His company, Traditional Norfolk Poultry, based at Shropham, near Attleborough, is the UK's largest supplier of free-range Christmas turkeys, producing hundreds of thousands of birds for the big day each year.

Traditional Norfolk Poultry is the UK's largest supplier of free-range Christmas turkeys (Image: Newsquest)

"We've been thinking about what we're going to do for next Christmas since October," Mr Gorton said.

"We'll be working right up until late Christmas Eve."

The firm's turkeys can be found on the shelves of the country's leading supermarkets. In the months before Christmas, it sends retailers around 1,000 of its best birds for meticulous taste tests and photo shoots for festive catalogues, brochures and advertising campaigns.

Mark Gorton, founder and managing director of Traditional Norfolk Poultry (Image: Supplied)

Traditional Norfolk Poultry has 90 free-range chicken and turkey farms across East Anglia, employing 250 people full-time.

Its headcount ramps up to 600 at the start of November when it buses in hundreds of returning workers from Romania for the frenetic Christmas period.

Mr Gorton added: "We use the Poultry Seasonal Workers Visa. We get a high rate of returnees, which really helps us because it means the workers coming in know the jobs they are coming back to."

Traditional Norfolk Poultry (Image: Supplied)

The UK's Seasonal Worker Visa allows foreign nationals to work in the poultry sector on short-term contracts between October and the end of December.

"We need the extra hands as our farms, factories and processing lines go from working five days a week to seven. We run multiple shifts all around the clock, it's 24/7.........

© Norwich Evening News