Fine feathered friends: Bob French with two of his prize roosters.
JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
The good people from Geelong and District Poultry Club have heard all the jokes.
The birds, the feathers, the roosters, the legs – all of them either paltry or foul.
But it’s the efforts they put into improving the breeding of one of our favourite food sources that actually pays off for us all.
“We are custodians of the pure-bred genes,” club president Bob French said.
“The chicken industry keeps cross-breeding but you can’t do that forever. At some point you have to reintroduce purer breeds.
“And that’s where we come in.”
The club held its Bantam Bonanza event at Geelong Show Grounds last weekend, with typical categories like soft feather, hard feather, waterfowl and, of course, bantam in both heavy and light divisions.
After seeing some of the specimens strutting their way through the show it’s easy to understand how the boxing world decided to borrow the term bantam for a weight category.
And for keen backyard chook keepers, it’s not just a case of rocking up to the show grounds and showing off. A myriad rules and regulations govern the event under the auspices of Poultry Stud Breeders and Exhibitors Victoria.
Bob said pure-bred poultry was amazingly popular.
“You can’t move on the main days in the poultry pavilion at the Geelong show, and the Melbourne Showgrounds gets thousands through their poultry exhibitions,” he said.
“It’s an Australian way of life, keeping a few chooks in the backyard.” Committeeman Don Davis said the club leased the pavilion at Royal Geelong Agricultural and Pastoral Society’s show grounds.
“We’ve been there for donkey’s years,” Don explained.
“We try to do a few things to improve the area. We recently completed a major renovation of our poultry pens – it took us two years.
“Everyone pitches in and it turned out to be a lot of fun – some of us even learned new non-poultry related skills.
“We’re getting together an honour board because the club has been around for more than 50 years. It’s one of the longest-lived clubs in the state.
“We have 40 to 50 members at the moment. We did have a strong junior membership but they tend to lose interest.
“Some of them come back later as adults but we know we have to have juniors coming on or the club won’t last.”
Don said junior and novice members could call on advice and encouragement from the club’s experienced members in all aspects of breeding, keeping and showing poultry.
The club tried to retain its family orientation, holding regular meetings with guest speakers, he said.
The club will run its fifth annual super-show at the showgrounds’ poultry pavilion on May 14.
The club has a website at geelong.backyardpoultry.com.
Don said anyone interested in joining the club could phone him on 5275 8707 or email psbevchair @gmail.com.
