The "chicken tractors" Mr McRae is trialling are an example of this - movable hen coops which result in the birds fertilising pasture while providing him with a supply of organic eggs.
He already has a large transportable free-range chicken shed, which he moves around the pasture and paddocks of Glendhu Station at night when the hens are asleep.
The hens get to forage for food among the grass and pasture of the farm paddocks, while their natural habits of scratching and pecking help turn over the soil.
Add in the fertilising effect of the hens' droppings being worked into the earth and you had a cycle of soil replenishment, he said.
Mr McRae is trialling his chicken tractors because it will give him more control over how and where the hens are working the soil.
While the hens in the chicken tractors and the eggs they produce are not free-range because of the size of the space in which the hens are confined, they are still organic by virtue of what the hens eat.
"The movable coops allow for the hens to still scratch, peck and work their manure into the soil.
It means I can then roll it forward and behind the coop you are left with a row of turned over earth."
The process effectively mimicked that of a tractor-pulled till, he said.
"All you need are some pigs to come along behind and root the ground up even more. If I could come up with a means of keeping them in a hutch to do the same, I reckon it would be comparable to a rotary hoe," he says.
He has a theory the various habits of farm animals and the way their feet are "designed" help contribute to a natural method of tilling the earth.
"Chickens scratch, pigs root and then you have all the different cloven-hoof shapes of sheep, cattle and horses to help work and then flatten the soil out again."
If his trial was successful he intended to build more hutches and try them out in his larger paddocks in rows.
The taste of the organic eggs collected from the cooped hens was the same as those from the free-range chooks, he said.
Mr McRae said he got the idea for the chicken tractors from United States organic farming guru Joel Salatin.