Packington Poultry

A slow hum of Triumph bikes announced The Hairy Bikers visit to Packington Poultry, Dunstall (home of free-range happy chickens). Part of the Staffordshire episode of their series, broadcast on BBC, brought them to the free-range chicken farm to find out how chickens are reared with the best of welfare standards to produce the most deliciously succulent and tasty chicken you can buy.

The Bikers, renowned for their travelling kitchen, double-act antics in far-flung places and food-lovers informal approach to cooking, investigated the free-range chickens amongst the large grass fields bordered with woodland and wild hedgerows. We talked about how I have pioneered my own method of breeding the free-range chickens, the ins and outs of a bird's life from chicks to being a Sunday roast!

Despite a demanding filming tour around the UK for their latest series, on their last day neither Si or Dave let their weariness get in the way of getting stuck in to tasty food and some great banter, and a genuine interest in the animals.

The farm tour inspired a wealth of questions from the Bikers, keen to know how the chickens were reared, what they ate, how lovely the fields were that they got to roam around all night, whilst being tucked safely out of reach of the foxes at night in spacious barns with footballs and other games for entertainment! But what needed no words was their faces whilst tasting the juicy, mouth-watering meat during a welcomed pit-stop at the farmhouse... doorstop chicken sandwiches, carved in hunks, dripping with chicken juices, gorged in rustic style, gave their taste buds an introduction to the fabulously succulent chicken, with an old fashioned real tastiness that has long left fast-grown, mass produced supermarket birds.

Sad to leave the countryside haven, and rustic food, they revved off into the dimming sunshine... They are pretty hairy, very friendly and love their food.

Alec Mercer