The Chapman family came to West Cockmuir in 1946 and is now being run by the second and third generation. Robert Chapman is our Managing Director, his wife Ethel is Company Secretary and their son Iain is Farms Director.

We supply C J Lang & Son Ltd with a quality Scottish product into their Scottish SPAR stores and have had a long and very fruitful association with them over the past 20 + years. We look forward to this relationship continuing in the years to come.

We are currently farming 2500 acres on 12 farms from King Edward beside Turriff and Banff, New Pitsligo, New Byth, New Aberdour, Rathen and in the area around the main farm at Strichen.

On the farm we currently employ 1 Farm Manager, 3 Tractormen, 1 Poultry Manager, 8 Poultrymen and 1 Cattleman.

We run a 250 Suckler cow herd and finish all the prodigies on the farm and have an approx. total of 550 head of cattle at our maximum stocking.

We rear all our own Point of Lay pullets as well as supplying P.O.L.’s for our 24 contracted producers. We have capacity to rear a total of 800,000 birds per year. We rear them from day old chicks to 14-15 week old pullets.

The grading / packing operation currently packs approx. 4.5 – 4.75 million eggs per week. This equates to 420,000 dozen per week. We as a company have capacity for 400,000 birds, and we have a further 24 contracted producers who own a further 520,000 birds. This gives us a total of 920,000 birds and still expanding. These birds are spread out over the north-east here, up as far a Nairn on the Moray coast, and south to Dundee and Perth.

Production Type Split

35% Colony Cages
62% Free Range
3% Organic

We operate all our own transport in-house and currently run a fleet of 6 Artic tractor units

Renewables are a big part of our company ethos and currently we have the following systems in place for renewable energy used on the farms. 1 x 850 kWh wind turbine and a share in a 330 kWh wind turbine. The larger of the 2 turbines powers the main farm with electricity. This is where the colony hens are housed, the packing operation is carried out as well as supplying the 3 domestic houses on site.

2 x 500 kWh Hertz Biomass boilers which heats the pullet rearing sheds.

2 x 200 kWh Froling Biomass boilers are also housed on the main farm at Cockmuir and provide the heating for the 3 houses, offices and packing shed.

A further 1 MW Hertz Biomass boiler provides the heat during harvest for the grain dryer and heats the maintenance workshop in the winter months.

As well as all the above we have a 50 kWh and 150 kWh Solar installation on two out farms using the electricity to power the henhouses.

In the last 5 years we have spent £7.5 million in major investments, extending the packing operation, installing a new egg grading machine and investing in robotic arms for packing eggs as well as a new storage shed and workshop. We have also just recently carried out major conversion of an ex broiler sheds into a rearing unit and converted the existing rearing into laying units.