Marriage of industry and nature
Wild fowl and exotic animals live happily beside a brewery
Docile and wild
Mr. Dikken also owns 40 sheep. They are
a great help in keeping down the grass and
for that reason are much appreciated by
the gardeners. Of course they are docile.
But there are also about a hundred hares -
quite wild - which race around the
concrete buildings. They regard the
Heineken plant as a kind of sanctuary, for
all the surrounding land is hunting
territory. Their numbers are kept within
the acceptable proportion of one hare to
every three acres by crows and their kin.
These birds feed on the young which are
too weak to escape when attacked. This
means that only the strongest animals
survive.
Pheasants imported
The hares came on their own decision, but
there are pheasants which were imported.
They have lived there for some months
past and seem to be doing well. But Mr.
Dikken has to feed them every day, so
uncanny precision - at any unwelcome vi
sitor. They do not roam far but have plea-
sant living quarters, especially construc
ted for them, and are carefully looked af
ter. But there are other animals which do
not need coddling.
One of the first Heineken employees bas
ed at the Zoeterwoude brewery on a per
manent posting was Teun Dikken, con
struction supervisor. When he arrived on
the site there were only green meadows, a
dilapidated old mill, a few trees, and many
animals wandering freely about an area
where a huge plant was soon to be built.
Mr. Dikken loves animals, and though he
is still hard at word on construction activi
ties his second job is the care of the living
creatures on the vast 160-acre site of Hei-
neken's Zoeterwoude plant. He certainly
has some most peculiar guests.
Zoo animals
Artis, Amsterdam's well-known zoologi
cal garden, suffers from a shortage of
space and Heineken has offered some of
its grassland as a home for a few of the
zoo's animals accustomed to wide open
spaces. These include the Banteng, a kind
of Indonesian cow, and a couple of vicu
nas, a sort of llama which has an unplea
sant habit of spitting - copiously and with
4
