It has been long been a policy of ours at Martin Thomas butchers to source as much of our livestock as we can from our own county and neighbouring ones as Staffordshire is a very rural area.

 Also being on the border of Shropshire we are in the fortunate position to not only have a couple of large family run farms that along with our own sheep and cattle from our own small holding in Staffordshire means that we are able to trace the animals back to the farm we purchased them from but even back to their parents as well as 90% of the animals would be born on their farms as well, this also cuts down on the carbon footprint as we are less than 5 miles from our biggest farmers as such this cuts down on stress of the animals as they are not being purchased from an auction where they could have been transported miles to get there and miles to a contract slaughterhouse then to a cutting plant before arriving on some supermarket shelf or counter.  Ours are loaded by the farmers who they see all the time as such they do not get stressed and in most instances it is us or the farmer who does the transport as well.

Christmas poultry

We use a family run farm in Shropshire who have been family friends for generations who only do poultry for Christmas for our free range chickens, bronze turkeys and geese.  Our barn reared turkeys also come from a small family farm in Shropshire who only do poultry for Christmas.  Unlike a lot of Christmas poultry both our breeders only hand pluck the feathers which ensures less damage to the bird and also it means the poultry keeps better as it has not had water or mechanical equipment used to remove feathers.