Australorp

You've got people like Adrian Nags, you know, doing a lot of that.

Mike Evans of Australop, now racing pigeon fame.

He was all over as sort of chief steward there as well.

So it was great to catch up with everyone.

And yeah, I mean, I think it's.

for bards to have a chance to do anything at all, beat a buff or go on to beat other breeds, they can't be small, weedy little things.

But, you know, if they're going up against an Orpington, a Wyandotte, an Australop even, you know, they've got to have a bit of...

I think actually, yeah, I did also use an Australop as well into the...

When he retired, he's like, Oh, I want to do a different project.

And he tried crossing brush turkeys with Australorp chickens and he succeeded.

I dug up this old article from like a 1990s poultry magazine that someone had scanned and put on the internet and And they were not only viable, they actually like crossed and hatched, but they were fertile.

He was breeding subsequent generations.

And I think brush turkeys are invading the suburbs and mating the people's chickens.

So maybe it'll happen spontaneously.

Like if you're hatching out your Australorps and you've had a randy brush turkey harassing them and you get something weird hatch out of the nest, pay attention to it.

It could be a whole new kind of animal that is perfectly suited to the Australian environment.

I picked the rooster up.

It was one of my Australorps.

And I looked down, like that's an angle you don't usually look at a chicken's head from that closely, and I could see all kinds of stuff matted under the feathers against his ear.

So Dr. Rebecca, when people bring in birds that they suspect an ear infection in, what kind of symptoms are they seeing?

I-

He's a good rooster.

I will say that of all the roosters I have had, my Australorps have been the gentlest and nicest.

Yeah.