Chickens in The Hills

As Australia is very aware of Bird Flu at the moment with fear of our Poultry Industry being affected- at this stage it isn’t - we thought we would focus on the early poultry industry in the Shire of Mundaring.

Many people in the Shire would have run poultry farms and they were busy thriving businesses.

Most villages would have had them - namely Darlington, Glen Forrest, Mahogany Creek and Mount Helena and Parkerville had particularly large farms.

The area of Zamia (near Coppin Road), where there was a railway siding, was at one time the centre of the Hills Poultry Industry.

In the 1930s the farms would have had Black Orpingtons and White Leghorns.

Thousands of eggs were being gathered, cleaned, weighed and packed and sent off on the train for either export or the local market. Also, day old chicks were sold.

It was a very labour-intensive industry, the birds had to be fed, the pens cleaned, heat lamps and incubators to be maintained, green feed to be cut, water to be provided and eggs collected twice a day.

Hygiene was also very important, so pens, perches and walls had to be cleaned. Kerosene and carbolic acid were used at that time. Parasites such as stickfast fleas, tick, lice and red mites had to be eliminated, and incoming birds had to be quarantined.

Brooklyn Poultry Farm was one of the bigger farms in Parkerville situated north of Glendower Street some 26acres between Seabourne and Kintore Road from 1909 until 1945. One of the various owners was George Allman, who was also a member of the Greenmount Road Board (now Mundaring Shire). He had a road in Parkerville named after him.

Another large poultry farm was “Hills Poultry Farm" located off Richardson Road and run by John Taylor. Robert and Margaret Feldman took up an adjacent poultry farm in 1959, but they went into poultry meat rather than eggs . Much of this information can be found in Rob Borsje's book “A History of Parkerville & Stoneville".

Click on image to enlarge and find out more information.

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  Taken from a booklet "Live in the Hills" published by The Hills Railway League c1933

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  Taken from Brooklyn Poultry Farm Booklet

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  Front page of Brooklyn's Advertising Booklet in 1927

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  A poultry farm at Werribee Boys Home in 1934 P2006.63

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  Jan Lyon feeding chickens at Fat Hen Chook Farm in Glen Forrest now Hovea 1936 P2001.18