Once upon a time - about 30 years ago, actually - sheep cuts were standard table meat and chicken was an expensive luxury.
Now it's the other way round, as we all know when we visit the butcher or supermarket.
And that is part of the reason why Wayne and Sue Curry sold up their eastern Stratford hill country sheep and cattle farm last year and bought a broiler chicken growing unit on Te Arei Rd in Lepperton.
Because what was happening in the retail market was also happening at the farm end.
The Currys say they are the fourth hill farmers to have made the leap of faith and joined the Tegel family in the past 18 months.
Despite being driven largely by the relatively poor returns from meat and wool, and years of making no progress for their hard work, it was still a scary decision.
"It's one thing to talk about it, but it's quite another thing to carry it out," Mr Curry says.
They were shareholders in family farming company Popoanui Farm with Wayne's dad, Rob, and their two sons.
They argued, wavered, vacillated, procrastinated and, in the end, put the farm on the market. And they got lucky. It was the middle of a drought, but dairy farming was generally booming and it was propping up land values in the easier hill country.
If the Curry nerve had failed and they had waited until spring, when the dairy payout dropped, their capital gain would have been much lower and they might not have been able to afford what they have now: Four state-of-the- art, climate-controlled sheds, each about 1100 square metres, in which they raise 83,000 chickens to slaughter weight in six batches over the course of a year.
Tegel supplies the day-old chicks and all the food; the Currys are responsible for their welfare and growing them to Tegel specifications.
In return, they are paid an amount per month to cover their costs and a top-up based on feed conversion efficiency (kilograms of food per kilos of meat), measured against the local broiler industry average.
Wayne and his father had farmed the 450ha Strathmore block for 30 years, initially as sharefarmers with the owner.
Because it was not big enough, they bought an adjoining 350ha place in 2004, which they have leased out to Clint Bellamy.
"We started thinking about leaving Strathmore in 2006-07, when we were selling our fat lambs for $50, if that," Wayne says. "Wool was bringing about $3 a kilo and beef not much better. Then we had to destock for the drought. That was the last straw. We had a big mortgage and costs kept rising.
Ad Feedback "We had borrowed money when prices were good and interest rates high and when things started declining, it made us think: What are we doing here? What are we getting out of it and what if this happens next year as well?
"We either locked ourselves in and tried to tough it out for another 10 years and be no better off, or we looked at alternatives.
"We talked to the bank and our accountant and their question was: Where do you want to be in 10 years' time? We wanted to be semi-retired and the way things were in the sheep and beef industry at that time - and still are - we would not be able to achieve that.
"It was also tough for dad. He was still tied in with us, as were our boys, and nobody was getting ahead."
Wayne saw a broiler unit advertised and realised he knew virtually nothing about the chicken business. The sales agent was an ex-grower himself who had sold up due to failing hips and he gave Wayne a guided tour of the industry.
The agent arranged the sale and also handled the unadvertised sale of the Strathmore farm to Aotuhia Station owner and Hereford breeder Kevin Downes.
Sue, a schoolteacher who is still doing relief teaching at Toko, had developed into a successful potter at Strathmore. She can continue that at Lepperton, but she wondered how her husband would adjust from the very physical, independent, outdoor farm life to a highly regulated indoor operation where all the major decisions are made by Tegel Foods.
But the more Wayne looked at it, the more he liked it.
"It was offering a good lifestyle with the sheds well away from the house, virtually guaranteed returns and you are not at the mercy of the market, even though it is directly market-driven.
"We are getting an 8 per cent return on capital invested, after covering costs. That's a very good return.
"This chicken unit nets a higher income than the Strathmore farm could ever gross. We get a payment every month at the same time and then a batch payment, which includes performance incentives. We've never had that.
"It doesn't bear comparison with sheep and beef, where income is spasmodic, you're rarely out of overdraft, but your costs are constant and rising."
What appealed to Sue was "you have your chickens in for six weeks and then you have a three- week break until the chicks start growing and need attention".
"It's a pretty good undemanding lifestyle that you can carry on into a ripe old age and even then you can put a manager on."
But the transition was difficult and stressful just the same, because three of the four sheds needed rebuilding at $250,000 each, although this was incorporated to their advantage in the purchase price. And once the previous owner had left after helping them through the first broiler run, they were on their own, straight into a major rebuilding programme as well as still growing chickens.
"We were newbies on a major learning curve and I would not want to go through it again," Sue says. "Neither would Tegel, with newcomers."
One shed was rebuilt at a time, stripped back to the concrete floor and steel frames. Each project took nine weeks, so it was not until March this year that they had all four sheds working. At that stage, they had chicks knocking on the door and the feed line hadn't been tested.
Local company PTN Ltd designed and built the pressurised drinker lines in the Curry sheds. They tested the prototypes here and they are now being exported. The nipple drips into the cup so the birds can either drink at the nipple or from the cup. Light reflects off the tiny droplet of water at the nipple and that is what attracts the birds to it. They learn how to drink much faster. A 2.5kg liveweight bird drinks up to 400 millilitres per day.
Wayne says getting into chickens has opened his eyes, particularly to the industry structure.
"I would say red meat could learn a lot from the white meat business, the way it's structured with contracts. This is totally market- and production-driven and that's why it's doing so well, whereas the red meat industry is so traditional and us versus them. They don't like being told what to do.
"You have a whole year to grow a lamb. With chickens, you have six growing runs per year. It's like six seasons per year."
The birds are not in cages. They have a perfect - if brief - life: never too hot or cold, always enough to eat and drink, always in air-conditioned comfort. The atmosphere is quiet and calm and there is less smell from the exhaust fans than one would experience at a dairy milking shed. The chicks start off on wood shavings. When the birds have reached the specified liveweight (determined by routine weighing), a team of people come in and catch them, several thousand at a time. They go to the Tegel factory at Bell Block, which is processing 50,000 birds per day, five days a week, into 400 chicken product lines.
When the shed is empty, machines arrive and scoop out the composted litter, which becomes Osflo fertiliser. The shed is washed out and disinfected by contractors and a new layer of shavings laid for the next batch.
The shed environment control is fully automated and if anything goes off-line, Mr Curry is alerted by pager.
The human role is to keep the shed humming and check the welfare of the birds by daily walk-throughs. That's about the extent of the physical work required.
Source: tvnz.co.nz
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