So why is our specific set of genetics so important to us? To best answer that, one needs to look at how they came about.

In the 1990’s the Australian meat bird industry started to pull away from using Australian breeds, in favour of importing faster growing, cheaper birds. These imported breeds are often referred to as broilers, and to this day most chicken found it your grocery store are these broilers (‘Ross’ from Scotland or ‘Cob’ from America). The difficulty with these breeds is that they don’t thrive in true free-range and pasture raised conditions.

In 2001, Michael Sommerlad began working with one of the first certified organic chicken producers in Australia and that’s where he first started to discover the need to return to Australian genetics, motivated by animal welfare conditions. So, what did he do about this discovery? Thankfully for us, he embarked on a completely new breeding project using the previous discarded meat birds and combining them with very carefully selected Australian heritage table poultry strains to create what we call today ‘Sommerlad Herritage Chickens.’ His focus was to create a breed that would thrive in Australian conditions, so they could comfortably enjoy being raised in paddocks rather than sheds. Every generation was raised in the paddock and as a result include wonderful features such as excellent foraging behaviour, heat-resistance, strong mobility, natural resistance to diseases. Which is a stark contrast to the imported strains of broilers most other farms use.