A few short years is all it took for Dr Katerina Kormusheva to go from novice chicken-rearer to champion egg farmer – beating out much bigger and more established operators to take out the top prize at the Sydney Royal Easter Show for her Hilltops Free Range eggs.
More impressively, it all consolidated in the middle of a pandemic.
“The opportunities came together in Covid,” says Katerina.
The software engineer and university business lecturer had been looking at how to improve the operations on her cattle and sheep farm in Boorowa, New South Wales. Part of the solution was chickens.
“[It had a] very hands off farm management system, and the chickens were a third species that added the much needed soil enrichment.”
Opportunity knocked. Katerina had no commercial background in eggs or poultry, but she had all the necessary ingredients: a farm, a firm grasp of management and business information systems, and – since Covid shelved an international software venture – more time. Hilltops Free Range was hatched.
With a passion for sustainability though, Katerina would be doing things differently – and that meant pasturing.
“The chickens are very spread out in different paddocks and all their housing is mobile – it’s all mobile caravans. When I recruit people I explain that it’s a little bit like fruit picking except it’s ‘egg’ picking,” Katerina says. “You have to hand collect the eggs, hand load them, and bring them back to the main house. There’s quite a lot of manual work involved.”
The chickens are as free range as it gets; they’re constantly moving to fresh pastures, with just 45 hens per hectare – the lowest stocking density in the industry. These efforts are all in the service of better land management, and promoting healthier chickens.
“The most important thing to have a good egg is the health of the chicken. How the chicken is living, what the chicken is eating, how it spends its day – all of this is invariably reflected in the egg,” says Katerina.
And now it’s reflected in the highest accolade the industry can bestow – Sydney Royal Easter Show Champion gongs for both 2021 and 2022.
When asked about her whirlwind rise to the top of the egg game, Katerina Kormusheva is philosophical.
“Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans,” she laughs.
