Vale Farm Eggs is run by Karen McGuire-Garland and husband Matt, who moved to the idyllic Hackford estate farm off Dereham Road in February 2015.
 
Having established Belle Bantams UK, which sells rare, true and ornamental bantams (a small variety of poultry), the partners decided to expand and are now approved to sell bantam, duck and quail eggs to the public and wholesale to businesses.
 
Karen, a former carer, started breeding bantams in 2007 purely as a hobby with just four hybrid hens – Pepper, Sugar, Honey and Ginger – providing fresh eggs for family, friends and neighbours.
 
Having moved to Reepham from a small property with a tiny garden in Manea, Cambridgeshire, the couple were awarded a £500 enterprise grant from Broadland District Council last year to convert some of the barns of the former pig farm.
 
The hens are kept in large purpose-built pens with access to soil, straw and natural light, and are fully protected from local predators and other birds that can spread disease.
 
More than 300 hens from around 30 different breeds are now housed at Vale Farm, including Belgian, Japanese, Pekin, Sebright, Sabelpoot and Silkie bantams, larger breeds, such as Goldlines, Marans, Light Sussex and the rare Norfolk Grey, as well as hybrid hens, ducks and quail.
 
Belle Bantams UK can also supply a variety of hybrid and auto-sexed chicks from a day old up to point of lay, as well as fertile hatching eggs from all of its breeds. The business has a wide client base, including customers from across the UK as far away as Scotland, and in Ireland too.
 
Besides poultry, the McGuire-Garlands have a menagerie of animals on their seven-acre smallholding, including horses, dogs, cats, ferrets and parrots – as well as three teenage children, the youngest at Reepham High School.
 
Following a flood in one of the barns last winter, the business has bounced back and is currently looking for more funding to convert another shed, which will enable a reorganisation of the hen-rearing and laying pens to accommodate more livestock.
 
Since November, Vale Farm Eggs/Belle Bantams UK has been selling eggs and livestock at Creake Abbey Farmers’ Market on the first Saturday of the month and is also looking at other markets besides Reepham.
 
Vale Farm Eggs has already supplied eggs to the Dial House and V’s Café in Reepham, and can supply other local pubs, cafés, restaurants and shops, having been approved as a certified registered packing station by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency as all the eggs are boxed and labelled on a daily basis, then refrigerated.
 
Karen will focus on the marketing and day-to-day work at Vale Farm, while former London-based fitness instructor Matt will manage the markets side of the business, which remind him of his childhood spending time on his grandfather’s market stall selling pet food.
 
Karen, who proudly admits to having OCD (obsessive chicken disorder), said she absolutely loves the outdoor lifestyle amongst all the animals and fresh, country air. “It certainly keeps me busy, although it sometimes doesn’t feel like work at all,” she confessed. “We have already achieved so much in just a year.”