downside is they don’t grow quite as fast as the housed breeds.

They use formulated feed for the finishing pigs. The sows are a little more forgiving and get a range of food waste including broken eggs and even pastry off cuts.

Marketing the pork has been a challenge. They had a go at doing it themselves – running their own butchery shop – but found that too tough. They now supply the butchery trade and are about to set up a supply contract with Harmony Meats. Like other pig farmers, Bert is worried about the threat that the import of raw pig meat into NZ presents – opening the door to diseases that could cripple the local industry.

Bert and Rebecca have five children. Rebecca home schools using activities on the farm, like collecting eggs, as an ideal backdrop to the children’s learning.

Bert and Rebecca are very proud of the wetland they’ve planted on the block using a local council grant.

Gorse is a big issue and Bert prefers mulching to spraying. It’s a once a year job keeping the gorse under control.