IMPROVED cooking instructions have helped Swindon turkey farmers Chris and Lindsay Rumming win a coveted two stars in the national Great Taste Awards.

Their free range bronze birds were said to have a “very Christmassy nose” by judges and led to Lydiard Turkeys becoming one of just over a thousand products in the whole of the UK to be given the accolade.

“This is the second Great Taste Award we have won,” said Lindsay. “It’s a great feeling to be recognised for all the hard work that goes into producing our turkeys.

“In 2015 we received a one star award and we were determined that we wanted to do better so we worked on our cooking instructions and it looks like it helped.”

Husband Chris started raising a few turkeys for the table nine years ago, reviving a branch of the farm production that had ended around three decades before when his great aunt retired.

He began the venture with just 40 birds, now he rears hundreds.

The birds are just a day old when they arrive at the beginning of summer and spend their first couple of weeks under heat lamps until their feathers have grown enough for them to be put in a paddock.

As they grow they are moved to a fruit orchard, coming in at night to a straw-bedded barn.

Traditional bronze turkeys once had pride of place on most Christmas dinner tables but fell out of favour with farmers when it was discovered that white turkeys grew a lot faster and cost less to produce.

But Chris, who is part of the National Farmers Union’s poultry industry programme, says that when his bronze turkeys are slaughtered at 22 weeks they are twice as old as the fast growers and have a better taste.

All the processing is done at the farm, meaning the birds do not have the stress of travel.

Judges decided his turkey had “an excellent aroma and a good level of moisture when carving. A very Christmassy nose!

Moist but not wet - texture but not tough. The dark meat has some gamey notes. Overall a good balance of texture, flavour and richness.”

There were more than 12,300 entries for the Great Taste Awards with just 165 winning three stars. On the taste test panel were MasterChef judge Charles Campion, baker Tom Herbert as well as buyers from Fortnum and Mason, Selfridges and Harvey Nichols.