VIDEO: Demand on the rise for award-winning Guinea fowl
With the industrial town of Darlington on one side and the A1 motorway on the other, Burtree House Farm is an unlikely home for some of Britain’s finest food produce.
But, despite this awkward location, owner Robert Darling and his wife Lea have seen three of their products in the last five years take top honours at the Guild of Fine Food’s Great Taste Awards in London.
“My wife has been entering the awards since 2004 and she was supreme champion for her sticky toffee puddings in 2005,” says Mr Darling.
“Every year since then we’ve sent entries along and last year I decided to send a chicken – and it won three stars. This year I thought ‘oh well, let’s send along a Guinea fowl’ – and there’s another three stars.”
Now Mr Darling’s only problem is raising enough Guinea fowl to supply his newfound customer, exclusive London retailer Fortnum & Mason.
“I’ve had to say to them I’ll send what I can when I can, because I’ve sent some to a local hotel and others to the Great Taste Awards, so for a few weeks I won’t have any,” says Mr Darling.
The Guinea fowl originally came to the Darling’s 12-acre farm in 2005 as an experiment. “The man I buy my chickens from in France also does Guinea fowl, so I asked him to throw some in, just to see how they went,” says Mr Darling.
Cohabitation
Pullets and keets – as the young Guinea fowl are known – are raised together in a former stable for four weeks before they are moved into letts in the neighbouring field. They are given five days to acclimatise to the new environment before they are released.
“As soon as you open the letts, the Guinea fowl rush out and start running about,” says Mr Darling. “I think this gets the chickens out too, because you see some free-range places where the chickens aren’t very adventurous.
“A friend of mine’s birds are always out, but they seem to never leave the side of the shed. They almost don’t even need a fence. If I didn’t have a fence they would disappear into the hedges or on to the next farm.
“My chickens are much more active, and I sometimes wonder if that is why they taste so good, because my Guinea fowl are almost leading them astray.”
The Guinea fowls’ wild streak is well known, but Mr Darling says he hasn’t experienced any problems with the birds being too flighty or hard to handle.
“They seem to live more independently than the chickens, their character is completely different,” says Mr Darling. “When they are in a pen with the hens, they will flock together. The Guinea Fowl are more like partridges and run around as a covey together.
“And while the chickens will all go into the huts at night, the Guinea fowl will want to perch somewhere.”
Fencing can be a problem, with the Guinea fowl ready to exploit the smallest chink in the run’s defences to make their escape. “Little holes that a chicken wouldn’t bother with, the Guinea fowl will be out,” says Mr Darling.
A bigger problem than birds getting out, however, is predators getting in. Like any farm which allows its birds to range extensively, Burtree has experienced significant losses from attacks by foxes this summer.
“We had a week recently where, during the day, we lost around 80 or 90 Guinea fowl. It always seems to be the Guinea fowl they get. The chickens squawk and flap and run away, but the Guinea fowl squat down and try to hide and the foxes find them. We shot six foxes in that week.”
VIDEO: See Mr Darling’s flock
Feeding
Guinea fowl and chickens are fed on the same ration, sourced from the local farm co-operative where their son, Andrew, works.
“When I first started, I got a ration from France which was very coarse and you just fed it from the off. It was basically a starter ration which you fed all the way through,” Mr Darling explains.
“We are now using a starter ration, then a grower and then a finisher, and it’s going fine. I haven’t killed any of the Guinea fowl which were reared completely on the new feed, but everything looks as I would imagine it. The chickens look good, so I hope the Guinea fowl are similar.”
Ensuring the meat tastes good is the overriding consideration in everything Mr Darling does with his poultry, and he achieves this through a mix of slow growth and an insistence that all poultry is hung before it is shipped.
“When I order the birds, it’s four weeks before they arrive. Then I want to keep them until they are 14 or 15 weeks old,” says Mr Darling. “People call up and say ‘oh can I have a few more’ but they don’t realise the lead in times.”
Guinea fowl are slaughtered shortly after the chickens, weighing anywhere from 1.2kg to, ideally, 1.6kg and are hung for up to a week before being dispatched.
“I could kill them sooner, but you end up with a tiny little bird and they don’t get very well finished,” says Mr Darling. “Also, I don’t want them covered in fat. I’ve seen some that are yellow, just covered in fat. If you look at mine they are purple with patches of fat on them. You don’t want them to be covered in fat when you cook them.”
With the new agreement with Fortnum and Mason, and the broader market on the rebound, Mr Darling is now looking at increasing production of both chicken and Guinea fowl. “Demand is actually picking up again now. I’m getting pretty stretched with chickens and Guinea fowl, so I’m going to keep more.”
Guinea fowl history:
As their name suggests, the birds come from equatorial Africa, where they are raised commercially for meat and hunted in the wild. In the UK, the birds first arrived with Portuguese traders during the Elizabethan period, but they have been considered too temperamental and flighty to keep commercially. Major production centres exist in France, Spain and Portugal as well as in their native Africa.
Guinea fowl facts:
• Birds mate for life and will mourn if their partner dies
• The loud squawking noise which deters many farmers from raising the birds has long been used as a method to warn gamekeepers and poultry farmer of foxes or thieves
• Their Latin name meleagris derives from Greek myth, with the teardrop shaped markings on the feathers said to come from the tears of a prince