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Willowbrook Farm – The UK’s First Halal Farm

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Chicken

Our chickens live a healthy natural free-range life and are traditional slow maturing mixed breeds which live for a minimum of 12 weeks.

The result of this is a high quality nutritionally dense meat, bursting with a real chicken flavour, firm texture, and very little water content. So when you cook our chicken you won’t be left with a shrunk flavourless dry meat but instead know you are feeding your family and supporting an ethical and sustainable farming system.

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Willowbrook Chicken Membership

On our farm we rear natural slow maturing traditional breeds of chicken, free from unnatural chemicals, hormones or medication. Unlike the modern breeds of chicken found in supermarkets and butchers across the UK, which live an average of 5 weeks, ours will reach full maturity at 12 weeks and have full access to woodland & pasture all year long!

As we can only rear very small flocks of chicken with this farming process, we simply could not meet the increasing demand. We felt it unfair that our customers were having to fight it out online every week to secure some chicken, with many customers missing out on a weekly basis after waiting patiently for weeks.

And so we implemented a membership scheme, whereby members receive 2 whole chickens, every 4 weeks. We set the number of chickens per member at two in order so we can supply the greatest number of our customers as fairly as possible in a way that means we can continue to sustainably rear and sell our birds. Our own family in fact went over 6 months without eating any chicken out of loyalty to our customers and even still only have a maximum of 2 per month

This does not affect our lamb or beef produce, or any other activities on our farm. We hope to continue improving our services and providing excellent quality meat.

Why can’t we increase our stock?

We have increased our flocks to our sustainable limits. Remember, we are a small farm and we sell chickens that mature slowly and naturally. We don’t believe in the over-stocked commercial type farming. That’s part of our ethos and we believe it is why you’re here reading this.

But what are we supposed to do if we can’t get your chicken?

It’s not what you want to hear, but consider eating less meat? We have always advised our customers that as a nation we consume too much meat. We raise healthy, natural animals that take time and money to mature and should be accorded a commensurate status.

Consider buying less chicken, buy our lamb or beef, or even go veggie a few times a week. Chicken is the least sustainable meat. Both beef and lamb are fully grass fed and require much lower inputs

Please read our blog Red vs White Meat for a discussion of this.

Something to consider… before starting this new system none of us Radwans here at Willowbrook had eaten any chicken for over three months! All our produce has gone straight out to our valued customers.

Remember, it’s slow food not fast food!