Hatching
After hatching, our chicks grow indoors for their first 3 to 4 weeks until they have feathered up and are ready for a life outside. During this time our chicks are tucked up in cosy barns with warm air and fresh chippings below their feet. This allows our chicks to brood and feather up ready for a life outside roaming freely amongst pasture.
We rear three different strains of a slow growing breed called 'Hubbard'. The Hubbard breed is designed to grow slowly, roam freely, and lay down fat from eating pasture.
You may notice some slight variations in the colour of our birds and their meat, this is due to the genetics of these three slightly different strains of Hubbard and their 'colour gene'. The difference in the colour of their skin makes no difference to the texture or flavour of our birds. It is the life and the diet of our properly free range chickens that creates the flavour we are famous for.
Properly Free Range
Our free range chickens are slow-grown in small groups, free to roam outside on healthy pastures in natural light, and with the freedom to display their natural instincts such as scratching for food and dust bathing. These contented birds have properly developed bones and muscles and a strong natural immunity from scratching and pecking in the soil.
Pasture Raised
All our free range chickens are raised amongst lush pasture, which not only provides our birds with a wonderful healthy environment to explore, the pasture also makes up a proportion of our chicken's diet.
Our free range chicken's diet is made up of straightforward cereals (corn, barley and wheat) and grass, with the emphasis on developing a healthy digestive system. Chickens are monogastric animals, which means they can’t survive on pasture alone – their stomach systems are not sophisticated enough to extract the energy and protein they need. This means nutrient-packed grains and proteins are a crucial part of their diet. We do not use any additives or chemicals in our feed. We want our chickens to grow slowly, healthily and lead a properly free range life.
Soya is present in the feed for our chickens. We use the minimum amount possible (in mature birds, less than 5% of their feed) to ensure the welfare of our chickens, this protein is crucial for our birds to thrive while living a properly free range life.
Traditionally, fishmeal from local ports and harbours would have been fed to chickens instead of soya, however this was outlawed in the 1996 following the outbreak of BSE. Fishmeal, as a by-product of the local, inshore fishing fleet is a totally sustainable source of 'high quality, protected protein'. With the ban in place, it has meant that our local feed mills have had no option but to use soya.
We are hopeful that the ban on the use of fishmeal by-products will be lifted. In the meantime we are actively looking at alternatives such as lupins. It is stimulating the challenge to combine the resourcefulness and skills of our local feed millers with our family farmers working these crops into traditional crop rotations.
We will continue to actively seek alternatives to soya and remain hopeful for changes in regulations that will allow us to feed our chickens a completely sustainable diet.
Slowly Grown
We grow our chickens slowly, up to 12 weeks old, which is at least double the length of intensively reared birds. We want our birds to live a proper life, scratching and dust-bathing, foraging and flapping. This active life not only is vitally important from our ethical viewpoint, but also ensures our birds develop a proper carcass and muscles which results in healthy, nutritious food.
Humane Slaughter
Our chickens are killed in farmyard based slaughterhouses. The humane slaughter of our birds is vitally important to us, we put a great deal of love and care into producing a healthy, happy bird, the last thing we would want is for our birds to have a stressful end to their lives. Every chicken is carefully stunned prior to slaughter.
Pipers Farm Properly Free Range Chickens are healthy, nutritious food, grown without the need for any routine use of antibiotics, and not exposed to the significant problems of food poisoning bacteria associated with industrial-scale systems of farming and processing.
Family Farms
We work with two incredible farms who rear our properly free range chicken. Our talented, likeminded farmers work to our standards to ensure every chicken reared is of exceptional quality and has been produced in a way you can have complete confidence in. We work closely with our farmers to ensure we are treading as lightly as possible on the land and producing delicious nutritious food for your table.
We believe in better farming, with a 360° respect for the environment, farmer, animals and you, the customer. Chickens mean a lot to us too, as it was after seeing the introduction of industrial poultry systems that prompted Pipers Farm founds Peter and Henri to start farming sustainably over 30 years ago. They were determined to produce good, healthy, wholesome food that they could feed to their family with confidence. We hope that by sharing the story of how our chickens are reared today you can see that those principles have only got stronger. By choosing Pipers Farm you are supporting family farms who are nurturing our countryside, working in harmony with nature to produce food you can trust.