By Clare Hill – Planton Farm
It felt like a timely moment to share an update on our Impeckable Poultry project, as we’re now in full production with chickens on the ground. First and foremost, thank you to everyone who supported our work last year by purchasing our birds — your support means the world.
A New Year, and New Birds
2025 began with the arrival of some very special chicks in February. These birds had quite the journey — originating as eggs in France, hatched and incubated in East Anglia, and finally brought home to Shropshire. Why such a long route? Because these are rare and promising dual-purpose French breeds that we’re trialling on the farm as part of two exciting projects:
- DEFRA’s Farming Innovation Programme, delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.
- The Innovative Farmers Dual Purpose Poultry Field Lab, which we’ve established alongside a network of like-minded poultry farmers.
Designing for the Future: Housing and Systems
As part of the DEFRA-funded project, we’ve been reviewing pasture poultry housing designs to find what best suits our farm. Having worked with organic and pasture-raised poultry for over 20 years, it’s been a valuable opportunity to bring together the full breadth of that experience.
The past four years, in particular, have involved a lot of experimentation — learning from the roots of the pasture poultry movement, which traces back to the late 1980s. Joel Salatin, a farmer, author, and advocate for sustainable agriculture in Virginia, popularised the use of mobile chicken coops (chicken tractors), rotated daily onto fresh grass. His farm, Polyface, and his book Pastured Poultry Profits (1993) have had a lasting influence on farmers worldwide.
The movement made its way to the UK in the early 2000s, as small-scale and organic producers began trialling rotational grazing systems, inspired by Salatin’s work. The Pasture-Fed Livestock Association (PFLA), formed in 2009, helped champion pasture-based approaches — initially focused on ruminants, but with crossover interest in poultry.
Since then, growing public awareness about industrial farming and increasing consumer demand for ethically raised meat have kept momentum building. The regenerative agriculture movement in the 2020s has only accelerated this, with more UK farms now incorporating poultry into their pasture-based systems. Though still niche, the pastured poultry sector is steadily expanding.
The Heart of the Matter: Dual-Purpose Birds
While housing is a key piece of the puzzle, the real focus of both projects is exploring whether dual-purpose birds can be viable in regenerative, pasture-based systems. Can these breeds help us raise chickens in a way that truly restores soil, ecosystems, animal welfare, and human health?
At the moment, we have three batches of birds on the farm:
- JA757 – Our standard organic meat bird.
- Gris Cendré – A French dual-purpose breed (the exciting new arrivals).
- JA657 – Another slow-growing organic meat bird we’re trialling.
We’ve long worked with the Hubbard JA birds because of their suitability for organic and free-range systems. It’s been fascinating to compare these different Hubbard lines side by side and assess how they perform in our pastured setup.
Our organic pasture-raised JA birds are typically processed at around 81 days, while our Gris Cendré dual-purpose males will likely be ready at 100+ days. Their female counterparts will be kept as laying hens — either joining our own flock or going to other farmers in our network.
This is a significant step forward from the current fate of male chicks in the egg industry, who are either culled at one day old or killed in ovo before hatching. Giving male chicks a meaningful role in the system — and a full life on pasture — is a shift toward a more ethical, regenerative poultry model.
Boxes of the three strains of chicken will be available through Primal Meats giving you the opportunity to taste the results of these trials. We welcome your feedback. This work is a step toward something bigger: a chicken system that restores more than it takes, honours the life of the bird, and nourishes the people who eat it. Thank you for walking this path with us
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