This question comes from Maddy in Melbourne:

Dear BigFarmerTrev,

I have had many breeds of hens since starting my hen owning journey.

The Belgian Duccles are my favourites.

I decided that if I continue with hen ownership it will only be Belgians.

They’re a true bantam, easy to care for, quirky, loveable and cute!

 I presently have 4 girls , 2 of which are Belgians and getting on in years.

I noticed that my hen breeder has not advertised Belgians for ages. So I sent them a msg asking if they ever get them anymore and they said no.

Feeling rather sad about this, I set about looking online to see if anyone else sold these little darling birds and have stumbled upon only very very serious award winning show bird sellers who ‘auction’ breeding pairs.

I know nothing of this particular side of hen keeping.

As such I have a number of questions.

The first and silliest being – should I quit my day job, move to the country, buy a breeding pair of Belgian D’uccles and live out my dotage winning prizes for my amazing birds.

That silliness aside – will these serious breeding people sell birds to me if I just want a coupla female pullets?

I cannot imagine my life without a few Belgians D’uccles following me about the garden.

Please share any wisdom you may have re – hens that sell via auction / showing birds and quitting your day job to move to the country.

Yours in good faith,

A city kid.

Ask Trev: Chicken Perching Problem

Dear Maddy,

First of all, I don’t think youre first question: should I quit my day job, move to the country, buy a breeding pair of Belgian D’uccles and live out my dotage winning prizes for my amazing birds?  is silly at all.  I used to live only a 20 minute drive from you in Melbourne and look at me now – I live in the bush, breed ducks and win awards for them every year at the Rylstone Show!  Some people have dreams of being famous singers or crushers of empires – moving to the county and breeding poultry is far more sensible, attainable and frankly less stressful.

The answer to your second question: will these serious breeding people sell birds to me if I just want a coupla female pullets? is yes, they will – but you will pay top dollar.

If you don’t want to pay the breeders rates, and they can be pretty high, then your best bet is attending a Poulty Auction.  When our Muscovy’s flock was decimated by a fox some years back, we drove over an hour to Bathurst and attended their monthly poultry auction.  Not only did it save us paying the local breeders rates (and note that now I occasionally beat those same breeders in competitions) it gave me a chance to eye off all the different birds and see what would work best with my flock.  I ended up bidding on and winning 3 black & white muscovy ducks, as all ours before this were plain white and I wanted to add some diversification into the gene pool – worked a treat!

Given you have a very specific breed of bird in mind – Belgian Duccles – it may even behoove you to contact via phone or email some of these poulty auction sites and see if they regularly have the birds you are after up for auction.  You don’t want to head all the way out to one to find they never auction off what you are after.

Your other option may be social media, pages for fans of pretty much anything exist now (I’m sure there is probably an ‘Australian Napkin Appreciators Society’ page) so maybe do some online searching, see if there are any Aussie/Victorian pages about Belgian Duccles and see if they can be of assistance.

Hope these answers are of help 😊

Ask Trev – Chickens: the balance between pet and livestock

Ask Trev: How to deal with molting chickens