Couple's hobby hatches into gourmet concern

Rodney Alexander and Joyce Lloyd and their Manurau game bird operation, at Nuhaka, near Wairoa in Northern Hawke's Bay. PHOTO/PAUL TAYLOR

The void in Rodney Alexander's life has been filled with birds.

"On 30 June 2008 I went to bed as a farmer. On 1 July I got up and I wasn't.

"For 40 years there were 12,000 stock units that relied on me to know where breakfast was. Even if you went on a holiday overseas, you were still conscious it was your responsibility as a farmer or manager.

"All of a sudden that wasn't there anymore. A weight fell off my shoulders and it felt a little empty inside somewhere."

With a bumpy succession process behind him and his Wairoa farm safely in his sons' hands, he put his idle hands back to work. With partner Joyce Lloyd he turned a hobby into a business, founding their Manurau gourmet game bird products business in Nuhaka.

They had already raised and released pheasants "just for the sake of doing it" and their grain-fed turkeys were in demand at Christmas.

Joyce grew up with birds.

"My grandparents were all farmers and were a bit birdy-bent. One grandmother read every bird book under the sun. My other grandmother was always keen on wild turkeys. They had a family of 14 to feed so most of her life she had a flock of turkeys.

"I think we have both been bent a bit that way - we both had a childhood like that."

Rodney said New Zealanders were generally exposed to "just one breed of bird - Tegel chicken".

"So we felt there was an opportunity to introduce New Zealanders to lots of other species," he said.

"There are thousands of bird species, why can't we get to eat a few more?"

They decided to raise quail and advertised in a farming publication.

They went on a buying trip and bought several species but on the homeward leg a breeder in Te Puke said they had the wrong birds. "He introduced us to Japanese quail. Basically they are the most prolific laying bird in the world."

They are integral to old-world cuisine.

"There are hieroglyphics of them in Egyptian tombs.

The couple came home with 10 Japanese quail but soon had 100. They have since contracted a Wellington breeder.

From a recipe in a book they learned how to pickle quail eggs and needed a label for the jar.

"My bank manager said, my wife gets involved in that sort of thing - you had better talk to her."

Dana Kirkpatrick runs ExpressPR in Gisborne.

"She said you need a bit more than a sticker on a jar so she broke it into three facets - market research, branding and labelling, and marketing."

They make the trip to the Napier and Hastings Farmers Markets every weekend on her recommendation.

"She told us we needed to be there because of the type of population - there are more discerning buyers."

Joyce was hesitant about the cost of engaging professional marketing advice.

"I worried about it a lot, whether this was the track we needed to go down, but we had to put our trust in someone to help us get started. She won our trust and we went with it."

Rodney said he wasn't worried.

"The opportunity to start a new business with the experience of life behind you is not too bad a thing.

"We realised it was an investment because of our own experiences in life and we had a bit of capital behind us."

The next species was duck. A cousin of Joyce bred pekin duck so they bought all her chicks "and we wanted to go into dark eggs so we got khaki campbells".

Goose was next, sourced from the local wild population, Joyce said.

"We would go out with the bike and the cages. I would drive the bike and we would go down to the local swamps and river mouth, up the rivers and down the sand dunes. We had all our friends and neighbours telling us where the groups of geese were so we would go and suss out their nests and collect the babies. I don't think I would like to do it again - I'd rather pay the children.

"We put the word around the local children that we wanted them to help us catch goslings. We pay them five dollars a bird and they came in with 700.

"We didn't know if it would work or if we could sell the birds, but we did and we are still looking for kids to go out there and catch them around October."

Rodney said their presence at Farmers Markets was a good source of breeder contacts.

"About 25 per cent of our conversation over the counter is probably with lifestylers looking for advice about the few birds they have at home, rather than actually selling a bird."

That is how they met Waipukurau breeder Peter Kettle, who supplies them with black-skinned silkie bantams.

He once managed farms in Wairoa but met Joyce and Rodney at the Hastings market.

"He's a chicken freak from way back," Rodney said.

Whether to stay with just one breeder supplying each species was a dilemma.

"We did that with one breeder and the cat ate up the birds, so from a business risk-management point of view I would be better to share it out."

The nearest bird abattoir is in Wanganui. They deliver 150 birds at a time and return with the carcasses chilled, ready for vacuum packing.

They are about to invest heavily in bigger processing facilities. The Hawke's Bay Farmers Markets are now just 10 per cent of their business, with the restaurant trade taking off.

Pigeons, Guinea fowl and Canadian goose are the latest offering but chefs often request greater volume than Manurau can supply. Rodney is unrepentant about diversification.

"Where else can you walk up and have nine species of birds? We are happy to stick with what we've got."

They are also happy to keep up their weekend trip to the Farmers Markets.

He has a brother in Napier they stay with on Saturday nights.

But he misses his leisure time.

"I broke in ponies in my spare time but can't do that any more. There is a big boat in the yard that doesn't get out anymore to gather kaimoana and the grandchildren don't get to the sea enough."

They are not keen on appointing a manager.

In the last year they have only missed one Farmers Market, when they went to the Wairoa Show.

Rodney's son was on the organising committee. "He said, you need to go to the show Dad - you need to show fellow farmers there is life after farming."