Chefs are calling this bird the wagyu of chicken – here's why - Produce Awards

Aug 15, 2025

Chef and delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards National Judge Alla Wolf-Tasker calls it “the wagyu of chicken”. Here’s why Grassland Poultry chicken is truly a bird of a different feather.

The majority of meat chickens you’ll find in Australia today come from just two breeds – Ross and Cobb. These ‘broiler’ birds were selectively bred to grow very large very quickly, and are ready for processing at just 4-6 weeks. This makes things very efficient and economical, but it doesn’t do much for taste or variety.

Relying on just two breeds to sustain an entire industry is a pretty risky undertaking. The recent avian flu outbreak is a good example of how one disease can wipe out entire flocks. Many heritage breeds of chicken are more resistant to disease, thanks to their diverse genetic and environmental backgrounds, but these have slowly been disappearing – in Australia, and around the world – as industrial meat production takes dominance over quality and flavour. This means our chicken gene pool is shrinking, and becoming more vulnerable.

Grassland Poultry — Sommerlad chickens are bred to thrive in the Aussie outdoors.

A real Aussie bird

Back in 2001, Australian poultry breeders Michael and Kathryn Sommerlad hatched a plan to address the lack of genetic diversity in our meat chicken industry. Through a poultry breeding program, they developed a new meat chicken strain that was specifically suited to our climate, with natural resistance to common diseases. The result was the Sommerlad chicken – a bird that thrives in Australian free-range pasture conditions. These birds are active foragers, and are designed to live outdoors all year round, doing what nature intended chickens to do. Because Sommerlads take longer to grow to reach maturity, they also develop stronger bones, bigger muscles and ultimately, more deeply flavoured meat.

The breed has been commercially available since 2013, and in all that time, no one has produced a more outstanding version of this remarkable bird than Bryan and Kim Kiss of Grassland Poultry. They have been State and National winners of delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards on multiple occasions, and are once again National Finalists at this year’s awards.

A cracking good system

What sets Bryan and Kim apart is how they raise their birds. They really do ‘raise’ them – from scratch. Unlike other large-scale chicken meat producers who buy in chicks, the Kisses hatch their own birds on their farm. They have a special breeding flock, and still work in close consultation with Michael Sommerlad to this day as they develop the Grassland Poultry breed to suit the conditions on their property, located on the NSW Central West Slopes and Plains region.

“We hatch our own chicks,” Kim says. “Then those chicks go up into the paddock – and this is what we do a little bit different from other people – they’re out in the paddock in the shelter that they’re going to be using for the rest of their lives.”

The chicks are first kept in the brooding section of the shelter under heat, before being opened up to the back of the shelter, where they get access to grass and rocks and soil.

“This is really important, because it sets their gut,” Kim says. “This is what their mum would’ve done in the nest. She would start getting them to feed, so we’re just mimicking that.”

Once the birds can regulate their own temperature, the shelter walls pop open and they’re released out onto pasture with the flock, watched over by Maremma guardian dogs.

“They have access to pasture and anything that’s in the paddock, like worms and bugs,” Kim says. “It’s all free choice. Because they’re outside all the time, they just use their natural instincts to do what they want to do. And they never get locked up again.”

A different process

Unlike broilers, Grassland Poultry chickens are not processed until 10-12 weeks. In a perfect ‘closed-loop’ system that gives Bryan and Kim complete control over every aspect of their birds’ welfare, the couple even have their own on-farm processing site. And again, they do things very differently from many others.

“We don’t use any medications or anything with our chickens as they’re growing, and we also don’t use any chemicals in the abattoir at all – no chlorine, no bleach,” Kim says. “We feel that’s really important. You create these beautiful birds; the last thing you want to do is coat them in chemicals on the way out.”

Instead of chemicals, ultraviolet light is used to kill bacteria. The process is semi-manual, and offal is removed by hand, leaving organs perfectly intact.

“The other thing we do differently is, at the end of most of the [other] chains, the chickens go into chlorine baths, and then the bird will be bagged straight away out of those baths.” Kim says. “We air-dry ours in a cool room for 24 hours before we bag them, so there’s no water in them.”

As Bryan explains, this leads to better value for consumers: “If you buy a chicken from the supermarket, you’ll get a lot of shrink in the oven, because there’s a lot of moisture getting cooked out. Whereas the yield of ours is a lot better. You don’t lose any moisture, because it’s already dry aged.”

All about that taste

The dry-ageing also improves the flavour of the bird and delivers crispier skin. Not to mention the impact that the birds’ life of free foraging has had on the quality of the meat.

“They have a lot more fat on them,” Kim says. “And because they’ve been running around and foraging, the muscles have been working, so the flesh is firmer. It has more depth to its flavour.”

One taste of a Grassland Poultry chook, and you may never be able to look at a supermarket chook the same way again. Sure, the price tag might be a little higher, but what you’re paying for is not just a high-quality, supreme-tasting bird; you’re also supporting a more sustainable, ethical and resilient food system.

Winners of the 2025 delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards will be announced on Tuesday, August 26.