Off to an early start
Aiden’s Eggs, a farm fresh business, was set up by Aiden when he was five. He wanted to buy a barn to house his family’s animals and needed around $400. His grandfather, a farmer at Mudgee with whom he spends school holidays, loves his flock of 200 chickens. When the drought hit his grandfather’s property, he survived financially by selling eggs. Aiden thought up the idea of keeping chooks and selling eggs too.
Aiden’s family bought half a dozen gold and blue laced red Wyandotte hens. Aiden feeds them by laying pellets and vegetable scraps and collects the eggs after school – sometimes six to eight, although in winter there are fewer as it’s too cold. His mother Sarah, a nurse, posts an “Eggs for sale” message on her Facebook page and at $4 a dozen, based on what caged eggs sell for, she says they are easy to sell at her work or at Aiden’s school.
Aiden says he has saved every cent that he raised from selling eggs. He bought the barn that houses bulls, calves and horses. Now he wants to buy a henhouse to protect his much loved chickens from the foxes.
To ramp up his savings he is incubating his eggs and has hatched around 50 blue laced chickens, which are in demand. “The blue lace chooks and roosters are easy to sell when you put them up on chook websites.”
Aiden admires the different personalities of his chooks and says they are clever birds.