Chicken Caravan

The Full Story...

Chicken Caravan was founded by brothers Daniel and Evan. They set out to create sustainable farming systems to produce nutritious and sustainable organic produce. 

In August 2010, Daniel bought 2000 day old chicks to start a dream of having a free range egg farm. At the time he didn’t have any of his own moveable sheds, so Daniel, with the help of Evan, worked out a design criteria and went to the drawing board. Since then it has been a journey of innovation and learning, as they develop new ways of sustainable farming with a goal of producing a more nutritious and flavoursome egg. 

Evan and Daniel went on to build the first Chicken Caravan in December 2010.

After having built numerous sheds for themselves by now, they were frequently being asked by other farmers if they were going to sell these chicken sheds. After much thought, they decided to. In November 2011 Daniel with his dad Robert, debuted the ‘Chicken Caravan’ at the “Farming Small Areas Expo” in Richmond, Western Sydney. They consequently sold that first caravan to a farmer in Western NSW.

2012 saw the opening of a full-time workshop building Chicken Caravans and 1 full-time employee.

By mid-2012 the second Chicken Caravan was sold to a farmer in Gippsland, Victoria.

Research and development continued, and soon they developed the Chicken Caravan Feed Trailer and Chicken Caravan 130, the latter being a smaller scale version of the original 450 bird Chicken Caravan. The first 130 was sold in NSW.

By the end of 2012 the team had sold 12 Chicken Caravans, and had won Australian Farm Invention Of The Year in October 2012. The team began to expand with both an apprentice and a trainee joining the team.

In January 2013 they sold their egg farming business and Daniel and Evan were able to devote more energy and focus into developing Chicken Caravans and other free-range farming products.

2014 saw the development of the flat packed Chicken Caravans and these were field tested in Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria. In December 2014, the first Chicken Caravan was exported from Australia to New Zealand and the first USA sales were made.

Between 2015-2017 we took on a huge task of setting up our own packing/assembly facility in China. This came with huge risks and many unknowns navigating a foreign culture with a language we could not speak.

Initially, we were nervous as our goal was to not just deliver the same quality products as we were already producing, but to deliver better quality. One of our main goals was to produce a mobile chicken shed with a hot dip galvanized chassis. This was very important to us, because we had seen first hand how corrosive chicken manure can be on pre-galvanized steel. We also wanted all our nesting box sheet metal to be laser cut and machine folded taking out any human error giving the end product a better look, functionality and ease of assembly. We have now successfully done these things. And Evan has enjoyed many culinary delights (fried tarantula, anyone?) on trips to China, thanks to the awesome team in China.

We were so happy once the set up was complete in China as we were then able to help more farmers in the USA, Canada, Europe and beyond. It is extremely rewarding to see pictures of the Chicken Caravans on farms in countries that we had not even visited before. It was great knowing that we played a part in the change that these farmers were making in the agriculture industry of their nation and changing the way poultry farming is done.

We successfully achieved all of these goals. While there are sometimes sceptics of overseas manufacturing, the Chicken Caravan has proven itself hundreds of times over, with its superior quality, hot dip galvanized chassis. It is an Australian innovation, developed and owned by an Australian family, delivering world-leading technology and performance that benefits farmers around the globe. Our families’ have risked a lot to finally deliver to you, a revolutionary system to produce ethical eggs. Although the journey was extremely hard, we are proud that this system is now available to farmers worldwide.

We have now developed and expanded our product range to include a 600 capacity caravan, a 30 capacity version and the cutest one of all, our Chicken Caravan 10. Chicken Caravan now has a workshop set up on a farm in Port Macquarie, NSW, where we can more easily put our products to the test.  And with a great team working to help deliver great farming products.

We are so thankful to have had these opportunities and to be a part of the regenerative farming industry. The journey continues…..