Paul Perryman

Elizabeth Skelton

We had a children's petting farm pre foot and mouth and during that time we used to have a lot of young children and school children to view the animals. One of the things that we did was to collect the eggs and I have to say, if there were lots and lots of children there we cheated because one lot would collect the eggs and then we'd have to put them all back. Then the next lot would collect them so some of these eggs went round and round for days.

We used to have a selection of eggs in a tray and ask the children if they could identify them and guess which birds they came from... we'd have trick questions like 'who do you think laid this?' 'oh it was the peacock' 'no no definitely not because peacocks are all male, and peahens are girls'.

We'd explain how incubators work and how to bring them up to the right temperature and about automatic incubators that turn them, or manual ones that you turn yourself and have to mark noughts and crosses on the shells - every day you turn them over. Anyway, one lady was there and I explained that one of the reasons we turn them is so that the developing hen moves in the shell, so you don't get one arm big, one leg growing behind it's back, that sort of thing. And this woman said 'do you know love, I've been turning eggs for 50 years and I never knew why!' She was told to go and do it and she went and did it, no question!

Trevor Addison

I've been keeping them about 14 years - I was an estate agent and an auctioneer and when I retired I was looking for something to do, so I decided to show poultry. We have a few friends that show, so we tried it out with a couple of breeds before we settled on the one that we fancied showing - those were large white wyandottes'. We got first and champion at Skipton Christmas show with them. We used to keep a lot of bantams too.

 A lot of people say the white take a lot of looking after... I mean they do, but the big white wyandottes are so gentle. You can wash them... they're no bother, no bother at all. Silverlaced, for showing, you've got to have that lacing spot on. The under-colour as well, and the feathers... I mean different judges want different things, different fancies, so...

My son is showing old english game today, but really it's a bad time of year. 99% of our birds are in the breeding pens and we've set off our first set of eggs in the incubator. You can't set them off showing and also have them for breeding, it's one of the other.

W. Robinson