Sheep and Geese at Alexandra Palace

Animal holding pens for Chivers & Sons of Histon, Cambridge, Agricultural Section on west side of Great Hall, 5th North London Exhibition. Signs over pens include: Toulouse Geese, Lambs, Fat Sheep, Hens & Chicks, Baby Beef Cattle, Fruit Growers. Chivers were fruit farmers who began making jams in 1873. By the end of WWI they had become an integrated farming operation to supply their factory, and the Chivers family regarded themselves as farmers, with the factories as a secondary enterprise. Plums and other soft fruit were grown for jam and canned fruit and formed the bulk of the farmland, but pedigree cows and pigs were raised and corn grown to make manure. Poultry were kept in the orchards to manure the land, fed on their own wheat, with eggs used to make lemon curd in the factory. Percheron horses were added to pull carts and ploughs, but the family were also early users of tractors. When the value of corn fell in the 1920s, grass was instead grown and sheep farmed in preparing the land for later use as orchards. They led the world in mixed farming techniques and would only breed pedigree livestock, whether they be pigs, cattle, poultry, sheep or their magnificent Percheron horses.