An unexpected career pivot brought Tom Goodair into the poultry industry, but he’s making the most of the opportunity. Michael Barker reports
If things had gone differently, Tom Goodair could have been joining the well-trodden family path of a career in the army.
Instead, in a sliding doors moment, to tide him over for six months before he was due to enlist, he took a job on a local chicken farm and found he was a natural, pivoting away from a military future and instead becoming an unexpected star of the broiler production leaderboards. To top off an extraordinary first decade in the industry, Goodair was named Grower of the Year at the 2025 National Egg & Poultry Awards in London this summer.
Today, Goodair is farm manager at Lodge Farm in Hertfordshire, where he runs the poultry operation of former NFU president Sir Peter Kendall and his brother Richard. The poultry side of the business, which has only been running for a decade, has eight sheds and grows 295,000 broilers per crop seven times a year for Cranswick.
It’s fair to say the 32-year-old’s route into the industry was atypical. “I started off on breeders with my first chicken job, having fallen into it by accident,” he recounts. “I just needed to tide me over for six months before going into the army, and a job came up down the road at a little chicken farm. I wasn’t really bothered about it to be honest but I went and had a look and thought it was actually quite interesting. They offered me a job and it turned out I was quite good at it.”
The early years took Goodair across the country to Hampshire, Hereford and East Anglia as he built his knowledge of an industry he never expected to be working in. Certainly, his original career path would have been more logical: both his grandfather and great-grandfather had been in the army, while his brother joined the Air Force. “I thought to myself that if I don’t like chickens or I’m not very good at it, I can go back into the army – that’s not going anywhere – but if I go into the army I can’t try my hands at chicken,” he explains.
It turns out he was very good at it indeed. While he had deviated from his original plan, Goodair threw himself wholeheartedly into his new career, pushing himself to read as much as he possibly could about efficient broiler production. “I was basically self-taught,” he admits. “Nobody taught me anything other than what was in the guides and trying to apply that the right way. I’ve never believed in the phrase ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’. Progress demands curiosity, courage, and the willingness to challenge the norm. If you want to grow, you’ve got to keep pushing the boundaries.”
That attitude took him to a series of high-flying performances on the Ross rankings, which began with a stunning 414 on his first-ever flock. By the time he had joined Kendall’s operation, he had developed a competitive spirit that brought 11 consecutive crops that each improved on the last. And that was just the beginning: last year he posted a 497 followed by a 498, but even that was just the warmup act for this year’s whopping 522.
A fan of computer strategy games who loves to find an edge in everything he puts his mind to, Goodair is open enough to admit that it’s the competitiveness of trying to be the best that motivates him above all else. “If I’m truly honest I don’t think it would have attracted me as much if we didn’t have that [competitive element],” he concedes. “If you just have flocks come in and out and you just have your boss saying he did or didn’t make money, it’s not as exciting as having those results, those benchmarkers, that leaderboard.”
It’s having that seven-cycle average of how he has performed against others that’s particularly satisfying to Goodair, who says that while anyone can have a good crop in isolation, achieving it consistently is what brings the greatest satisfaction and motivation to put even more effort into it. “It really gives you that incentive to work hard, and other people can see that you worked hard,” he says. “You get a better job from it. It’s helped me to progress fast because I can show how good I am, what I’ve learned, and that helps you to progress.”
So what’s the formula for his success? “Starting off from the muck out, it’s about making sure the shed gets cleaned out properly, washed properly with the right chemicals and so on,” he begins. “If you’ve got problems, you can’t just ignore them, you’ve got to address them. Then when the birds come in it’s making sure all the lines have been flushed with acid and then fresh water, so the first thing they drink is nice fresh water. Then from there it’s about managing their environment. Make sure the humidity doesn’t get too high – keeping it in good balance. And then I would say that the birds will tell you what they don’t like a lot more easily than they tell you what they do like! You can’t truly learn unless you make mistakes — and sometimes, finding out what birds don’t like is the fastest way to discover what they do. So I try to tweak things, such as the ventilation, always with the goal of trying to improve it.”
After that it’s about making sure the biosecurity is as good as it can be and vaccinations are done on time – essentially, controlling the elements that can be controlled. And that level of control over the process has been improved by the fact that Lodge Farm now has its own in-house NestBorn, where eggs are transported at the last stage before hatching and laid onto the bedding.
That approach crosses into the topic of bird welfare, and Goodair’s mantra is that “if you have healthy birds, you have happy birds”, which means good provision of bales, pecking objects, windows and so on. In a unique analogy, he compares the birds to body builders and farm managers to Formula One drivers : “They’re not fat, they have muscle and are little body builders,” he points out. “If you do body building they always say you’re going to need the three pillars – eat, sleep, and train. Feed the birds the right nutrition, give them sleep for the hormone regulation, and train as in keep them healthy and in the perfect environment for them to thrive to convert feed. It’s like Formula One – whenever people ask me how I get the scores, I say you need a good farm and a good manager, just like you need a good driver and a good car.”
Going into more detail on his personal philosophy, Goodair describes broiler farming as a game of attention to detail, relentless focus, and the drive to improve by even 1%. Those small gains may seem minor in the moment, but over time they snowball, compounding like interest into something greater and more consistent.
It’s not just Lodge Farm that’s been the benefit of Goodair’s attention to detail and competitive spirit, as enthusiasm for the job has led him to encouraging three or four friends and family members into the industry who would never have considered it before. That includes his best friend of 16 years – who joined as Goodair’s assistant and has since been promoted to a manager – as well as another friend, and also Goodair’s cousin. “I even converted my own father, who also fell in love with the scores and competitiveness,” he adds.
Working with friends is a treat for anybody, and working with an inspirational figure such as Kendall – who led the farmers’ union from 2006 to 2014 – can’t hurt either. Goodair says Kendall has a hands-off approach and lets the team run the poultry farm, but is always available to help out if needed. “Peter is very involved if he needs to be and is always there to help if there’s a break down, or assist where he can, but because there’s a capable team he’s able to step away,” he says. “I’m very happy and he’s very happy.”
With Kendall’s involvement it’s unsurprising that the business has a sharp focus on sustainability, and Goodair states that the company’s goal is to make the farm as self-sufficient as possible and “almost off grid”. Four of the sheds are heated by biomass and the other four by underfloor ground-source heating, while there are solar panels on several of the sheds and a wind turbine currently in the process of being put up.
Goodair says that winning awards was always an objective of his, which makes his recent win all the more satisfying. “When I came on board with Peter, he asked me what my ambitions were, and I said a goal of mine was to be challenging at the top of the leaderboard and competing for Poultry Farmer of the Year,” he explains. “I’m just shocked how quickly I’ve managed to do it really. Although my ambition is to be the best, I know broilers can throw unexpected challenges in your way, so it’s a continual learning curve to just keep getting better.”
He believes there’s a whole exciting career path out there for anybody willing to embrace it. “If I can do it with no help and with all the information out there, the only person stopping you is yourself,” he concludes. It’s a message that should resonate with anyone who never realised the career opportunities available in the industry.