
A North Otago egg dynasty continues to look to the future.
This Saturday, it will be four years since Anna Craig launched egg brand Bowalley Free Range from her family’s 420ha farm in Herbert.
"That’s crazy, four years. It has been a really exciting and nerve-racking journey and it has gone really well," she said talking to Southern Rural Life at the family business, Craig’s Poultry, about 20km south of Oamaru.
When she launched the Bowalley brand, she was on her summer break from studying agribusiness and food marketing at Lincoln University.
She now works in family business Craig’s Poultry full-time as chief operating officer.
The Bowalley arm of the business has grown, including new hen houses being installed each year for the past three years to meet consumer demand for free-range eggs.
All of the sheds run on solar power.
The latest shed was a Big Dutchman, imported from Europe in kitset form and installed by local contractors.
Since the Bowalley brand was launched, its supply of eggs to market had increased 125%, Miss Craig said.
The number of hens, dimensions of the sheds or numbers of eggs sold were confidential as it was commercially sensitive information, she said.
"We are all competitors in the poultry industry, selling directly to customers."
Despite keeping tight-lipped about some operating information, the business wanted to be as transparent as possible to customers about how it ran its free-range operation.

About every three months the cameras were moved to a different shed.
Viewers had been able to listen to the hens after sound was included on the live feed last year.
People watched the live feed from around the world despite Bowalley eggs being available to buy only in the South Island.
Her eggs were stocked at Foodstuffs and Woolworths supermarkets in the South Island.
A long-term goal was to supply eggs to the North Island but for now the focus was on the South Island while their business was in a growth stage.
"We would rather take care of our customers down here than spread ourselves too thin and not meet expectations."
She spent five months travelling in Europe last year including two weeks visiting egg farms in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Scotland.
A Scottish farm on the tour was biggest free-range egg producer in the world, she said.
"Their scale is out of this world."
The infrastructure required to supply millions of eggs to market each week was fascinating.
Farm visits in Europe highlighted the opportunities and challenges of operating at a large scale.
Many of the big farms in Europe remained family owned and operated.
The Craig egg dynasty began when her great-grandparents, Ivan and Joyce, farmed 200 hens about 8km north in Maheno, from 1958.

"Dad and Mum and Nanny and Granddad have always been open to any opportunities or anything me or my brother want to try — we have been really fortunate in that respect."
For the first time, her brother, who was chief executive, arranged for a farmer to graze his lambs on oilseed rape on their farm during winter last year.
About 380ha of the farm was arable and the harvest of barley and wheat begins soon.
Her brother had floated an idea of the family business running their own sheep but managing a flock represents "a world of pain to me", Miss Craig said.
"My brother is keen but I think we have enough going on with the poultry and arable at the moment. In the future, there may be sheep everywhere, who knows?"
Miss Craig declined to talk about bird flu, other than saying it had not caused any issue on their farm and directed any questions to the Egg Producers Federation of New Zealand to ensure the sector had a consistent message on the outbreak.
Late last year, about 200,000 birds were culled following a positive test for a strain of bird flu at Mainland Poultry in Hillgrove, about 20km south of Herbert.
When asked what kept her awake at night, Miss Craig said it was the upcoming harvest.
Her father Brent, Craig’s Poultry managing director, said what kept him awake was the state of the economy.
"If the economy doesn’t start performing better the exchange rate is going to come under pressure and that’ll be great for exports but it’ll be disastrous for imports."
A weak Kiwi dollar meant New Zealand consumers would have less disposable income and could change their egg-buying patterns and "downgrade their brand choices".
"That interrupts our strategy and plans ... if the economy is not functioning, we are all in trouble," Mr Craig said.