Citadel Farms Ltd

Run by Chris Williamson and his family, Citadel Farms is now in its 50th year in agriculture. There are two farms, one based just outside Shawbury and the other at Weston Under Redcastle (opposite Hawkstone Park), totalling about 500 acres. Crops produced include cereals, oil seed rape, beans, potatoes, and sugar beet. Livestock has always been an integral part of the system with over wintered sheep grazing the beet tops and cattle grazing on the pastures in the summer and feeding on home grown silage and rolled cereals and beans in the winter.

Welfare

Beef cattle have always been part of our farming system. The animals graze the lush pastures in the summer and bring them into the cattle yards in the winter where they are deep littered on our own wheat straw – a by-product of the cereal enterprise. This provides a residual heat so that even in the coldest months of winter they are comfortable, warm and dry. Welfare is an important issue on-farm; a healthy, well maintained beast will reward the farmer with a high growth rate and good feed conversion ratio (food intake: daily liveweight gain). The cattle are wormed when they are yarded in the winter and as they go out onto the grass in the summer. They are never routinely inject antibiotics or use growth promoters. If an animal is ill then veterinary advice is taken and and always adhered to. This is necessary to pass the annual FABBL (Farm Assured British Beef and Lamb) inspection. Every animal on the farm gets the utmost care and attention, and whilst on the farm it is content and being kept in a relaxed and natural environment.

"The Rolls-Royce of beef"

Why Aberdeen Angus beef? The answer is simple - It really is the best beef that you can buy, it is the Rolls-Royce in the beef world. They mature early to give a perfect balance of fat and lean. It is a lightly marbled meat – fine threads of fat interwoven through the muscle, this combined with hanging the beef for 2-3 weeks in our on-farm cold store, results in a succulent, tender and highly tasty experience.

Traceability and locality

The emphasis these days is on sourcing local food thus reducing the cost to the environment, this is as important as traceability – records of each animal are kept from the day it arrives on farm. It is important to know exactly what it has been fed, where it has been grazing and how it is performing.