The Domestic Fowl Trust and Honeybourne Rare Breeds

Today my youngest son and I decided to visit 'Chicken World'.  The Domestic Foul Trust.  It isn't too far from us.  It is in the County of Warwickshire.  I thought I would show you this picture of a Village called Alcester, it looked pretty with the remnants of yesterday's street party for The Royal Wedding.  Warwickshire is Shakespeare country as it is the County where William Shakespeare was born.  Even the hen houses are mock Tudor.

Well these ones were anyway.  The Domestic Foul Trust near Honeybourne has a museum containing all things chicken and egg related.  We read about the history of Cockerel Fighting and looked at the Factory production of chicken and eggs.  We also enjoyed looking at old chicken themed toys.  When we left the museum to enter the park we were mobbed by trained racing chickens sprinting towards us as they must have known we had bought feed to share out on our way around.

They look sweet and innocent but some could jump pretty high and manged to peck the paper bag in my son's hand.  I made friends with one before I realised it was a cockerel.

It's loud crowing gave me quite a shock.
My son made friends with this one...

It actually followed him all around the park for about fourty minutes, they had quite a bond between them.  Euan called it Freddy the Chicken.  Freddy certainly got reward for his friendship with Euan and we probably left him nicely fattened with a belly full of corn. 
We had a tour around the world in chickens and saw 131 different breeds of chicken, from British and European breeds to American and Asian breeds, you will forgive me for not remembering all of them.  Many of the exhibits had tried and tested escape routes from their enclosures and were at large around the park.  I am a complete 'Townie' and the size of a full grown chicken surprised me, some are huge.  The cockerels and Turkeys were a bit scary.  I am sure by the way this turkey puffed himself out he was as scared of me as I was of him.

It was quite hard to tell which was the head and which was the tail with some breeds.

I found myself admiring all the miniatures and bantams.  They are definitely on my wishlist for the future.  I particularly loved these miniature Buff Orpingtons.  They are about a third of the size of a Buff Orpington.  There were also Buff Orpington Ducks but I didn't photograph them as they were too busy having a bath.

We went even more miniature in the chick room....

Very cute with all the different breeds of chick all together.

I can see three ducklings in this picture too.
Euan got very sad when it was time to say goodbye to Freddy so I had to promise we would go and see him again soon.