Welcome to “From Ancona to Zoning: a poultry reference”!

Looking for information about chooks? Maybe your guineafowl are being a bit wayward? Unsure of the legalities behind selling eggs in Australia?

This is the resource for you! On a regular and random basis, I’ll put out information, essays, opinion, and debunkings. I take requests, too - got a topic you want me to cover? Give me a hoy!

What’s my experience?

I got into chooks as an adult, around 2007, when I moved to 47ha of mostly-bush near Goulburn, New South Wales (Australia). Everyone said that you needed chooks to be self-sufficient, which was broadly the idea of the move.

I’ve gone from having a bare half-dozen to close to 200 birds, and back down again. I’ve done them on a small-scale commercial basis, and a rural backyard basis. I’ve had illness, lost them to foxes and eagles and hawks. Raised chicks, processed roosters. Agisted a project purebreed (blue-laced red Wyandottes), bred my own pures (Marans, Araucana, Australorp, Leghorn, Ancona) and crossbreeds (all of the above mixed together …).

Along the way, got into ducks, geese, and guineafowl.

Read a lot of books and articles.

Moderated a few forums and Facebook groups;

And, as I tend to retain stuff I’ve read on the things in which I’m interested … I have a lot of info sloshing around in my head.

And I like sharing info.

So here we are.

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