Five years ago, three friends engaged in a chicken-or-egg discussion.
Seeking a side endeavor, Ashley Lelie and Channon Harris — both former receivers for the University of Hawii football team — and Wisely Butler explored several ideas. The most popular was to start a chicken farm with the intent of selling the eggs or raising the chickens to be sold as broilers.
Or, as they finally agreed, to do both.
Lelie, who had an interest in horticulture, knew the USDA offered programs to help aspiring farmers locate property and start their businesses. A friend offered to build the coops and fences. Asagi Hatchery sold the group their first 100 hatchlings.
Because the business was hatched during the pandemic, Harris noted, “we could take orders and drop off the eggs at everybody’s doorsteps. And they could pay us through Venmo.”
Eventually, the former Rainbow Warriors formed a partnership under Lelie’s Golden Farms Oahu. The 300 chickens on the initial Kahuluu farm produced about 1,500 eggs per week. Harris was in charge of pre-order deliveries to stores, as well as selling cartons at the farmers markets.
At the time, Lelie also had a farm in Waimanalo that grew mamaki, a Native Hawaiian plant that is used in an anti-oxidant tea, as well as other agricultural business. A couple of years ago, Lelie moved to Hawaii island, where he grows fruit trees and sells potted plants from a propagation nursery. Lelie said eggs are a small part of his Big Island business.
Harris, who is employed by the Department of Education to work with at-risk students, now has his own egg business — Golden Family Farmz — in Haleiwa.
The bird flu problem on the continent has not affected the safety of Hawaii’s egg supply. Harris said his free-range chickens are healthy and absent of diseases. The problems on the mainland have created a backlog of hatchling orders to expand inventory. He said he expects the orders to be fulfilled by the end of the month.
For now, Harris’ more than 200 hens produce about 600 eggs a week. Harris sells them, by the dozen, online and Sundays at the Kailua Farmers Market. “Sometimes I sell out by the time we open,” Harris said. ‘We take a lot of pre-orders.”
Harris said he has Rhode Island Reds that lay large brown eggs, and Ameraucana hens that produce multi-colored eggs. The blue eggs are smaller than the brown ones but have more yolk.
Harris said he has maintained the same price through the years: $10 for a dozen brown eggs, $15 for 12 blue eggs, and $12 for a mix of six brown eggs and six blue eggs.
“Our eggs are pretty fresh,” Harris said, noting he once sold several dozen to the captain of a fishing boat. “He put them on his boat for his crew. The refrigerator is pretty cold, of course, and he said he had the eggs from us for several months. And they were still good, still fresh, when they ate ’em. They still had that little ‘mountain.’”
Harris said a visual test is after cracking an egg, if the yolk is formed into a “bubble,” it is edible. A flat yolk is considered an old egg.
Harris said the roosters are used to increase the flock. If there is an imbalance, some of the roosters are sold.
“You know how some put hormones in the chicken?” Harris said. “We don’t do any of that. We know the meat is really good, really healthy.”
Harris said sales of the eggs are used to buy feed or purchase hatchlings.
Harris, like Lelie, always had an interest in essentially growing and raising his own food. “I’m from the South,” said Harris, who grew up in Louisiana. “I’ve dealt with animals and hard work and planting stuff. I understand that. I didn’t think I’d be a chicken farmer. I thought I’d have a few chickens in the yard, nothing to this extreme. But it kind of makes sense. It comes full circle.”
Harris also is seeking to expanding his business to include growing fruit. After all — drum roll — he does not want to put all his proverbial eggs in one basket.
