Our Story

The Joyce family has been involved with poultry farming since 1945.  Bill and Jean Joyce decided to leave the city and Bill's job as a butcher behind and try their hand at poultry farming soon after the second world war.  After successfully running farms at Aspley and Moggill they purchased our Richlands farm in 1952.  The farm was primarily a layer farm and Bill was told in the early sixties that unless he changed from a barn and free range system to cages he would go broke.  He hated cages and stayed with the old ways until his retirement.  It was also during the sixties that a small abattoir was approved as in those days there was a good market for selling dressed spent layer hens . Ducks and Turkeys were also processed and it is one of my first memories helping out as a youngster and in winter having a nice bowl of chicken broth for lunch. Bill always preferred the Heritage breeds of poultry and usually stocked purebred Australorp utilities, he had a background with these and attended Gatton Agricultural College where they won the world egg laying competition. As a youngster I loved reading dads old books on traditional poultry farming methods and Heritage breeds. We sold the dressed poultry at the door and loved listening to dad talk to European and Asian customers and how they loved the flavour of our birds and things like yellow skin and good fats. Dad and I always played around with a few Heritage table bird crosses over the years and knew what superior flavour they had  to modern fast growing meat chickens. With this background we decided back in 2010 to develop a slow growing Heritage breed bird full of flavour like they have in Europe. After several years of development we are now very happy with the Joyce`s Gold.