Who are The Coles?
We run a multi-faceted farm in mid-Devon. We are a family-run business led by my father, Stuart, with myself and my two younger brothers (Elliot and Jacob) being 4th generation farmers. I graduated from Swansea University in 2020 with a degree in Materials Engineering but decided to come back home to the family farm. I now live on the farm neighbouring my parents (Stuart & Miranda) with my wife Eleri.

We are very new to the egg industry, having placed 12,000 pullets at the end of January this year on our new poultry site. The shed was built by a local company (Leach Bros Ltd) which has been building poultry houses for us for nearly 20 years but this was their first layer shed. We are very pleased with the building which contains the Jansen Comfort 2.0 multi-tier system. This system works very well and we have no complaints at all. Alongside the Jansen system, we have the Damtech Optipack 70 egg packer, which has operated extremely well so far and makes daily packing simple.

We chose St. Ewe as a packer shortly after meeting Bex for the first time. Having met with multiple packers before, once sitting down with Bex we knew that St. Ewe were going to be the best fit for us.

More about the farm
Although we are new to the egg industry, we are not new to the world of poultry. We currently have three broiler sites, one free-range and two multi-purpose ones. Both of which have mainly been producing indoor higher welfare birds for M&S. The free-range site is the oldest of our poultry sites, with the first shed being constructed in 2005. Our father saw the opportunity to get into the broiler industry and took it. With no regrets the farm expanded substantially in a relatively short period of time and broiler production became the main aspect of our farm.

Back in 2010, we developed a 1.3MW Biogas Plant. This has since become the heart of our wider farming operation and has allowed us to practice sustainable circular agriculture. All of our animal waste (broiler litter, layer muck and cattle farm-yard manure) is used as feedstocks. The diet of the plant being 60% animal waste 40% crops (maize and oats mainly). We also have 250 acres of arable land, which grows maize, wheat and barley to be fed to the cattle on our beef finishing unit. The beef unit finishes roughly 500 cattle a year, a mix of Aberdeen Angus and Longhorns. The primary and sometimes only fertilizer we use on our crops is the biodigestate produced from the AD plant, this further contributes to the circularity of the farm. Biogas produced by the AD plant is also used as fuel for our new New Holland Methane T6 tractor. This is our newest renewable energy-powered vehicle, to join alongside our electric van and quadbike.

Sustainability & Technology
Sustainability is certainly one of the driving forces in our decision-making process. Mainly as we need to value the environment to a very high degree and making sustainable choices often makes the farming process more efficient. Our layer site furthers our sustainability by being a completely off-grid site. A 50kW of solar panel and battery system with a backup generator easily powers the 12,000-bird shed. An onsite bore-hole is used to provide water for the birds, with the IWS water treatment system which is very effective at keeping the water clean from bacteria and disease. We planted 1,300+ trees in the range area. These were sourced through the Woodland Trust, which meant the trees and guards were partly funded through them. This latest tree-planting operation takes the total number of trees planted by us in the last 18 years to over 4,000. Some of these have been planted around two large ponds that we constructed. That project has seen an area of unfarmable land experience great growth in wildlife.

All of our poultry sheds, layer and broiler, have FLOX AI cameras and sensors in. We have been instrumental in the development of this tech startup company over the last three years. This system is a great tool for any poultry farmer and can see it being a large part of future poultry production.

Looking ahead to the future
The step into the free-range egg industry has been an exciting one and am very grateful to St. Ewe and all that have helped and given advice in egg production. The industry has been very welcoming and I know there is a lot more for me to learn.