During our travels, we like to push our comfort zone and try new experiences. A while back, we found ourselves living on a free-range chicken farm on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia for eight weeks.

We became egg collectors! There were five mobile trailers (caravans) with each pen housing a total of 3000 hens. Each pen was guarded by a Maremma dog. During our time there, we also had the pleasure of looking after some young Maremma puppies. We volunteered for approx 3hrs a day, except for Wednesdays.

Jude collected the eggs off the conveyor belt in a little room at the end of the caravan and stacked them into plastic egg crates. The number of eggs had to be entered into a database on a tablet.

Ray would feed the dogs, clean and refill the hen’s food and water, and collect and dispose of any broken eggs. He would collect the crates that Jude had filled and would load them into the farm vehicle.

We would drive back to the farm shed and stack the crates into a refrigerated trailer. The farmer would take the trailer off-site for processing of the eggs.

We had a lot of fun and laughter and learned heaps about the chook egg business.

Check out our little video below and see just what we got up to.