The Poultry Showing Season is well underway. The Domestic Waterfowl Club Show took place on 8th November 2009 at Stoneleigh, Coventry this year. Poultry Photographer Rupert Stephenson took some photos for us for us to share with you.

I have contacted the DWC and hope we can get permission to publish the full list of their results from their show here soon.

Experienced poultry keepers develop a sixth sense for problems and a quick glance at the way their birds are behaving can tell them a lot but nothing beats a good inspection and examining every bird in the flock individually is the best way to keep on top of numerous problems. The following diagram gives a few pointers of what to look out for:

The 128th Junggeflugelschau Poultry Show was held on the 17th-18th October this year in Hannover, Germany. The Germans certainly know how to put on a good show and the two days that I attended still didn't seem long enough to look at and photograph everything I was interested in which was pretty much all of the poultry and waterfowl on display! The Germans organise their shows a little differently to the British. The birds are judged before the doors open to the public, in most cases the day before the shows open. The results are published in the catalogue that you buy on the way in so it is easy to see the spread of marks in a category.

Have you ever wondered what those different ingredients were in your chicken food? Well, you will find there are many differences between poultry feeds depending on the type and age of the bird as well as the the price you are paying and whether or not the feed is produced for us hobbiests or produced for the commercial poultry market. We asked Dr. Deepa, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Poultry Science in India to give us a run down of the ingredients that could potentially be found in some poultry rations.

There are essentially two different types of poultry grit available.