Lowan Park Produce: Sustainable poultry at Bordertown, SA

Lucy Dodd has transformed her family’s century old grazing and cropping property into Australia’s biggest pasture raised meat chicken business in just six years.

Lowan Park Produce , Bordertown, SA.

When Lucy Dodd returned to her family’s Bordertown farm in South Australia after a 20-year career in environmental management, she brought with her a dream: to honour her family’s agricultural legacy while pioneering a new path in sustainable farming.

Today, as the Dodd family approaches its 100th anniversary of farming at Lowan Park — historically a beef, sheep and cropping property — Lucy’s dream has taken flight in the form of thousands of pasture-raised chickens and turkeys.

The rapid expansion from 80 birds to 100,000 in just six years tells a story of innovation, determination, and the delicate balance between growth and ethical farming.

Lucy said the challenge has also been to find a business model to go the distance.

Nestled on the northern edge of South Australia’s Limestone Coast region, Lowan Park has been the Dodd family’s home since 1926.

For Lucy, the farm represents not just her heritage, but a canvas for reimagining sustainable agriculture in Australia.

“I grew up on this farm but I was encouraged to see the world and do different things,” Lucy said.

After completing a business degree and spending nearly two decades in various roles, including management consulting and conservation projects with South Australia’s environment department, Lucy felt the pull of her roots.

“I was always passionate about the environment and geography,” she said.

“Through my various roles I was seeing alternative ways that farming could occur, and sustainable agricultural practices, that made me see the way I could farm that interested me.”

This led Lucy to explore options that would allow her to support a second family on the farm while implementing sustainable practices.

Inspired by Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farms model in America, she saw an opportunity in poultry farming.

“We didn’t need a lot of capital to start with chooks,” Lucy said.

POULTRY PIONEER

From these humble beginnings, Lowan Park Produce has grown exponentially, more than doubling chicken numbers every year since 2019.

The business now processes about 90,000 chickens and 10,000 turkeys annually but is still considered a niche in Australia’s market, dominated by two major operators - Inghams and Baiada.

“It has been a steep learning curve,” Lucy said.

“We are potentially the largest pasture-raised meat chicken business in Australia, volume-wise.

“That growth has been driven more by necessity, trying to make it work financially and finding that spot of scale that helps to make it work financially.“

Lowan Park Produce now operates across two properties at Bordertown: the original 890ha home farm, and an eight hectare turkey farm and accredited processing facility.

The latter was bought two years ago when processing off-site - a five hour drive away - became unsustainable.

“The journey got too much for me,” Lucy said.

“I thought, I either need to get out of poultry or process (the chickens) myself and I was going to stop poultry but then the turkey farm, 30 minutes from us, came up for sale and they had their own on-farm processing facility.

“So we bought it and here we are.”

The growth of the business leapt from slaughtering 300 chickens a week to currently almost 2000.

Turkeys are more seasonal, averaging 150 a week throughout the year and 500 to 1000 a week from October to December leading into Christmas.

The business employs a team of 23 people, equating to 15 full-time equivalents, including Lucy and her father Wayne.

“The chickens give us consistency whereas turkeys are seasonal and provide a good revenue boost that allows us to maintain our workforce throughout the year,” Lucy said.

Lowan Park Produce owner Lucy Dodd, Bordertown, SA, with her father Wayne Dodd. PHOTO: Cath Leo

ECO-FRIENDLY FLOCK

Their commitment to sustainable farming practices is evident in every aspect of the operation.

The chickens are raised in fox-proof eco-shelters that are moved daily, allowing the birds to peck and eat from fresh ground while fertilising the paddocks.

Turkeys are free-range, roaming paddocks that are rotated between batches.

As omnivores, poultry require a balanced diet so besides pasture, the birds are fed a commercial poultry mix. The pasture can provide up to 15 per cent of their feed.

The chicks and poults are sourced from hatcheries at one day old and kept under heat in brooders.

At four weeks, chicks transition to the paddock, while turkey poults are a little older, transferred between five and nine weeks depending on the time of year.

The chooks take another four weeks to mature to a slaughter weight of about 2.5kg live weight, while turkeys take eight more weeks to reach an average 10kg live weight.

“It is a complicated business model,” Lucy said.

“Most commercial growers have all their birds at one age, grow them out and then get a new flock in.

“Because we sell direct to customers, we need fresh supply weekly so we need to have many flocks of different ages to meet that demand.”

REMOTE FARM REALITIES

The rapid growth of Lowan Park Produce has not been without its challenges.

Margins are tight.

“I don’t yet make a profit - that’s the reality,” Lucy admits.

“It’s not what we want to highlight - we are close - but are currently putting all that money into growth.“

One of the biggest challenges has been managing the logistics of distribution from their remote location.

“If I was to have another ag business it might be in supply chain and logistics,” Lucy said.

“It is because we are a long way from any of our markets - three hours from Adelaide and five hours from Melbourne.”

Product is sold from Adelaide to Melbourne, and Alice Springs to Sydney, as well as locally to butchers, supermarkets and at farmers markets.

“We choose to coordinate the logistics rather than selling to a third party so we take on that risk ourselves and need to ensure we get a premium for our product,” Lucy said.

Being isolated from other commercial poultry farms does have its advantages with disease prevention and biosecurity.

Labour, feed, energy and animal costs are the major expenses for the business but there is little room for minimising those.

“The biggest influencing factor for us is survival rates and sales and ensuring we have the most efficient labour,” Lucy said.

“We are always trying to minimise our losses and growing in a paddock production system means accepting higher losses than in a commercial shed.

“It is more impacted by weather and seasons than a climate controlled commercial shed.”

Lucy said it had been difficult to get additional capital funding and they were trying to grow within cash flow means but that was “really tight”.

“I would love to do a big upgrade of our processing facility but at the moment it isn’t financially viable,” she said.

Lowan Park Produce, Bordertown, SA.

GROWTH AMID CHALLENGE

In the poultry industry, farmers typically fall into two categories: growers contracted to large integrators, or independent producers managing the entire process themselves.

“When you are independent and when you manage the process from buying at day-old to selling to customers, it’s a very different business model and you take on a lot more risk,” Lucy said.

This model, while challenging, allows for greater control.

“This is the choice I’ve made and I don’t think I would change - to become a grower for the big commercial facilities would require big capital outlay and I wouldn’t be able to do that - it’s not a growing model I want,” she said.

“I’m really interested in connecting to my customer and knowing there is an alternative way to grow good protein.”

While acknowledging that their method is still intensive compared to other farming systems, Lucy believes it results in “happier chickens” and a healthier, more regenerative approach to land management.

BALANCING EXPANSION

Looking to the future, Lucy sees plenty of room for growth but is cautious about expanding too quickly.

“I haven’t thought about our upper limit but I will try not to get bigger before ensuring the business model really does work for us,” she said.

Currently their cropping country is leased to provide an additional income stream but Lucy sees potential to help grow their own feed down the track.

There may also be room to take on commercial growers, sharing risks associated with biosecurity.

“When I look forward I don’t have tunnel vision - I am really open to new possibilities,” she said.

This may be the key to ensuring Lowan Park continues to thrive for another century and beyond.