Poultry For The Table And Market Versus Fancy Fowls (1891 And Now)

Fred Hams says this is as true now as it was then.

- Fred Hams

There seems to be many poultry keepers interested in breeding for eggs or meat from yesterday’s utility laying strains. Others will be interested in using these and other purebreds and their crosses to produce an altogether better table product

Then there are those who are fascinated by the history and heritage of poultry keeping, fascinated by the romance and drama of the ‘poultry mania’ that swept country following the 184050s introduction of the heavy boned Asiatic fowl headlined by the misnamed Cochin Fowl. Wright’s Poultry may be better known but in my opinion no one chronicled this period and its fowl better than W.B. Tegetmeier F.Z.S in his early ‘Poultry Book’ of 1867.

A probably larger section of the poultry fraternity will be just as fascinated the heritage of the post WW1 poultry keeping boom of the 1920s-30s that saw tens of thousands of largely ex-service men take up smallholding  and poultry keeping as an escape from both unemployment and the drudgery factory and office work. (Eds note – this fascinates me!) It was the advances made in the science and selection of laying fowl during this period that paved the way for huge advances in egg numbers that characterised the 1930s and 40s and perhaps sadly, paved the way the later all conquering hybrid laying fowl.

The earlier Tegetmeier work with illustrations by W Harrison Weir that contained the earliest Poultry breed standards that predated the formation of the Poultry Club by more than a decade, was the first classic poultry book I ever picked up but even at this early stage concentrated on the useful qualities the new and mostly imported breeds could bring to poultry keeping and breeding – so important to small flocks then and now.