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. |
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