The History of Our Business

Your Garden Bird Food – Grown by us on our farm

Street End Farm is a traditional Down land family farm which lies just outside the town of Bishop’s Waltham, near Winchester, Hampshire. The farm sits at approx 350 metres above sea level and has lots of gentle sunny slopes which are ideal for growing bird seed crops. We farm just under 400 acres and those are devoted to the production of arable crops for sale on the open market, and a wide range of bird seed crops. The acreage of farm which is now used for growing bird seed crops is increasing at a dramatic pace, which does poses us all sorts of challenges regarding rotation plans!

The farm has been in the family for more than 50 years. Richard’s mother and father (Mary and Norman) moved from their home near Romsey in 1961 when they bought Street End Farm.

Richard wanted to farm the land and in 1993 he took over the reins from his father. However by the early 1990s grass seed and cereal prices had collapsed, and unfortunately the income which could be generated from a 400 acre farm was just not enough to survive and keep the farm going.

Richard opened a farm shop in 1994 and found he was increasingly being asked for wild bird food. Since grain prices were still extremely low, manufacturing bird seed looked like an attractive alternative- and off he went to mix bird seed by hand, with a large board and a shovel ........and that was how the business began!

As well as selling home-mixed bird seed to farm shop customers he also began to get requests from local hardware stores and garden centres. However as more and more of the public started to feed their garden birds, some really big companies entered the marketplace and produced bird seed at a much cheaper price than he could; predominately by using vast tonnages of cheap filler ingredients (like wheat, maize and peas) to keep the cost down. Because Richard didn’t want to compromise on the quality of the products he was producing, it became impossible to compete, and it was time for a business re-think

Richard’s intention was to produce only really high quality bird seed products; products which were nutritionally excellent, clean, and filled with home grown cereal grains and oil seed crops, so he started to increase the range of crops grown and produced on the farm. He then created our own, totally unique range of bird seed mixes – products over which we have total control – from the field direct to our customers’ bird feeders.

Meanwhile I had trained to be a Veterinary Surgeon, and qualified from Glasgow University Vet School in 1990. I spent 7 years in practice before joining Pfizer Animal Health as a Veterinary Technical Advisor. During my career with Pfizer I held a range of Marketing, Sales, and Business Management positions until I left to have our daughter, Eleanor, in 2004. It was during my maternity leave that Richard and I decided to combine our complementary skills, and launch our internet business selling our products directly from the farm- and The Really Wild Bird Food Co. was created! Up until that point we traded as Street End Feeds, which is why you see both logos on our website and on Sagepay secure checkout.

I hope you have enjoyed our story about how we started. Thanks to you, our customers, and the great team we now have working with us, the business is growing and this has allowed us to re-invest in our farm and its machinery so that we can continue to produce great quality, locally produced, home-grown bird seed for your garden birds. More information on the actual farming processes and how we grow and process our crops can be found on the farming pages.

We are sure your garden birds will enjoy our delicious home grown products.