Chook, chicken, peafowl, hen? What is the deal with birds?
The Feather Club’s Association of Queensland Inc’s Bird (Aviculture) and Poultry Museum is a treasure trove of information about anything to do with birds.
We talk to the manager, David Simons, about all things feathered - from laying hens to messenger pigeons and show birds.
Whether you’re a seasoned poultry fancier or a curious bird-novice, you’re sure to learn something new (although we can’t promise it’ll be useful) or at the very least be entertained in this episode.
Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/roadshow-and-tell/id1666756225
Follow us on Instagram to see photos of stuff mentioned in this episode: @roadshowandtellpodcast
Chook, chicken, peafowl, hen? What is the deal with birds?
The Feather Club’s Association of Queensland Inc’s Bird (Aviculture) and Poultry Museum is a treasure trove of information about anything to do with birds.
We talk to the manager, David Simons, about all things feathered - from laying hens to messenger pigeons and show birds.
Whether you’re a seasoned poultry fancier or a curious bird-novice, you’re sure to learn something new (although we can’t promise it’ll be useful) or at the very least be entertained in this episode.
Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/roadshow-and-tell/id1666756225
Follow us on Instagram to see photos of stuff mentioned in this episode: @roadshowandtellpodcast
Welcome to Roadshow and Tell, a podcast for people hoping to improve their pub trivia team score. I'm your host, Kate, and I'll visit museums so you can learn things you never knew you wanted to. In this episode, we're heading to a most eggciting museum in the Caboolture Historic Village, located 50 minutes northeast of the Brisbane CBD. The Caboolture historic village is made up of 70 buildings that share the local history of the area and older days. And one thing that really ruffled my feathers about the village is that it displays the original Brisbane Expo 88 signs. Yep. The really bright, colorful Ken Done ones that spell out Australia, and then again stacked as a cube. Of all places, that's where they've gone to live out the rest of their lives. The Bird Poultry Museum itself is a small shack within the historic village. It showcases information and exhibits on the keeping, exhibiting, and promotion of pure breeds of poultry and other birds, as well as their historical significance. I sat down for a chat with the manager, David Simons, about all things bird and poultry. I discovered what makes a prize-winning show Bird, why carrier pigeons were vital members of the Allied Forces Army in World War II, and how an old-fashioned egg laying competition would work. I really hope you enjoy listening to this episode, as much as I enjoyed creating it, because I can tell you this for free, it was a real hoot. I'm with David Simons today. David, where are we?
David:Okay. We're in Caboolture Historical Village at the moment in Beerburrum Road, Caboolture. And the building we're in is the Feather Clubs Association of Queensland Incs Avicultural, AKA Bird and Poultry Museum.
Kate:Amazing. And whose land are we on today?
David:We're on Gabi Gabi land.
Kate:So tell me about this museum. How did it come to be?
David:Uh, The concept of the museum was first established around about 2001 by Bob Whitehouse. He lives nearby. It's very much his brainchild and his absolute passion for it. He came up with the idea, ran it past the Feather Clubs Association of Queensland, which is the state body that looks after all of the poultry clubs in Queensland. With the idea of sponsoring a museum to be established so that the history of poultry and bird keeping in general wasn't lost. Bob then went away, managed to get some more support obtained some grant funding, and most importantly, found a location, which was an old building located in the middle of the historical village here. It was close and nearby to people who could actually work on it, and it was sort of ideally placed. There's always been a fairly big poultry showing connection in the local region, the Moreton Bay region.
Kate:Can you tell me about that history and the connection to poultry in this region?
David:Yeah. We're not that far away from all the big poultry farms up at Beerburrum in the Beerwah way. There's also a number of poultry farms conducted over the past many, many decades in the Caboolture Weyermann area. In terms of poultry showing, there's a lot of poultry exhibitors from the north of Brisbane right up to the Sunshine Coast, many of whom are around this area. and a lot of them actually had a fairly keen interest in history as well. So a lot of work was done actually converting and renovating the building, putting on a new roof, new ceiling, lighting, putting on displays, new interior walls, all the cabinets, et cetera. and it was officially opened in June, 2003 by the then Minister for Agriculture, Henry Palusczuk, who's the current premier's father. And then since then we've had several more extensions off to the side to incorporate the incubator room and the wing that we have our pigeon display in.
Kate:What's the most popular part of the museum?
David:A lot of the kids are really drawn to the different eggs that we've got on display. We've got different sizes from ostrich right down to quail and even smaller. We've even got a replica dodo egg and an orc egg, both extinct birds. We've also got a replica cass owary egg and whole range of other unusual bits and pieces. There's a taxidermied chicken skeleton, a duck skeleton uh, that always sort of gets a bit of interest. And our pigeons in warfare display, which we're quite proud of, gets a lot of interest as well when people sort of get an idea of way before the era of mobile phones, radio communications and things like that, pigeons were actually the main form of communication. And we've got quite a good display in there. And also a number of samples of the leg rings that they used to put the messages in. We've even got a copy of a message in there that was sent, by a tank squad in World War I seeking help. So I'll show you that one later.
Kate:Why are pure breeds of birds so important?
David:I think pure breeds of birds are so important to maintain genetic diversity. Most of the commercial birds that use commercially now are all hybrids, whereas up until probably the, the first quarter of the 19 hundreds, mostly they were pure breeds. it maintains a heritage of the different breeds that are out there, and it also means that if it future down the track from a commercial perspective, they need new blood. You've got all these heritage breeds out there that could be used to recreate meat breeds, layers, and utility birds that are a mix of both.
Kate:So why did they make hybrid breeds in the first place?
David:They made them to get higher production. So for laying breeds up until the early 19 hundreds breeds like White Leghorns, Australorps Orpington's, quite a few others, very heavy layers Menorcas,, Spanish Anconas used them to lay, but they found that particularly in the battery cage environment, a, they didn't do as well in confinement and B they didn't produce as many eggs in a shorter period of time. So you'll find that the heritage breeds lay a lot longer, but they won't lay as many eggs. You're commercial hybrids lay huge numbers of eggs over a relatively short period of time, and then they burn out. So by the time they're about 2.
Kate:What happens to them after they burn out?
David:They get sold off and I think they have people go and rescue them from farms and things like that, whereas the pure bred stuff, depending on the breed, some breeds will lay longer than others. Many of them are still quite productive at 3, 4, 5, 6 years of age. And the breeds that don't lay a lot of eggs, if they're bread for other reasons, either ornamental or game birds, some of those can live to 15 or 16. But you usually find that the more eggs a bird churns out the, probably the shorter the lifespan because so much of their energy goes into the production of eggs.
Kate:And so show birds, are they all pure bred?
David:Yes. So some of them have got histories going back hundreds and hundreds of years. Some of the pure breeds that are shown now, their standard may not have been sort of set in place or finalized up until say, 40, 50 years ago.
Kate:so at a show, what makes a prize-winning bird? And what what are the things that the birds are judged on?
David:Okay, so all birds have got a written standard, which is an ideal. It's a written description with accompanying photographs or illustration saying, this is describing how the ideal bird should look in terms of its shape, the head characteristics, the feather characteristics, the legs, the size, and the length of them. Whether they've got feathers on'em or not are the different body color. It varies from bird to bird. Each breed's got a scale of points going up to a hundred. And depending on what the breed is, there's emphasis on some things more than others. Say if you've got say something like a Polish, which is got a big crest, there's a lot of points for the crest. And less points, say for the shape or for the color. Other breeds that have got very intricate color patterns, there's a lot of points for colour. But then in the end, type is still the most important thing and type is the general shape and characteristics of the bird. So even if you say, look at a silhouette, you can look at the silhouette and say, okay, that's that breed. Cuz every breed's got its own unique shape or set of characteristics that go together that make that you that breed different to the next breed.
Kate:So an example standard for the Polish chook from poultry keeper.com reads: crest, 30 points. The crest should be high, large, full, and circular. In females, it will be smooth and in males shinier and thinner. Head and Wattles, 15 points. So the wattle is the fleshy bit that hangs below the head by the way. For white crested varieties, the head should be topped by a bony knob from where the crest emerges. Other varieties should also include muffling, which is basically fancy feathers. And no, the muffling should be full and almost hide the face. Colour 30 points. Colour should be solid white, no paling. Black birds should have a beetle green shade. Laced varieties should be clearly laced or spangled. And white crested birds should be snowy white with no colored feathers except for the colored band at the front. Type, five points. The bird should look long and sturdy. Remember that the bird should be alert and lively. A sick or lethargic bird will be disqualified. Size 10 points. There are a range of different weights for different bird sizes. And lastly, condition 10 points. Here the judges look for health, freedom from parasites, and absence of genetic faults and cage fatigue- a term meaning over showing of the bird. What's your favorite breed?
David:Anconas.
Kate:Why?
David:I've had them since I was probably 14 or 15, which was a long time ago. And I've had a number of different breeds over the past, but I've always kept Aconas. I think I just like the temperament of them. They're quite a good layer, good layer of white eggs. We don't keep them for the eggs, just like them for the show. Beetle green plumage with white tips on the end of each feather. And the white tips very challenging to get and it's just, I suppose it's the breed. Everyone has certain breeds they like for different reasons, now this the same as dogs.
Kate:What's your background in relation to birds and poultry?
David:I first started with poultry from my grandma. Grandfather sent me some big Sussex in 1979. Showed them at the local ag show, got some Rhode Islands and sort of started to get the showing bug. And then once I got some, Anconas started showing quite a few shows a year and I've sort of had them ever since. So I would go to probably six or seven shows a year as an exhibitor. I also judge poultry, so I'd usually judge three or four shows as well.
Kate:Do you know how many shows you've been to in your life so far?
David:That's a lot, given that I really started seriously showing in the mid eighties... probably 300, 400.
Kate:Wow. That's a lot of shows.
David:Yeah. And I've judged about 160, 170.
Kate:How many prizes have your birds won?
David:A lot. I've got boxes and boxes full of prize cards and ribbons.
Kate:What's generally the prize that you win? Is it money, or do you get chicken feed or something?
David:Uh, Some shows the major awards will be like a bag of chook feed. Agricultural shows, there's usually some money, there's sashes or rosettes or trophies. A lot of it is just trying to compete against other exhibitors to see how you're going in terms of improving your quality, which is why breed club shows are really good for that. So for the Anconas, we get between a hundred and 150 Anconas at our annual show each year in Rosewood. And so the thing to aim for there is to A, win a class and then b, try and win one of the major awards. But the competition is that strong there. Even to get a third or a fourth in some classes is a good thing.
Kate:What's the most prestigious show award you can get in queensland,
David:most prestigious one? It depends on, I suppose, your perspective. Obviously the grand champion at Brisbane Royal,
Kate:the eKKA?
David:The EKKA, would certainly be up there. I've never won that The shows you've get like, well, agricultural shows, then you get poultry club shows then you'll get breed club shows. And then it really depends on what you've got and what your aim is some people like to go to all the ag shows where you get a little bit of prize money, others focus more on breed club and regional club shows.
Kate:And what's the vibe at the shows? Is it really collegiate, like everyone's curious and happy for each other when they win? Or is it very competitive and serious?
David:It depends on the breed and the show.
Kate:Can it get nasty?
David:Not overly nasty, but some people are more competitive than others. There's a lot of shows around. There's a lot of people. So I suppose the thing would be to find a show or a club or an area where people are generally a bit more friendly towards you and they'd be the ones you click in, but different personality styles as well too. Yeah, there is a lot of competition. They're probably not quite to the extent of what there is in some other animal species. But yeah, it's still definitely there.
Kate:Okay, so while it doesn't get nasty, I discovered the annual general meeting minutes of the Feather Club's Association of Queensland, Inc. are available online for your perusal. In the 2019 AGM, Lloyd Stoltenberg asked quote"what the F C A Q are going to do about the city slickers and do-gooders that complain about birds not having water in their show pens when they are being judged" unquote.. It was suggested that the clubs put up signs saying that the birds will be watered on completion of judging. That will give the public a k a city slickers and do-gooders a better understanding of what happens at a poultry show. How many avicultural or poultry clubs are there in Queensland?
David:There used to be about 60. I think it's down to about 50 now. Cause over time we find a lot of the poultry exhibitors are getting older. They're getting less support. So some of the clubs have folded.
Kate:You might be confused about the different bird terms used so far. An A aviculturalist or Avi culturalist is someone who breeds and keeps birds. A poultry fancier is someone who keeps rare or distinctive breeds for showing.
David:And there's a whole heap of terms out there. Even there's some people don't like using the word chook. Others don't like using chicken because they think it's too American. And it's a generational thing as well. I tend to use chook a lot of the time. Other people who, especially some of the older ones, will say fowls.
Kate:That sounds like something from a Roald Dahl book, a fowl. Yeah. Yeah. And what do you think about chook as a term of endearment?
David:Oh yes. I'm fine with it. I use it most of the time.
Kate:David, do you eat chicken?
David:Yes.
Kate:and all types other types of poultry as well?
David:Yes. Chicken's the favorite one though. Chicken.
Kate:Why should people visit the Bird and poultry Museum?
David:It's got a lot of very interesting things in there, and I think because the Caboolture Historical Village has got 70 buildings on 12 acres, there is a lot here for everyone to be interested in, to have a look at. So regardless of what your interest is, you'll find it in here. But the Bird and Poultry Museum itself are people who have, maybe as kids if they're, they're older generations and they remember, back before in the, the war years and earlier, most people had chooks or chickens in their backyard, whereas they, they don't tend to now people's lifestyles changes and you've got council regulations and things like that. We get a lot, there's a lot of school kids come through for the historical village as part of the school's program. So there's things in here that kids will find from an educational perspective, and there's other things in here that if you are a poultry fancier or you've got a relative who was, you'll come in here and you'll see, ah, my uncle or my grandfather used to have either this particular breed or had these sashes, or there's something in here that twigs a memory of what they used to see when they were younger as a kid. And I think that's sort of an important thing. If you didn't have a museum like this, that older history would be, tend to be lost or you might just find it looking on some social media, old websites, but you can't actually get up and close to some of the, the quirky more interesting things that we've got here. And we're always on the lookout for sort of new and unusual things, so it's not just a museum full of prize cards and trophies and sashes..
Kate:Now, David and I take a tour of the museum starting from their front entrance.
David:Okay. So the front of our building's got a an artistic display out the front with a pair of metal cassowary sculptures and model cassowary eggs.
Kate:Oh, those eggs are huge.
David:And they also green in amongst some artificial foliage here, which is low maintenance cuz we just hosed it off yesterday. So that makes it good. But put it here as a, something a little bit attractive to catch people's eyes as they walk past it. Behind it, there's a bark wall. And that bark actually came from some old poultry sheds in the, the locality. So that's got a connection to, to poultry keeping. On the left hand side of the door is a mural of a gentleman who went to a poultry show in the 1930s down in Victoria with a duck in a cage on a wheelbarrow,
Kate:So Jack Waters was a man who lived in Woori Yallock in rural Victoria during the depression of the 1930s. He heard that the Royal Melbourne Agricultural Show Society was offering one pound as a prize for the champion duck of the show. Jack Waters had a duck, which he thought was quote a pretty good duck unquote, and reckoned he'd have a go. So as the story goes, he put the duck named Persil Benny in his old wheelbarrow, and walked just over a week to Melbourne to enter. Lucky for Jack, his duck won and he was awarded the one pound prize. And even luckier still, because his duck was named Persil benny, the Persil detergent company decided to give him another pound!
David:So that's an example of a very keen poultry, fancier, probably keener than what most of us would be. Certainly nowadays. We've got a bird migration chart there that shows the migration routes for the short tailed shearwater, the Eastern Curlew Eastern Broad Billed Roller, and the Spangled Drongo, and some of them are go quite away, especially the short tailed Shearwater, which sort of starts off in Southern Victoria and goes around Tasmania, goes up towards Alaska. Past Japan and then sort of loops back around again.
Kate:Is that what they do every year?
David:Yes. So pretty good migratory patterns.
Kate:And this is an egg laying competition trophy. Yes. So how do you have a competition for egg laying?
David:Egg laying competitions were really big, especially in the 1920s and thirties and even the forties. And this was before I suppose the invention of all the commercial hybrids they have now. This is where people would have flocks of white leghorns, Australorps, Langshans, Orpingtons Wyandottes, all those sorts of breeds, which are largely more kept for exhibition only now used to be kept commercially and sub commercially. So you'd have people with flocks of a hundred, 200 white leg horns or Australorps and they would make a living out of that. Some of them are obviously bigger than they'd be in the thousands and the earlier cage birds were are actually hybrids of those breeds. And to run an egg show, what they would do is they'd put in a pen of, say, six females or whatever, and they would count the number of eggs that that pen laid over a certain period of time, whether it was six months, twelve months, or a shorter period. And the teams would be competing against each other. And the pen, that laid the most eggs over that time period would be the one that won.
Kate:that seems like a very long competition and one that would be tedious to judge
David:it would be but a a lot of the breeders and suppliers relied very heavily the egg competition results to boost to their own sales. So particularly when people still had the pure bread ones in the twenties and thirties and forties, if you had say like a strain of white leghorns, that was consistently winning the egg competition, everyone would come to you for stock. Whereas if you weren't doing particularly well or your breed wasn't, you'd be further down in the results list and it'd wane off.
Kate:So this particular trophy on display was won at the Darling Downs egg laying Competition, 1935 6 by R.T. Green. The winning fowl was a white leghorn that laid 243 eggs in 313 days with three more weeks to go in the test.
David:The next display case, we've got a number of ribbons from the EKKA show and some trophies that have been donated over the years. So this is probably one of the jewels that we've got the pigeon and warfare display. So I suppose starting off with here, you've got a duplicate of the message that was sent from a tank in 1916. The tank was being attacked. They needed some help from the headquarters area. So they did the message up, put the message into a little pigeon ring, and the tanks would all hold metal containers that they carried that messenger pigeons in. So if they had to get a message back, come help us or some intelligence information, write the message on. It's a very thin paper, so it's quite light. Roll up really tight, put it in the little capsule and then send the pigeon off and it would go where it was supposed to. There was a unit set up in the second World War in New Guinea which was pigeon unit, and they were a group of, most of them were former pigeon fanciers that when they enlisted, they put them all together and their job was to maintain the pigeons for the communication system there. We've had displays here where people have brought pigeons up, they let them out and it might be like Burpengary, Morayfield,, which is 15, 20 minutes, half an hour away. They beat their owners home. They're fast. So, and there's a, in the pigeon racing field, they have a lot of endurance races, which go for many hundreds of kilometers. And they travel very, very, quickly.
Kate:Pigeons in the wars were used because of their homing instincts, not their speed, and they could carry messages in war zones when all other forms of communication were cut off. The normal range of flight for a pigeon is 120 miles or nearly 200 kilometers. The Royal Australian Mint issued a stamp with a blue chequer cock that honored, a pigeon known as DD.43.Q.879, or Q for short. Q was awarded the Dicken medal for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty, unquote. Of all the 54 Dicken medals presented in World War ii, which honor acts of devotion to duty by animals, more than half were awarded to pigeons. There's more photos from the pigeons of warfare exhibit on our Instagram. At Roadshow and Tell Podcast,
David:This here is a pigeon carrying crate, which parachuters, paratroopers could use. It's got a leather case on it, and it's a wicker basket with a strap, but each of these compartments is lined with fiber and the pigeons slot safely on either end. There's a little door there so they can put them in there, and then when they, they're jumping out and moving around, the pigeon won't get damaged. And then wrapped around this compartment is this little exercise yard. So that all comes apart. It's got four walls. It's got a little fence over the top mesh so they can feed and water them. Pigeon then goes back in here and they fold the collapsible pen, back round it and put the case over it and then strap it over them and off they go.
Kate:That's... Not how I thought they'd transport pigeons, but I guess you gotta do it somehow.
David:Yep. There's a whole range of different ways. Now this one here is a metal pigeon carrier for a tank.
Kate:So the pigeon is bulletproof?
David:Well, I suppose so, but I suppose cuz the tanks, especially the ones from that era, if you've been to the memorial around Canberra, there's not a lot of room in them. So they'd have to be very careful with space. And something that wasn't flammable. So yeah, it's a metal box with a set of breathing holes on the side of it, like a colander and the pigeons would go in there. And then if they needed help or they needed to get some intelligence across, out would come the pigeon, put the note on it. Put the ring on, off it'd to go. Um, In terms of racing pigeons, we've got a, a timing clock down there, down the bottom.
Kate:After the pigeons in warfare display, we walk around the museum and I'm not sure where to look because everywhere I look, all I can see is bird paraphernalia. Anything to do with the breeding, showing, laying and keeping of birds that you can think of, it's here in this museum.
David:Hats made outta feathers. Gotta display of all the different pigeon breeds. There's some different egg scales down the bottom This here is a pigeon carrying crate a chicken skeleton and a duck skeleton This is a egg washing machine, postage stamps We've got a machine down there that makes egg cartons heap of sashes and trophies here from a whole range of different shows, Got an honor board from Ipswitch Poultry Club. there's a game here, it's called Chook Chook a plucking machine
Kate:The museum also has a range of different types of incubators designed for,
David:Hatching eggs.
Kate:and if you're like me, you're thinking, but why do we need an incubator? Wouldn't it just be better if the laying hen sits on her own eggs?
David:It would, but they don't always sit and not all breeds sit. And they don't always sit at the right time, so you gotta wait for the birds to go broody, and chickens love to go broody around here, at least anyway, October to December, which is too late for your show season next winter. So most of the time they don't go broody when you want them to. And then you'll have some breeds that are just terrible mothers. They kick and scratch the eggs, they break them, they, or when they get'em out, they just dunno what they're doing, whereas other breeds, natural mothers and they do a really, really good job. So having an incubator is a way of getting around the bad mothering skills and also means you can hatch a lot more out. Whereas under a clucky hen, you are looking just depending on the size of the hen, six to 12 eggs. Whereas an incubator, depending on how big you get you can hatch anything up to thousands at a time. Wow.
Kate:So incubators are also accelerators. Maybe that's why the tech industry has hijacked the word incubator, to use it for companies that act as springboards for early stage startup. In egg hatching incubators are used because they can control the humidity, temperature, and turning frequency better than the broody hens could, and it often results in a greater percentage of eggs hatching into chicks. David shows me different types of incubators from the early 19 hundreds. There is a kerosene one, which was used before electricity was widely available.
David:so you've got put the hot water up in there, kerosene lighter there. And the eggs are down in here. Okay, so this big one is Lanyon Man, Mammoth incubator, and it's a kerosene one. And you see this trays there. You can imagine how many eggs you could fit in that. And then to turn them, you've actually gotta turn the eggs manually. And you can either do it that way if it's one of these flat type ones and other ones have trays, and you tilt the handle and whole tray goes 45 degrees the other way. We've got this one, which is an Australian one. There's is American one there. We've got, Buckeye is another American one down there, so that's obviously a much smaller one, but it does the same job. It's kerosene heated on the side. And then this one here, there's a big Rotary one. A rotary one. Yeah. We can get some very, very big units in these that will hold thousands and thousands of eggs. I've got another bigger incubator. Oh, this one's huge. This is another multiplier one.
Kate:How much do they sell for now?
David:A brand new multiplay, depending on whether you want it fully automated. So if it's got a digital turn and automatic turner and that for 12 dozen eggs is about 2000. and then you get little incubators like this little metal up there, nice and compact. That's a little compact one, which is more like little plastic homestyle ones you get now for chickens that hold 20-30 eggs.
Kate:And get this, you can get a fully automatic home incubator for 36 eggs for just$129 from amazon.com.
David:This is a egg washing machine, so these coils would've been wet. and you turn the handle and the eggs go down, work their way around, and they come out there. The one that's down there is a brush version of it. Although when they came out, you'd have to be careful if they didn't hit the end, so they'd break, I'm not sure how it actually works without breaking the eggs,
Kate:There are so many eggs scales on show. Egg scales are used to separate eggs into predetermined grades like medium, large, and extra large for consumers..
David:They're, some of them were quite inventive and cuz they all had patents, they would all come up with all these slightly different ideas on basically the same principle.
Kate:Interestingly, vintage egg scales seem to be quite a collector's item too, and are fetching between 80 and$200 on Etsy. and also bird skeletons!
David:This is something that really interests the kids when they come in a chicken skeleton and a duck skeleton. And also we've got a little model of a human skeleton in there, which is only about 30, 40 centimeters high, just to sort of show the difference in the number of bones. So in there it says the ducks have got 122 bones, chickens have a 120, and and human adults have 206, but babies have about 300. And obviously there's babies have more cuz they fuse as they develop in age. In the next shelf down we've got painting of a Auk egg, which is an extinct bird, as well as a replica of the Egg, which is the one here on the end with the spots.
Kate:Okay, so the auk- spelled A U K was kind of similar to penguins. they're also black and white upright seabirds that dived for their food. They were found in the cold North Atlantic waters until 1844 when they went extinct, mostly from human hunting for feathers, meat, fat, and oil.
David:Dodo egg replica. Cassowary egg replica. We've got the replica there because the real Cassowary eggs are restricted items here need a special permit to keep them. Replica Rhea egg
Kate:A Rhea is a small version of an ostrich from South America. The egg is perfectly ovular and about 13 centimeters long. On the other side of the room, there are three dioramas on display. The first diorama shows the first instance of imported birds in Australia.
David:We've got first fleet diorama there. That's where they bring onboard some geese. And in the first fleet there were 18 turkeys, 29 geese, 35 ducks, 122 fowls, and 87 chickens.
Kate:The next diorama is on migrant birds.
David:So I suppose what you call pest species introduced species
Kate:That includes birds like the Common Myna, House Sparrow, Spotted Turtle-Dove, and Common Starling. Ah, yes. The common miner or the Indian miner. The absolute Karen. of introduced species.
David:And then a mockup of a poultry show.
Kate:Oh, yep. I can see the judge giving prizes
David:to the Western Western show. A couple of taxidermied old English game fowl.
Kate:Would these actually be prize winning game fowl? Yes. Oh,
David:yes. Okay. Yeah, they originally they were bred by Athel Pengelly in Central New South Wales, and he used to win a lot. That's sort of like a stylized version of what a poultry show looks like, only much bigger of course.
Kate:I wanna go to a poultry show now. And so what happens to the poultry after they're no longer good for shows? Do they just get sold to farms, like you said before?
David:Yeah. And and quite often for breeding? So when birds judge, the judge will go up and down in front of the cages, have a look at them and then they'll take each one out, handle it, look at the under the wings, the tail, feel the body of it.
Kate:Do they do a little catwalk like in the dog shows?
David:No? No, Showing poultry is easier than showing dogs.
Kate:Yep. Just look and feel.
David:Yes. Look and feel. You've gotta get them quiet enough so when the judge goes to approach them in the cage, they don't go crazy and hit the roof. But it's not like a dog where you have to train them to go at the right pace, then train them to stand while the judge looks over them and not move and then do everything exactly right. Dog showing's a lot harder. I'm a very, very much a novice dog show.
Kate:Oh, you show dogs as well?
David:It's just started. I'm much better at doing chooks and dogs.
Kate:What's your favorite egg to eat?
David:It'd be a chicken. Chicken, egg. Chicken, egg. I don't like duck eggs much. They're a bit too rich. But people apparently who do a lot of baking, find that duck eggs are really good for making cakes. Especially sponges.
Kate:Really?
David:Yeah.
Kate:Why is that? Do you know?
David:Dunno, it must be something to do with the texture when you break them open, they're a thicker consistency, a bit goer, so obviously it must work better with the cake batter.
Kate:Now we go outside to try and spot the resident chooks of the historical village.
David:it. I'll show you the chooks. Yeah, sounds good. See, I just instinctively call it chooks. I'm in my fifties. Whereas you get someone that's older, or especially some of the really, really serious poultry exhibitors, they, they call them fowls.
Kate:How many chooks are there?
David:Oh, I'd have to count them now. I think it's about nine or 10. And they are all hiding... No. There's two Orpingtons. There's two Malay games. There's a couple of Rhode Islands and there's some big and banner
Kate:mankins. Oh, they are beautiful. You
David:can see why I like them.
Kate:So the anconas are quite impressive. They are like reverse dalmatians, totally black, but speckled with small white spots.
David:Yeah. The caretakers let the chooks out, so we'll have to find ourselves. They usually hang out cause it's hot at the moment. They would be somewhere shade in the shade. So I can't actually show you the birds themselves. They're all hiding, somewhere cool. Cool. There's Rhode island and sun baking. The others would've more sense and they'd be underneath the house there in the dust where it's cooler.
Kate:What's the dumbest bird in your opinion?
David:Silkies aren't very smart. Yeah. In terms of intelligence, ducks are probably smarter than all the chicken breeds and geese are by far the smartest.
Kate:The village offers accessible parking and accessible toilets. Walking frames and wheelchairs are also available to borrow from the village free of charge. The Bird and Poultry Museum itself is on one level, and wheelchair and frame friendly, although there is one minor slope in the floor. Caboolture Historical Village is open from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM every day, except public holidays. The cost of admission is$15 for adults,$11 for concessions, and$7 50 for children under 12.
David:But for that price, you can basically fill in the whole day wandering around all the village and hopefully also the Bird and Poultry Museum, which is located almost in the center is definitely well worth a look. It's quite quirk and interesting inside, I said, it's like a bit of a tardus.
Kate:it's your entry to over 70 buildings and 12 acres of beautifully maintained grounds. It could be a really fun day out for your family. There's lots of other special interest groups represented here, such as the Antique Machinery and Restoration Club, Caboolture and District Woodcrafters, Caboolture Gem Club, homestead Country Music Club, and a pottery club. Plus other museums such as a police station and prisons museum, two railway station museums, a transport museum, military museum, and maritime museum. Well, I can say without a doubt that my knowledge of aviculture and poultry has increased tenfold after my visit to this museum. And if you were like me, you are thinking while listening that it would be so awesome to see a bird exhibitor's version of Dance Moms that follows passionate bird exhibitors around to different shows and captures the high octane drama of bird fancying. Well, you are in luck because David let me know that there are two documentaries that do just this, and I immediately watch them both and they're brilliant. They are Chicken People from 2016, which is on SBS, and a 2017 New Zealand one called Pecking Order, or should I say Picking Order which is available on Binge. And while you watch these shows, remember you can see images of all the birds and things discussed on this episode on our Instagram at Roadshow and Tell Podcast. Thanks for listening to Roadshow and Tell. If you enjoyed this deep dive into a specialty museum, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode. We're a new podcast. So if you wanna help support us, please share it with a friend and leave a rating and review. If you are involved with or know of a regional or specialty museum that should be featured, please get in touch at roadshowandtell@gmail.com. I'm your host, Kate. Roadshow and Tell was edited and produced on the lands of the Gadigal people. I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the various lands on which you may be listening from, and the lands that the museums featured in this podcast reside on. I also acknowledge any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people listening to this podcast. I pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal peoples and their ongoing cultures and connections to the lands and waters of Australia.