It is June 2000 and we are sat on a friends veranda in Goshen just outside New York U.S.A., we are sat reflecting on how our lives have changed over the last few years. We have spent the last 24 Years building a small business in the motor trade, I always wanted to work for myself and redundancy many years ago forced this issue, but as the years passed we discovered interests that we both enjoyed. So after all this time we have decided to sell up and hopefully fulfil our dreams of breeding and flying birds of prey plus breeding and exhibiting of poultry but particularly a crested breed called the "Poland". This decision could not be taken lightly as the effect on our lifestyle will be quite dramatic, many of the material items will now have to take second place, we do not kid ourselves, because the breeding and exhibition of poultry is not a large money earner, although if the plans come together, the sale of excess stock, eggs, etc., this can all be reinvested and the hobby pay for itself.

The dream we have is to breed every colour of "Polands" of which there are many, (I will describe these later), but the time factor involves many long hours and seven days per week, but as this dream becomes reality, there is nothing better than seeing the sheds full of these stunning birds in full feather. This is after the breeding season and the moult; it makes all the work and expense worthwhile.

We will also be involved in the breeding of other rare breeds, but will concentrate on the crested varieties, one in particular is the "Houdan", these are good in the sense that unlike the Poland they are easier to keep, the difference being the crest size, being smaller it allows this breed to run free range outside. In wet conditions the Polands crest becomes waterlogged thus causing an eye trouble. The Poland is mainly for exhibition, the larger the crest, and the better the bird. This leaves the obvious problems of shall we say a bad hair day, if the crest is wet and the bird has serious difficulty being able to see, the results from this should be fairly obvious. This can be avoided with care i.e. taping up the crest or clipping the crest back from the eyes, but the best way is to run the birds in covered dry runs. The Houdan on the other hand used to be used by the French for egg supplies and also as meat bird, so they may be of more use on a smallholding and they also bring an additional beauty with their appearance. The only problem at the moment is they are still very rare, but with effort they will be restored to their former glory.

Anyway back to the original story, it started many years ago with the acquisition of a pair of Barn Owls belonging to a friend who was emigrating to America, my wife Clare had collected porcelain Owls for many years, so in a moment of madness I thought how nice to have the real thing. Therefore the aviaries were built and the Owls moved in. Clare then decided she would love to release the offspring back into the wild, this she has done very successfully over the last 12 Years with excellent results. The release scheme is done under license and has to properly prepared for, this takes a lot of effort from a group of people in Derbyshire, but the results are very rewarding especially when you see the birds flying free in their wild state. From the beginning we started a collection of assorted Hawks and Owls, this increased steadily to include Harris Hawks-Buzzards and around ten assorted breeds of Owls.

This is dedication! Clare late at night feeding Mack - the baby Harris Hawk (approximately every four hours).

On a rare day off we visited a rare breeds centre in Nottinghamshire, once there I saw a pen with the strangest chicken I had ever seen, it was a large Chamois (Buff) Poland, this set me off on the chase to acquire some of these birds, it took me around 8 months because they were quite rare at this time, but we attended Bakewell show and visited the poultry tent were we met Mike Clarke who is the secretary of the "Poultry Club of Great Britain", after hearing my story he introduced us to a Mr Eric Parker "a Poland breeder for over 40 Years," as a result of this introduction we purchased our first 3 trios of Polands, the mayhem had started, the growth rate of this hobby was so large that we decided to fulfil the other main dream we had, that being to live in the country. We found a house by accident whilst visiting a friend. We decided that although the house needed to say the least T.L.C., it came with 2.5 acres of land, which was more important than the house. The house was left to the mercy of the builders while we purchased and repaired 2 second hand poultry sheds for princely sum of £180.00, these were large, i.e. 40 feet by 25 feet, so they were dismantled moved and rebuilt with vast repairs at our new home, the whole transition took around 6 months, needless to say the building of pens and sheds is still going on. We have come to realise that keeping any sort of animal means the work never stops, we often say to ourselves "how did we find time to go to work?"

The Poland although a very hardy bird does need special attention, as described earlier the crest gives the most problems. The fact that the bird is classed as a soft feather light breed does mean that they are not fat enough to eat, but they are really good at laying a quality white egg. Unfortunately they are a non-sitting breed, so you need broodies or an incubator to raise the chicks. We are now well into July so the breeding season is in full swing, we try to hatch rarer large fowl earlier to hopefully gain the size we require, the bantams are in the incubator now, this helps to keep the size down to a correct bantam size, this should apply to all breeds of poultry, but size only matters if your poultry is for exhibition. We target to hatch a greater number of large fowl due to their rarity; we use Curfew incubators, the automatic cabinet type which hold approximately 200 eggs each, when nearing the hatch date we transfer the eggs into our Curfew hatcher, we find these units very efficient. When we first started we were happy to hatch 20 chicks at once, we now have hatches of up to 200 at a time, talk about progress or shall we call it madness. I have now built a separate incubator room alongside the garage "which never sees a car," that is used for a brooder room during the breeding season and a drying room during the show season. The brooder pens have 250-watt heat lamps, which are controlled by dimmer switches, during the show season the birds are put into these brooder pens to dry after being washed. We do not exhibit birds until they are approximately 10 month old; this is due to the fact that they need this amount of time to achieve the quality we require.

The main object of this exercise is to collect and breed all the available colours; this is where the problem becomes more apparent. Let me explain, we start with the white crested varieties which include: -white crested black, blue & cuckoo, each of these come in both large and bantam, plain or frizzle feather, giving a total 12 types, then we have self or plain in black, blue, white, and cuckoo, next comes the laced varieties which include gold, silver and buff (chamois), this gives a total of 40 varieties, we have all of these. Then we come to the varieties that are not standardised in this country yet, these are non-bearded white and blue, plus black crested whites, creale, blue-gold and blue-silver we either have these or are in the process of creating them. The Dutch Poland club have been creating the black crested whites for some 10 years now, so we have joined them in their quest.

The only colours left to acquire are the white crested chocolate or buff, white crested mottled and tolbunt, these are very rare, but we will get them in the end. These birds are only available from the continent, so the cost, journey and legal paperwork has to be taken into account, bringing birds into this country is all well and good provided it is done legally, blood tests etcetera are required with the appropriate vets certificate, without all of this the risks are too great. MAAF are very helpful in providing all the information required, but unless you are as crazy and obsessed as us, this is really not necessary, there are birds available in Britain as good as any in the World, if not better.

During the last year Clare and myself have taken the job of joint secretaries to the British Poland Club, a small band of followers numbering around 50, but growing. The club supplies help and information to fanciers wanting to be Poland keepers. There is a yearly membership fee of £5.00 per person or £10.00 family membership for which you get the back up of us and other club members, plus two newsletters per year and our help line. The address and help line number will be printed at the end of this article along with my e-mail address, so for any information please give us a call or send an e-mail.

We are also breeding Orpington, Light Sussex Bantams, Rhode Island Reds large plus one or two other rare breeds, so the learning circle will continue. The Rhode Island Reds and Light Sussex are allowed to roam free range; these are all bred purely for egg production or for sale, as some friends say proper chickens! The Houdans on the other hand are being bred to increase the flock size for next years production, so we will have to wait and see.

Some people have written articles where they have gone totally self sufficient, I do not think we will ever be able to do that, but we are doing the next best thing, we may both do part time jobs to give us some income, but the change in lifestyle we both feel will be worth the effort. I really believe that you should follow your nose at 50 years old, if we do not do it now we never will.

I hope this article encourages more people to take up this incredibly beautiful bird whether it is for exhibition, pets or just fancy in the garden. Given the certain problems they have it really is worth the effort.

Contact Address.
Mr. & Mrs T. J. Beebe
The Oaks,
84 Sutton Spring Wood,
Temple Normanton,
Chesterfield,
Derbyshire.
S42 5DT.
Telephone or Fax: - 01246 854647
e-mail: - terryjbeebe@aol.com