These pages are part of a growing information resource inspired by, and based on, decades of helping domestic poultry keepers find the right solutions for their situation and our own experience breeding birds to improve selected UK pure breeds. No "out of the box, one size fits all" here. We recognise the individuality of your circumstances and have the experience, and the range of answers, to help you and your birds. It is far from complete please bear with us, and return to learn more.

WHERE TO BUY FROM

There are a number of sources of birds [or eggs], each with different risks or advantages.

CONVENIENCE :
Many people find an advert in their local paper for a dealer who is offering to deliver birds into your area. This is certainly convenient but can have its problems.

You do not get to see how the birds are kept.

You have no way to know if the birds are the breed, how pure, or if the hybrid that is advertised.

You do not know if there are any parent birds or if the supplier is selling on other people's birds, which means there is no known provenance. It is impossible to know how well a strain of birds lay without knowing what the selection of the parent and grandparent stocks are.
Many of the hybrids can spend a great deal of time on the road as young growers. There are a few main hybrid hatcheries, and then agents who take the day old chicks and rear them on. Some of these are small units handling fifty or a hundred or so at a time, but they mostly go to places where thousands can be being raised. These are intensively raised birds, which are always indoors.
From here dealers will pick up growers from 8 - 12 weeks old, some travelling hundreds of miles, to finish the rearing process and then deliver them out in vans around their location.
Again, few birds get to see outside as barn rearing is much more cost effective.
However because there are birds coming in at all ages from many places in different ages batches the potential for disease is very high.
It is very wise to keep birds from an existing flock when purchasing from such sources separate for several weeks to make sure they are not carrying a bug into your birds. Careful feeding and even a tonic can sometimes be useful.

OPTIMUM :
You find a breeder who is working with the breeds you want to buy, selecting for the qualities you aspire to and you can visit the parent birds before hand, discuss the qualities of the birds, husbandry, hatching criteria, rearing. You collect the birds in person, with the same feed as being used. You may well have to wait months before getting the birds.

IN-BETWEEN :
Various options include
Live Auctions - which can be a minefield, its a great way to find out who is breeding what, but too many birds in one place with no health tests or anything means that you can come home with more than just a nice cheap bird. Even if the breeder you bought from is clean, the bird can pick nasties up from the other birds in the auction hall. I would recommend going without any money, getting the catalogue, talking to owners / breeders to find out if they are producing what you want, and contacting them afterwards to buy direct.
Online auctions - In theory they are illegal in the UK but there are a few places to get hatching eggs. An interesting experiment but not a good assured way to get good stock or good hatchings. Shipping eggs can cause damage which makes them seem infertile, or reduce the viability. Many of the egg producers are new breeders with little knowledge of their birds history so its pot luck as to the quality of the birds produced.
Many people want a mixed bag of birds so go to one of the large breeders who advertise 50 or more breeds. They usually only have a few birds of each breed, and any parent losses are replaced with birds with little mind to its lineage. No-one can select well with so many breeds. There simply is not the time or the resources. The birds may be healthy but there can be little excellence in the selection of birds and therefore there is a dumbing down of the qualities - whether for the showring or for productivity.
With the popularity of the hobby of keeping birds has come masses of new breeders who are breeding any birds they get for whatever source and selling the offspring onwards. Again they may be well reared and healthy but they are rarely any quality for the breed. There are more and more of the new fashionable hybrids which mimic the old pure breeds - these are getting mated to pure breed cockerels of the type and sold as pure. Mostly its ignorance, and naivety but the resulting damage to the national flock is going to be profound.

Its an unfortunate result of the rapid rise in demand for domestic birds and the ill-informed media articles, that we are fast losing all the great strains of birds we had in this country and the national flocks of each breed are becoming shadows of their former selves. Few Rhode Island Red strains are good strong layers any more - most barely achieving 200 eggs a year, despite what novice breeders might extol. The birds do not read the books and we have lost most of the great pullet breeders of the last century. Very few breeders / keepers actually record the eggs their birds lay so any assurances of laying ability are purely guesses.

Tim and Jill Bowis
Kintaline Mill Farm, Benderloch, OBAN Argyll PA37 1QS Scotland
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