Poultry for Anyone Book

Victoria Roberts describes 44 breeds of chicken, including bantams, giving plumage colours, history, characteristics, special requirements, and utility. The book also lists egg production and practical uses, gives hints on preparation for showing plus a section on housing and management. The Victorians were great poultry enthusiasts, and developed or imported many of the more exotic breeds; after them, the art declined until fairly recently, when there has been a great upsurge of interest in the beautiful pure breeds. Reading of their different personalities and looking at the wonderful photographs makes you want to keep all of them: there's the incredibly prolific Rhode Island Red, which lays 260 eggs a year, the study and ancient fierce Old English Game, the stately Brahmas, the diminutive 'chain mail' Sebright bantams, the storybook farmyard Welsummers with terracotta eggs, the fashionably tousled Frizzles and the Polands with their outrageous millinery. Worldwide characters range from the friendly tea-cosy cute Pekin bantams through the independent 'tartan' Scots Greys, the determinedly airborne Appenzellers, the aristocratic and ticklish Indian Game and the 'virtually unkillable' Fayoumi.Read More