MONITOR:A Kildare farmer is breeding exceptional chickens, writes HUGO ARNOLD
When Finbar Higgins, executive chef at the K Club, roasted off a couple of sample chickens for his chefs to taste, he was unusually silent on the subject of their source. He wanted opinions first, and it was only when a huddle of French chefs started to nod their approval that he came clean. The Carbury Chickens were free-range and from just down the road: on his father-in-law’s farm, to be precise, and raised by his wife, Sandra.
There is no doubting the attraction of young chickens. As I stand peering into a sweet-smelling, sawdust- and straw-laid barn, it is a struggle to think of dinner. “Yum in the tum,” is how Sandra Higgins views her charges. She grew up on a farm and is a no-nonsense operator who knows she is married to her toughest critic. The business got under way a year ago when Higgins’s father, who was in cattle but at that stage only kept a few, was lamenting the lack of use for his farmyard barns. He had reared turkeys at one point and said there was good money in them.
Free-range, to the public, can create images of outdoor birds clucking about. The truth is far from this. The chickens spend quite a lot of time indoors. They need to, or they would die. Because they need heat, chickens are mainly summer-only birds. As I peer into a barn waiting for new arrivals, it is decidedly on the warm side.
Higgins’s system is rough and ready. Within the barn, sheds have been fashioned from blockboard so she can move a batch through while taking delivery of the next. As the chickens gain weight the heat is turned down, until eventually they are old enough to go into the fattening sheds. Here they do have outside access; prime Kildare farmland and lots of it, and perches to ruminate on. For a chicken, it looks pretty idyllic. At this point we are joined by Higgins’s children, Caoimhe and Oisín, and the story of why and how Carbury Chickens was born unfolds.
Farming chickens for Higgins is a lifestyle choice. She had worked in an office, but wanted something that combined the role of mum with something that was flexible and nearby. To qualify for free-range status, space and the ability to roam are prescribed, as is the feed and the age of the birds. They have to reach eight weeks, which brings its own challenges. A chicken can grow quite substantially between eight and 10 weeks, so if you miss picking a bird out it suddenly becomes too big and this is an issue in restaurants. Higgins’s chosen breed is the Hubbard, popular because it is slow growing and provides good eating, and while it is early days Sandra is already playing around with feed and has changed on the approval of customers to a feed based on wheat, soya, barley and sunflower seeds.
Set-up costs for an operation such as this are largely in the shelter and heating systems. After that, economies of scale are to be found in increasing numbers, but take this too far and you quickly start to compete with intensively-raised chickens and the whole enterprise stops making sense. So Higgins’s father is trying to develop a heating system that is turf-based, which would make use of fuel from the nearby bog and reduce costs at the same time.
A week later, I am sitting with a roasted Carbury Chicken in front of the family, saying nothing. Nor are they. Silent eating is a great compliment, as bones are sucked and juices scooped up with bread. “That was yum,” my nine-year-old daughter sighs at last.
Carbury chickens are on the menu at the K Club and the PGA National at Palmerstown House (www.palmerstownhouse.com; www.kclub.com). Also available from Rathmore, Carbury, Co Kildare, on the Kildare-Offaly border. Orders are taken on Monday, and chickens (€10) are available from Wednesday (087-6639008). harnold@irishtimes.com