Milking Yard Farm chooks: the end of an era

The check-in guy at the fancy hotel gave me a strange look when I asked if he could store my frozen chicken, just for one night.

Happy: free-range chooks

The check-in guy at the fancy hotel gave me a strange look when I asked if he could take my frozen chicken – and keep it frozen. “It’s just for one night please.” He smiled. “Do you mind my asking, sir, why you are travelling with a frozen chook?” “Not at all,” I replied. “This is not just any chook.” Indeed, as it turned out, my frozen bird was more like the thylacine of poultry. More in a moment.

The regular reader will be aware that I’m dealing, domestically speaking, with an ever-diminishing list of animal proteins that pass muster with the in-house caterer. Pork was always off the list; then came chicken, both on animal welfare grounds. That wretched documentary took octopus out too. Then canned tuna, always a rather handy staple, I thought. “I would prefer not to eat any meat unless I know where it came from and how it was reared or harvested,” she told me via her spokesperson.

There is, however, an exception to the chicken rule, and that is – or at least was until we left Victoria – the birds reared by our friends Bruce Burton and Roz Rapke. I wrote at length about Bruce’s birds in 2015, in an article titled “Is this Australia’s most expensive chicken?” Bruce was pursuing the business of meat chickens in two significantly different ways. First, the genetics: his birds were a hybrid species developed from laying breeds for slow growth, resilience and ability to thrive ranging on pastures. They look, behave and taste different to conventional white broilers. Second, Bruce’s birds lived the most wonderful life. I visited the truly bucolic North Trentham farm several times. Chook nirvana.

It was around then the fatwa on all chicken other than that of Milking Yard Farm came down. I can’t get anything like it in the West. Hence, my recent trip to Melbourne came with a single request: bring home a chicken. I messaged Bruce to make sure I could buy one of his chooks from the fancy meat shop owned by the fancy chef. “Your timing is good,” he replied. “We have just decided to hang up our boots on chicken production by the end of the month.”

I wish I could say I was surprised. It had been a 10-year project but a matrix of reasons conspired to put an end to the best chickens I ever ate. Bruce, a former pilot, told me that with 150 birds produced per week, the business never really reached a sustainable volume. “It’s not big enough at its current size to make it a long-term prospect. At my stage of life I don’t want to make the investment to grow it.” The other issue will be one familiar to many niche growers: their abattoir had called “time” on a weekly order “that amounted to a pimple on a duck’s back”.

My $68 chook flew to the West in hand luggage. Funny to think it may just be the last roast chicken my wife ever eats. It was, of course, bloody delicious.