I had chickens and a couple of turkeys when I was a kid
    growing up in a rural area west of Anniston, Alabama. My
    Grandfather gave me some of his culls, both bantam and
    large fowl meaning I had quite a mixture of breeds. I had
    Wyandottes, Cochins, White Leghorns, Seabright bantams,
    Old English Games bantams among others. I also use to
    peruse my grandfather’s Poultry Press.

    My Great grandfather was a carpenter and he built me some
    nice pens for my birds. Through most of my adulthood, I
    was busy with undergraduate college, graduate school and
    law school and then establishing some kind of a career so
    only got seriously involved with poultry here later in life
    when I had more time to devote to them. I started with some
    hatchery hens for eggs but was looking for a breed to start
    out with in a more serious endeavor. I wanted a breed that
    was rare but easy to keep and breed.

    I started by looking at the American Livestock Breed
    Conservancy’s (ALBC, now Livestock Conservancy, LC)
    website. I looked at the list of breeds on their critical list. The
    Buckeye caught my attention. I had started going to some
    shows locally just to look but did not see one single
    Buckeye.  I bought a pair of started Buckeyes from Duane
    Urch in 2006. They were the first Buckeyes I had ever seen.
    I thought they were one of the nicest looking fowl I had ever
    seen, and the pullet was extremely friendly. I was very proud
    to have the cockerel and pullet (very proud of them). I liked
    the breed so much I went looking to find other Buckeyes and
    hatched out some pullets from this first pair.

    John and I went to an ALBC convention in North Carolina in
    the Fall of 2007. There, we met Don Schrider.  As part of a
    seminar at the convention on how to select your breeder
    birds, Don used two Buckeye cockerels as training. Both
    birds were magnificent specimens of the breed. I could not
    believe their enormous size. When Don mentioned he was
    only keeping one of the cockerels and wanted us to handle
    them and give our opinion as to which he should keep and
    why, I perked up. Both cockerels looked almost identical to
    my untrained eye. That night at the ALBC banquet, I asked
    Don what was he going to do with the one he did not select
    and he asked, “Why, you want him?” Of course, I answered
    “yes.” He said he had not decided which one he was keeping
    but he would by the next morning, and I could come to his
    farm and get the one he was letting go. I was so proud of the
    new cockerel. I took him home that day and begin in earnest
    my breeding program by breeding the Schrider male to the 8
    females I had back home.

    Also by this time online, I had met and made acquaintance
    with Laura and Colleen Haggarty by coming across a year
    old post on a poultry forum where Colleen had begged for
    anyone interested in starting a Buckeye Breed Club. I
    responded to the year old post. The Haggartys and I became
    fast, close friends and have remained so to this date. The
    American Buckeye Poultry Club started with a simple yahoo
    group started by Laura Haggarty devoted to the Buckeye
    breed. We then had a club forum and a today a full breed
    club with a slate of officers and club national, district, state
    and special meets at a variety of poultry shows.

    In 2009, I showed my first Buckeyes, three cockerels, at my
    first ever show at the Ohio National in Columbus with the
    help of Laura Haggarty’s instructions on how to wash a
    chicken and how to prep a bird for a show. I won Best of
    Breed at that show with a cockerel.

    The Buckeye breed has come a long way over the last 11
    years since my first humble Buckeye pair. In the last three
    years, I have added Bantam Buckeyes to my flock with a
    kind and generous gift from Sharon Fildes and Laura
    Haggarty in 2015.  I look forward to more years of breeding
    with my Buckeyes, both large fowl and bantam.
Christopher McCarys's Bio
The American Buckeye Poultry Club
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