Last updated 16:24, Friday, 21 November 2008

He used to sell Russian cars from his Cumbrian farmyard, but now Alan Bird has switched to a messier but more conventional stock which needs much more looking after.

Alan Bird

Mr Bird used to be the UK’s principal Lada dealer, but the 49-year-old now contract-rears pigs on his 300-acre farm in the Penrith area.

“Ladas,” he says, “were at the bottom end of the market and seemed appropriate. We would struggle to sell BMWs from a farmyard, wouldn’t we?

“I had started selling bangers but was never happy with them. I bought a Lada one day and sold it the next and it was quite a good car. So I bought another and sold that and so on.

“A stroke of luck during the mid to late-90s resulted in us exporting Ladas back to their home country of Russia. This happened when a Lithuanian guy broke down at Penrith as he was driving a Lada back home. He came to us for spares, saw our cars and bought all of them there and then.

“This developed very quickly to the point where we were exporting approximately 200 Ladas every month.

“However, this stopped very abruptly when the Russians changed their taxation laws on imported vehicles.”

So, two years ago, he moved the cars out and the pigs in.

Providing you are prepared to work at it, he says, contract pig rearing is a viable way of generating income.

Today, it brings in as much as 80 per cent of the farm’s income compared with the sheep and cattle. (He also keeps grey-faced mules and breeds Highland cattle – with females used as replacements and males sold off as stores.)

The pork he helps produce is marketed by Sainsbury’s as high-welfare, top-end of the market and is backed by the RSPCA’s Freedom Foods Scheme.

Welfare standards in the UK are higher than those in Europe, where sows are often still housed in small cages enabling lower production costs.

Some supermarkets still import pork from these sources.

Mr Bird rears batches of pigs for eight weeks before passing them on for finishing.

The pigs, which still belong to the breeder, live in roomy pens, are automatically fed with GM-free food pellets containing wheat and soya and have their bedding refreshed daily.

“They arrive on an articulated truck as piglets, each as big as a large cat and weighing seven kilograms,” he says. “They leave two months later in another articulated truck tipping the scale at 40 kilograms.

“We began with piglets from large white cross landrace sows crossed with durock boars. We set off with 600, increasing the number as the two new sheds we built came on line this March. We now rear piglets bred using the Hampshire boar.”

He says the family – he farms with father Ernest, 80, and son Matthew, 20 – looked into contract pig rearing because they wanted a non-land-based income, invaluable to a farm with heavy land and an average annual rainfall of more than 100 inches.

The UK National Pig Association and the NFU have hosted events aimed at encouraging more farmers in the region into the industry.

The farm is an ideal site with good access roads and the space for large sheds.

These two factors along with a sizeable capital investment can prove a stumbling block for farmers who cannot match these criteria.

Another plus was that he enjoyed working with pigs.

He approached a large UK outdoor pig company and was quickly signed up.

One reason, he was told, was that Cumbria is seen as a ‘pig-free zone’. So his approach was all the more welcome.

The Bird family built two large sheds – classed as general farm buildings – to a high specification.

Each shed covers 18,000 square feet and has a cement fibre roof and steel-clad sides.

They are kitted out to accommodate pigs, using a central aisle between the pens along which the tractor can be driven as it tows the large straw-chopper spraying bedding into the pens.

To house the piglets, Alan and Matthew build ‘nests’ among the straw bales which keep the infant pigs draught-free and warm.

“Pig farming has a boom and bust cycle,” he says. “Last year was a bust cycle. Lots of farmers went out of business as grain and feed price rose sky high. There was no margin. They were actually losing money per pig.

“The national breeding herd went down by 11 per cent and fell by 9 per cent across Europe as the feed price increase was felt around the globe.

“The foot and mouth outbreak last autumn compounded the problem further still. Because of movement restrictions, many pigs became overweight, far exceeding the 110 kilogram considered ideal.

“This meant there was extra pork on the market, making something of a glut. Luckily, we are with a big company that could weather the storm.

“Things have started to improve a little since March. Prices have started to rise as farmers went out of business, so levelling out the balance between supply and demand.”

He is glad that his son Matthew plans to become a partner in the business. “Lots of young guys would like to farm,” he says, “but they just can’t do it. You can’t blame them for moving away from the land to earn more money.

“At least diversifying into contract rearing gives us a way of bringing in a regular income for a young farmer who wants to remain on the land.”