A family that’s really egging each other on

Mar 20 2008 by Jane Hall, The Journal

WHILE you are tucking into your Easter eggs this Sunday, spare a thought for one North East farming family who have been left shell-shocked by the enthusiasm for the job of their latest recruits.

It was only last weekend that 12,000 free range hens were moved into their new home at Lintz Hall Farm at Burnopfield in County Durham.

But already the fledgling layers born 18 weeks ago are proving their worth and producing more than 11,000 eggs a day.

It takes the daily output of Lintz Hall’s 96,000-strong feathered workforce to nearly 100,000 eggs. And with the probationary birds already proving their worth it means the Tulip family is a step nearer to realising their dream of becoming the region’s biggest egg producer.

Lintz Hall – run by George Tulip, 62, with the help of sons Richard, 32, and Stephen, 34 – is expanding to meet an increasing demand for locally reared, grown and made produce that boasts a small carbon footprint and few food miles.

This has seen them spend around £350,000 on the new free range laying unit, taking the number of such sheds to three. A fourth is planned for this autumn as the Tulips aim to turn the farm completely free range well ahead of the 2012 EU ban on caged birds.

The eggs – marketed under the Derwent Valley and Lintz Hall Farm brands – are sold to around 800 customers, including Tesco and Asda, the new National Trust run Gibside Larder, councils, schools, restaurants, hotels, butchers and independent grocery outlets.

More than 20 people are now employed at the 500-acre farm that also supports arable, cattle, sheep and livery stables. It’s a long way from the Tulips’ small beginnings as poultry farmers four generations ago.

It was George Tulip’s grandfather, who worked for the government during World War Two encouraging people to keep hens, who started the family’s involvement with eggs. Mr Tulip’s own father, also called George, then went to work in a hatchery in Surrey when he was 15 before returning to the North East. He bought a three-acre farm in partnership with his own father at Sunniside, Gateshead, which eventually supported 15,000 hens.

The Tulips moved to Lintz Hall 45 years ago and have seen egg production turn full circle from free range to intensive and back again as concerns about animal welfare and traceability have come to the fore.

Mr Tulip snr said: “The trend is definitely for free range, and it’s a trend we have to follow or close up shop. The Journal’s excellent Taste North East England Campaign to get people to buy local, use local and eat local has captured the mood of the moment. Consumers are voting with their purses and we are selling more free range eggs than ever.

“There are some reservations. With the astronomical rise in feed prices, eggs have gone up in price by between 16p and 20p a dozen in the past 12 months. There has to be some worry about whether consumers are prepared to pay extra. But it is my experience that where shoppers are presented with a supermarket own brand or a named local one, they are prepared to buy into the ‘local-ness’ of a quality product.”

While the emphasis may be on quantity, quality is also important to the Tulips. Lintz Hall has full Lion code industry accreditation for every section of the business, which rears one-day-old chicks for the farm’s laying units, and also deals with the packaging, marketing and distribution of the eggs. Mr Tulip snr says it has taken a “great leap of faith” to literally put all their eggs in the one free range basket.

But he added: “I have always been in this environment, as have my two sons.

“ Almost every year we have taken on a new project; we have gone from nothing to 500 acres, from arable and cattle into poultry and moved from Sunniside to Lintz Hall. Change is a constant for us.”