Visit to Otter Valley Poultry; 28th April 2016
As part of an ongoing project visiting farms and producer, Natalie and Lois set out to Cullompton to find out more about where our Free Range chickens come from. Otter Valley Poultry is a 40 year old family run business, based in the Blackdown Hills of East Devon. They rear chickens, turkeys, and guinea fowl and raise both free range and Soil Association certified poultry. Due to the size of operation, Otter Valley house their birds on a number of different sites in Devon and use a contract farmer to supply some their free range poultry. Working with small family farms is key to Otter Valley's success. and ensures a smooth operation, as well as consistency in achieving high standards of animal welfare.
Overall, 75% of the chicken produced at Otter Valley is Organic, but at the Real Food Store, we currently only purchase free range chicken (apart from at Christmas time when we take other poultry orders), although we are also able to specially order organic poultry if desired.
The free-range chickens that we buy are raised by a contract farmer called Johnny on a 30 acre site near Cullompton, Mid-Devon, so we took the time to go and visit him and learn more about how the chicken we sell is produced. The breed of chickens he rears are Hubbard 787s, which are a slow growing strain.
Johnny's been supplying Otter Valley with poultry for many years and also runs one of the hatcheries that provides his own farm, and three of Otter Valley's organic poultry suppliers with one day old chicks. The chicks are then raised to a minimum age of 9 weeks before they are slaughtered at Otter Valley's main site near Honiton, where they have an EC approved poultry abbatoir. Johnny showed us the huts that the chicken live in, and explained how they are free to roam around the site all day, then shut in for the nights.
There are a number of chicken huts dotted about the field, each housing a flock of several hundred chickens. Despite the fact that at any one time they may keep up to 6,500 chickens on this site it was obvious how much land these chickens have around them to roam freely in if they desired- we were surprised to see that the gate to the field is kept open, but there didn't seem to be any Great Escape plans being hatched at the time we visited (most remained within the safety and shade of their hut).
All the Free range birds are vaccinated at one day old which covers them until the point of slaughter. When the birds reach 9 weeks they are considered to be at maturity and taken to be dispatched (often supermarket chicken would have been slaughtered at around 6 weeks). The chickens are rounded up at night so as to limit the stress they experience and food is withdrawn from them for 6 hours before they are killed. They are then hung with their guts still intact to enable tenderisation of the meat and for the flavour to develop.
When a new flock is brought in, the sheds are rotated around the field to prevent the build-up of bacteria and disease and to gradually fertilise the field and rest the grass.
We often get asked in store whether our free range chickens truly are free range, so we were very glad to get the chance to go and see for ourselves, and to confirm that they do have lots of access to the outdoors. We would like to thank Johnny for showing us around, and to the whole team at Otter Valley for helping us arrange our visit!