POULTRY farmers who look after chickens while their owners go on holiday are celebrating after former Dragon’s Den businessman Theo Paphitis gave them a Twitter award.

The Cosy Hen Company based in Little Goytre Cottage, Monmouthshire, said their Twitter followers went “through the roof” after the multi-millionaire magnate picked them as his Small Business Sunday winner.

Their Twitter following jumped from around 1,200 to 1,400 after they were recognised on the TV personality’s micro-blogging site and they are now planning to build new hen houses for the birds.

Farm boss Peter Stoneman, 57, said: “We were stunned to have won. We’ve been inundated with tweets offering congratulations.

“It’s an incredibly popular service. We have been fully booked for a number of weeks this year, so we’re going to invest in extra units for 2014 to cope with the increase in demand.”

The Cosy Hen Company keeps up to 30 chickens a week in modern hen houses at their farm in Earlswood.

Mr Stoneman added: “If you’ve got people who live in town like Newport, they’ve got chicken in their back garden for the eggs and they want to go on holiday.

“They ask friends to look after them but they are often reluctant to do that. Foxes eat them so they put them into boarding with us, in the same way as people put dogs in a kennel or a cat in a cattery.”

Mr Paphitis picked the company as his Small Business Sunday winner on his micro-blogging site after the farmers sent the following tweet: “Chicken boarding is our service, owners go, their birds stay with us. Waited on for all their needs, Theo can u RT please”.