Meet Mark, the person behind our free-range chicken and turkey.
A transparent supply chain means you get to know what goes into your food and how the ingredients are sourced. And so, we'd like to show you the East Anglian farm where we source the free-range chicken and turkey in our dry dog food.
“I always wanted to be a farmer. Our farm is pretty much a mirror image of the little farm I had 30 years ago: one that gives chickens a habitat as close to their natural one as possible; and one that lets them do what they do naturally.
"We grew them how we thought they should be grown."
We grew them how we thought they should be grown, so they would have free ranges to run around on, they would have perches in their houses, and natural light and windows. So that’s how we did it.
Free range to me? It just gives me so much pleasure to see the birds out in the fields. What could be better for your day job than coming out here and being with these birds doing what they do naturally.”
We were drawn to their openness, inviting us to visit the farm, meet the team and see the birds for ourselves.
The longer lives of slow-grow birds, in the outdoors, means they need more land, water and feed than intensively-farmed chickens.
When intensively farmed, chickens grow up to full size in about 6 weeks. And, sometimes, each chicken has as little space as an A4 piece of paper. So technically, they use less energy and land, but this comes at the cost of their quality of life.
Compromising our meat’s welfare wasn’t something we were willing to do, so we looked for other areas we could reduce their impact without compromising their ethical treatment.
Our chickens and turkeys are processed in the same region as the farm. It reduces travel, meaning less stress for the birds and lower transport emissions.
They run the process, giving greater control. It means stress can be minimised at every stage of the bird's lives - they're processed using RSPA assured methods.
Let's talk nutrition. Fresh meat cooked at low temperatures keeps the delicious protein as digestible as possible.
Meat meal, the protein source for traditional dry dog foods, comes from multiple sources (which makes it hard to trace) and travels at room temperature. It’s then cooked at over 200˚C to kill off all those germs, which denatures and damages the protein in the meat, making it less digestible.
Our fresh chicken and turkey is similar to the stuff you and I eat. It’s transported in a fridge and cooked at 90˚C so the protein is protected, more nutritious and more digestible.
And it’s tastier, too.
