Lowfield Grange is a 520-acre arable farm on the flatter ground east of the Dales, where Reuben rotates wheat, beans, oats and a year of red clover ley. The chickens follow the clover, in five mobile arks that move 30 metres every two days.
Reuben runs the Hubbard JA757, a slow-growing breed that takes 81 days to reach the weight a commercial broiler will hit in 35. The longer life and the outdoor diet of insects and clover produce a bird that tastes, in his words, 'like a chicken used to.'
Flock sizes are deliberately small: 600 birds per ark, 3,000 birds total on the farm at any one time. The arable rotation, not the chicken shed, is what pays the bills, which means the chickens get to be chickens.
“A chicken should taste of something. Most of them don't, and that's a choice the industry made.”