Chickens: growing for the gourmet market
Monday, January 5, 2015
In a step away from 'factory farming,' some European producers are opting for slower growing systems yielding top-quality chicken meat, helping small-scale family farms
to survive.
by NORMAN DUNN
Chicken meat is definitely the favourite flesh in Europe with some 10 million tons produced annually and the European Union's annual per capita consumption at between 19 and 20 kilograms. Just like in Canada, though, the margin for producers under conventional systems is next to nothing – in fact less than breakeven according to present figures.
The natural reaction from farmers? Expand and spread fixed costs. In the Netherlands, for instance, the average chicken farm runs around 90,000 birds per production cycle. That's three times the size of 25 years ago. It's the same picture all over western Europe and that's a big problem here. European consumer organizations call this factory farming and there's hardly a week goes by without critical TV or newspaper reports of slip-ups in some huge production unit. But ask those critical consumers to pay more for chicks reared under what are seen as high-welfare environments and retail sales start to crumble fast.
There's a change coming, though, with a growing number of regions featuring their own special brands of gourmet chicken meat, grown more slowly for a proven juicier, tastier end-product. Some systems have gone for heavier brown-feathered birds, but the good news is that a lot of this new high-quality output is achieved with standard broiler hybrids, such as the Ross 708. Guaranteeing the meat comes from small units with more space per bird on the floor, with home-grown cereal rations and, in the end, a comparatively short final journey to the slaughterhouse is also boosting European market demand for the more expensive (at least one-third extra) meat.
One of the great pioneers in gourmet chicken marketing is the Wesphalian family firm of Borgmeier in Germany with its "Kikok" corn-fed chickens. The Borgmeiers started selecting small-scale producers willing to go for extra quality 20 years ago. Nowadays, this means the producers face up to 30 per cent higher costs per kilogram liveweight.
Despite this, there's continued interest from the farmers' side and now senior partner Werner Borgmeier reports sales of 6,000 branded Kikok chickens almost every day of the year. All the meat comes from Ross birds. Some 15 per cent of production sells as entire birds; the rest is cut into breast fillets and other pieces, and 300 selected trade outlets are the only selling points.
Farmers producing Kikok chicks undertake to feed 50 per cent corn and 20 per cent of their homegrown small grains, and the corn diet gives the birds another distinctive selling point – their gold-yellow color.
Other rules for these corn-fed chicks include eight hours' rest without any lighting in the barn, chopped straw bedding only, and a slower feeding regime of 45 to 48 days to a 2.3 kilogram end weight. Stocking density is a maximum 24 kilograms per square metre or 10 slaughter-ready birds. The legal maximum in Germany is 39 kilograms per square metre of barn floor.
"We find there's a bonus in keeping the chicks occupied, too," adds Werner Borgmeier. "Our producers are required to leave straw bales on the floor for the birds to climb onto and we have pendulum platforms that swing just a few centimeters above the barn floor. The birds seem to like piling onto these."
Another selling point: a maximum two and a half hour drive to the slaughterhouse on a continent where eight continuous hours is the maximum in most countries.
OK, so the farmers get more money for their trouble, and customers really seem to be queuing- up for the resultant meat. (Werner Borgmeier says they could sell double the amount of Kikok corn-fed chickens at Christmas.)
But what do the farmers themselves think? Marcus Hillemeier is one of just 20 producers of the special brand. He has enough acres to grow corn and wheat for a 20,000-bird Kikok enterprise plus a 30,000-bird conventional broiler production barn on his farm. The conventionally reared birds – also Ross 707s – are grown faster at regular stocking density for slaughter at 39 days for another Borgmeier slaughter line that processes over 100,000 conventional chickens per day for other markets.
Marcus Hillemeier's father was one of the first suppliers of gourmet chickens to Borgmeier. "It's a much more satisfying job," says Marcus. "The birds have more space, which means drier floors, and natural lighting. The combination seems to make them more alert and inquisitive, but without any aggression. For instance, there's no feather pecking and we haven't had the vet here for months. The chicks arrive as day-olds and, after just a few weeks, they are queuing to climb onto the bales on the barn floor or to get onto the swings."
Will Marcus expand to something like the average chicken production unit size in his country? "No way," he answers. "Maybe the greatest attraction of growing added-value chicken like the Kikok," he says, "is that we make enough from a comparatively small business to survive as a family concern without having to hire hands or invest in much bigger barns."
Like everywhere else, adds Marcus, there's no shortage of bankers and advisers urging expansion. "But we can resist the pressure, partly because we know there's a good market now for a quality chicken out there." BF
Norman Dunn writes about European agriculture from Germany.