Poultrykeeper was started by a few enthusiasts with no web page design experience and very little idea about how to go about getting even a basic page together… It was a desire to share some information with the ever expanding poultry keeping community about what we had learned ourselves over the years that spurred things along. After a massive learning curve on web design and thanks to the continued interest of our initial ‘team’ the site was born on Thursday 2nd October 2008.
Poultrykeeper's Aim
The poultrykeeper website's goal is to become the best resource of information for poultry keepers on the web. Poultry - is - (according to the dictionary definition), not just chickens but domesticated fowl collectively, especially those valued for their meat and eggs - so it includes turkeys, ducks, geese and guinea fowl as well.
We are always looking for new articles as well as breed photos to expand the site so if you have something you feel will be of interest, please contact us... we would love to hear from you. With around 700 visitorsper dayto the site, we can promise your article will get well read!
Meet the Team.
Tim Daniels - Author and Webmaster.
Tim has been interested in poultry and the countryside since an early age. Growing up with Chickens and Ducks, as well as aviary birds like Canaries, Zebra Finches, Java Sparrows, Doves and Quail and having a pigeon loft at the bottom of the garden for Racing Pigeons, Tim has a reasonable knowledge when it comes to birds. Tim takes care of the website design and the running of the 2 servers, as well as writing the bulk of the articles on the site. Tim currently breeds Marans and Cream Legbar chickens and keeps a few other breeds in small numbers. He keeps Abacot Ranger Ducks and hopes to have some Brecon Buff and American Buff geese soon.
James Young - Author and Inspiration Manager.
James grew up on a small Turkey / Goose producing farm in Suffolk. He obtained a National Diploma in Poultry and went on to manage a farm in Norfolk. James keeps Khaki Campbell ducks, Embden Geese and Buff Orpington Chickens. James has enjoyed poultry all of his life and likes to write the odd article for us based on his years of experience when he gets some time off from the farm (which isn't very often unfortunately!). James is very good at developing crazy ideas into something useful... Our Poultry Diseses and Disorders section is an excellent example of this where there is one place to visit that links into all of the different health articles across the site and allows you to flick through the different problems very quickly.
Rupert Stephenson - Poultry Photographer.
Rupert is grew up in a rural setting in the countryside of Meriden, and as a boy had a few brown hens some light Sussex and his brother kept Peacocks. His family were smallholders and farmers. Later on in life, Rupert started breeding rare coloured ring necked doves and black faced zebra finches and it wasn't long before he started breeding bantams. Gold Sebrights, Light Brahmas, Pencilled Hamburghs, Light and Speckled Sussex, Araucanas, Rumpless Game and Mottled Leghorns are a few of the breeds he has kept but his real love is Marans and Welsummers for the eggs they lay and petty Dutch bantams for pleasure.
Rupert started to take a few photos with his camera for Fancy Fowl magazine and now he travels up and down the country to the various poultry shows taking photos professionally for magazines and the poultrykeeper website. You can read more about Rupert here.
Ben Rolfe - Urban Chicken Guru.
Ben is a city boy who decided to get a few hens in his back yard in the early 90's. The 'few' hens are now 20 Pekin Bantams and 6 Call Ducks. Ben has 3 separate breeding groups or 'strains' of Pekins and has a wonderful 'urban' set-up in his garden using tall plants to cover fencing, creating different areas to walk through. Ben enjoys the health aspects of poultry and thinks he should have trained as a vet instead of a banker!
Dr. Deepa Menon - Veterinarian
Deepa is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Advanced Studies in poultry Science, mannutht, India. She has four years teaching and consultancy experience in the HRD field, and 10 years experience in the Poultry Sector. Deepa writes technical articles for the site in non-technical language for us which we appreciate!
Jaques Bernard - Veterinarian
Jaques joined a large pharmaceutical company as a Technical Manager responsible for their range of poultry products (including vaccines, antibiotics, coccidiostats and disinfectants) and was based in South Africa. After leaving the pharmaceutical company, he started his own successful poultry consultancy, which gave him 4 years of good hands-on experience of all poultry aspects. At the same time, he spent 1 week a month as a part time senior lecturer at a Poultry Department Veterinary Faculty, responsible for teaching undergraduate vet students, running clinics and doing posting sessions in the diagnostic lab.
Jaques knows a lot about poultry products and diseases, poultry husbandry and management as well as the poultry industry. Jacques has just joined us and will be starting to write some technical articles for us soon!
Our Guest Authors.
We publish articles from many different sources: Janssen Animal Health (the makers of Flubenvet), Fancy Fowl Magazine and many small breeders and other websites. If you have a website and would like to get some good quality links, then why not write an article for us? Links are an important part of ranking your site well in the search engines.
With around 700 visitorsper dayto the site, we can promise your article will get well read!
About Poultrykeeper