NI farmers' 'world beating birds'

Peter Morgan expects production to increase further

By Martin Cassidy BBC Northern Ireland rural affairs correspondent

Northern Ireland farmers have come up with a new breed of chicken which they think could be a world-beater.

The Antrim Bronze looks nothing like the modern broiler bird and is based on traditional breeds of farmyard fowl which had all but died out.

Farmers in the Braid Valley near Ballymena in County Antrim are now busily re-stocking with a bird that grows more slowly than intensively produced chicken and is prized for its flavour.

The chicken develop a better muscle tone with a slightly creamy coloured skin, giving the meat a firmer texture as well as a fuller flavour

Peter Morgan
Poultry expert

Intensively produced chickens can be ready for the table within just 36 days and shoppers snap them up for about £3 a bird.

The Antrim Bronze, though, takes months to rear, costing 50% more to produce.

New emphasis

Poultry expert Peter Morgan has spent years scouring the globe for faster growing and plumper birds, but when it comes to taste, the answer it seems may have been on his doorstep all along.

Peter says there is a new emphasis on flavour and texture.

"The fact that the birds graze in open pasture enables them to exercise more," he says.

"This allows the chicken to develop a better muscle tone with a slightly creamy coloured skin, giving the meat a firmer texture as well as a fuller flavour."

Gordon Smyth, who farms on the slopes of Slemish mountain near Broughshane in County Antrim, is pleased with his first crop of Antrim Bronze birds, which remind him of the sort of breeds running around the farmyard in his youth.

Free range

"They are a much bigger and leggier bird than the modern commercial chicken and they are really going back to the traditional bird of 30 or 40 years ago."

The Antrim Bronze is ideally suited to free-range production and local farmers are now producing more than 10,000 birds a week.

For a local poultry industry struggling to compete with imports, the move up-market using free-ranging speciality breeds may offer a brighter future.

Peter Morgan expects production to increase further.

"Commodity chicken is continually under threat from cheaper imported chicken and we feel that consumers will pay a little extra for something that they perceive and see as being different," he says.

"That is why we have gone with the Antrim Bronze and gone back to the old-fashioned methods of poultry production."