A passion for poultry

Clinton du Preez has approximately 600 chickens of various breeds neatly housed in the backyard of his Stutterheim home in the Eastern Cape. Mike Burgess visited him recently to better understand his life-long passion for breeding and showing top-quality poultry.

Clinton du Preez (49), a former chairman of the East London Poultry Society, has had one constant in his life: poultry. From early childhood to mid-life and through all life’s milestones, including completing school, securing his first job, establishing his own businesses, and getting married and having children, there has always been the clucking and crowing of chickens in the backyard.

His love for poultry was ignited when his grandfather, Stanley Sonnenberger, gave him three chickens at the tender age of seven. These three birds proved to be the vanguard for many more that would populate the backyard of Du Preez’s parents’ suburban home in Cambridge, East London.

However, the development of his refined interest in the more focused breeding and showing of poultry was fuelled by the friendship he developed with renowned East London poultry showman William Hunter. The two met in 1995, after Du Preez responded to his newspaper advertisement concerning the sale of three Australorps. “We met and became friends,” recalls Du Preez. “He helped me with everything [relating to the breeding and showing of poultry].”

By 1997, the 22-year-old Du Preez showed his first chickens at the East London Agricultural Show to the great satisfaction of Hunter. The elderly Hunter, however, passed away two years later, but had by then left a lasting impression on Du Preez, who has ever since been breeding and showing poultry with great success.

BREEDING