Brothers Dustin and Austin Stanton have developed the largest free-range chicken operation in the country, Stanton Brothers Eggs.

Dustin, a junior, said he began the business in 1999 when his first grade class hatched chicks through MU Extension 4-H’s “Hatching Chicks in the Classroom” program.

“You hatch it, and somebody can take them home,” Dustin said. “I really wanted the chicks but I didn’t get them. Another girl won them. But I told my uncle, and he bought me six baby chicks. That’s just kind of how I got started, there in first grade.”

Austin, a junior at Centralia High School, joined his older brother a few years later and the two became co-owners of Stanton Brothers Eggs.

The business is split into three segments, Dustin said. The first segment is production, which focuses more on growing the grain to the chickens laying the eggs.

Dustin said the second segment deals with processing and preparing the eggs, and the third segment is marketing.

“I do more of the last two there, the processing and the sales,” Dustin said. “And (Austin) does a lot of the production. So that helps out a lot, to split the business up into that faction.”

In high school, Dustin began selling eggs from his 500 chickens at the Columbia Farmer’s Market before expanding into wholesale. He said the business has grown to 12,000 chickens since its inception.

Stanton Brothers Eggs has about 40 weekly outlets, including Hy-Vee locations in Columbia and Jefferson City as well as several restaurants in downtown Columbia.

Dustin said the company also supplies all eggs for MU and Columbia College student dining.

Along with co-running the business, Dustin, an agricultural business major, is a full-time student. Austin also balances the business with his high school coursework.

Austin said he’s often busy as a student and co-owner.

“A lot of it’s just trying to manage your time,” Austin said. “Especially when you get a lot of homework and projects.”

Dustin said he agrees that time is the most difficult aspect of operating full-time in the two different worlds. It is all about being self-motivated, Dustin said.

“I’m going to college now, but a degree is a piece of paper when you come down to it,” Dustin said. “A lot of it is defined by the person themselves, if they’re self-motivated to do what they actually want to do. When it gets down to it, it’s the person who’s working. You can determine your future that way, if you want to grow something or not.”

With the help of their parents and hired help, Dustin and Austin collect anywhere between 200 and 400 dozen eggs each day.

The brothers are in the process of developing a 200-by-40-foot facility to make their business more efficient. Dustin said the building will have various automated features so they can process eggs and feed the chickens from an iPhone without having to physically be at the farm. They also hope to raise “broilers,” where chickens are killed for meat.

Dustin said he didn’t plan on getting into chicken farming as a kid; he just wanted to grow a business. He said he and his brother have done just that, and they hope to grow Stanton Brothers Eggs into a livelihood.

“It’s so large now that I have to continue it in a sense, but I really do enjoy it,” Dustin said. “A lot of it was learning by error, though. I might have messed up when I was a first grader, but I learned it then. So by the time I was in high school, I knew what to do right.”