Nichols Poultry was founded in 1988 by the Nichols family to be a leader in the industry for quality, sustainability, and animal welfare. We continue this tradition today with leading practices in air chilled chicken and onsite wind power generation.

Why choose NIchols Poultry

When you choose to eat chicken from Nichols Poultry, you know exactly what you’re feeding your friends and family… nothing but 100% Tassie chicken. We’re proud to produce premium chicken products that are 100% natural and RSPCA approved. Our chicken is different, there’s no chlorine or water added to any of our products, which other brands use when processing their chicken. Try our chicken for yourself to taste and experience the Nichols difference.

  • Air chilled
  • No added Water
  • No Chlorine
  • RSPCA Approved Chicken

air chilled

If you’re not cooking with air chilled chicken, then you won’t be able to taste, real flavoursome chicken. The way in which chickens are processed makes a huge difference to the taste and texture of the meat. All Nichols chickens are air chilled, which means they retain all of their natural flavour, juices and texture.

So what is Air Chilling? In chicken processing, the birds must be chilled quickly after feather removal. The industry standard does this by immersing the chicken in icy cold water bath. The water is chlorinated to prevent bacterial contamination. Some of the chlorinated water is absorbed into the chicken which compromises the flavour and texture of the chicken. Air chilling, however, is a process by which chickens are cooled by cold air as they pass through a blast chiller.

There are a number of benefits to air chilled chicken but most of all it is tastier and more tender. This is because water chilled chicken absorbs water during processing and when the chicken is cooking the water either evaporates out making the meat contract, dry out and loose flavour or leaves it soggy and stringing. By contrast air chilled chicken produces more tender meat with natural flavour and texture. Because it has soaked up additional water you can also get nice and cispy skin from air chilled chicken. The absorbed water also increases the size and weight of the chicken, by over 10% in many cases, which adds to the cost of the chicken. This means that not only is air chilled chicken better quality, it is also better value.

sustainability

We are committed to environmental sustainability and have a number of initiatives to help reduce our environmental footprint.

  • We generate approximately 50% of the power needs from an onsite wind turbine.
  • We compost the litter from our growing sheds and this is used as fertiliser over our farm.
  • Our waste water is treated and used to irrigate pasture.
  • All trays used for packaging are recyclable.
  • We are working to eliminate plastic waste to landfill from production waste.

WHERE TO FIND OUR PRODUCTS

Nichols Poultry chicken products can be found in a number of stockists throughout Tasmania, including:
your local IGA store, Hill. St Grocers, Coles and quality butchers in Tasmania.