Advertorial
Eight years ago, a successful vegetable-growing business branched out – now Ivel Valley Bird Food is leading the way in producing high-quality food in an environmentally-friendly fashion
The Ivel Valley Bird Food business started in 2015, initially making suet treats for local retailers and other manufacturers. Now, third generation farmers Nick and James Parrish have introduced the company’s ever-growing range of homemade suet treats and specially formulated seed mixes to the general public.
A family affair
The Parrish family name was already well-known as one of the UK’s biggest suppliers of onions and shallots, but despite the success of the vegetable business, the Parrish brothers had an additional passion they wanted to pursue.
With a plan to both accommodate and preserve local wildlife, Nick and James began experimenting with growing wild bird food. Using a combination of homegrown cereals and other UK-sourced ingredients, they developed a core range of premium bird food products, and Ivel Valley Wild Bird Food was born.
Sustainable farming
Despite fast growth as a modern business, Ivel Valley has striven to preserve the history of its 100-year-old family-run farm too, combining its historic infrastructure with modern technology.
“Sustainability is at the core of what we do,” said James Parrish, “which is why we have adopted precision farming techniques throughout the farm to optimise resources required to grow all of our crops, including sunflowers, millet, linseed, wheat (that we mill for flour), onions, shallots, and potatoes. Renewable energy is used to help run the stores, with over 400kw of solar panels installed over the farm. We also have our wind turbine, and even use water from our reservoir to irrigate our land.”
High quality for high-flyers
Nick and James appreciate the importance of producing high-quality wild bird food – the better it is, the more each individual bird feeding on it benefits.
To ensure their products contained the proper nutrition, they enlisted the help of Mike Smith, the farm expert ornithologist, who has an MSc in Ornithology and specifically wild bird supplementary feeding. With the help of Mike, Ivel Valley developed various seed and suet ranges around key nutritional ingredients, with the aim of supplying birds with a healthy, high-energy food source.
Importantly, all Ivel Valley’s seed mixes are free from wheat seeds and generic fillers.
Playing our part
As well as keeping British birds healthy and happy, Ivel Valley is working towards keeping the planet happy as well. Nearly all of Ivel Valley’s packaging is fully recyclable paper or biodegradable plastic. They will continue working towards 100% eco-friendly packaging across their whole product range.
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