It was the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001, which caused hardship to so many farming families, that prompted Alwyn Royle to look for another source of income on his farm, Garreg Lwyd, facing Moel Siabod, above Llanrwst.

His mother, whose family of ten was raised in the two-up, two-down old farmhouse before the family finally bought the farm, had always kept a few chickens. Alwyn decided to expand the flock and, five years later, he and his family are producing one hundred dozen free range eggs a day from 3,500 Warrens. “We farm 40 acres here and another 40 at Melin y coed so free range chickens seemed the obvious choice

when we were restricted with other livestock during the foot and mouth outbreak. The income we made from the eggs really kept us afloat that year,” says Alwyn. Not only free range, the couple have made a conscious decision to ensure that their chickens are given no feed containing genetically modified ingredients nor any antibiotics or growth promoters.

Despite having 120 beef cattle and 350 Charollais sheep to look after in addition to the chickens, Alwyn seems to spend most of his time these days out on the road delivering eggs to hotels, retailers and butchers from Bethesda to the Vale of Clwyd where he supplies eggs to The Patchwork Traditional Food Company for their pates and pies. However, for Alwyn this is only the beginning. “We’ve had quite a few requests for quail eggs, which seem to be becoming quite a fashionable culinary ingredient these days, and also for duck eggs. So we’re doing some research and will hopefully have those available to our customers in the future.” With plans to renovate and move back into the old farmhouse, the futures of Alwyn, Susan and their children Elin, Dafydd and Lea are now looking much more secure than they could possibly have believed in February 2001.