|
|
|
WYANDOTTE CLUB OF AUSTRALIA INC.
The Wyandotte Club of Australia has a proud history of being the oldest breed club in Australia, serving one of the most popular breeds of poultry in the world. The Wyandotte comes in a range of beautiful colours captured in a body of curves making it undoubtedly the most beautiful exhibition breed today, not forgetting the wonderful utility qualities as a layer of brown tinted eggs & a plump delicious carcass of tender white meat.
The Wyandotte Bantam is very popular as a show fowl due to the availability in 17 recognised colours with several more currently being developed. The large fowl is regularly shown in at least 12 colours, with all colours owing their origin to the Silver Laced Wyandotte first standardised in 1883 in their country of origin, America.
The Silver Laced was first exhibited in Australia in 1888. The Silver Laced has the honour of winning the first laying test at the Hawkesbury College.
Much has been written about the Wyandotte over the years extolling its virtues. However, little has been written about the Club & the contribution it has made to the popularity of the breed.
The Wyandotte Club was the first club to print a Manual or Handbook on the breed, being a leader in this field it set the standard for other clubs to follow. This tradition has been maintained with the recent release (March, 2002) of a new Handbook.
In August 2000 the Club underwent a complete change of executive with a vision to revamp the club & return it once again to being a leader in breed clubs. The new executive is very conscious of the need to have a united Wyandotte fancy, with members in all States represented by breeders of Wyandottes.
The main objectives of the new executive were:
1. To produce a quarterly newsletter that members would look forward to receiving, this has been done with the help of some dedicated breeders, comprising of 20 pages per issue includes both colour and black and white photos.
2. Another exciting new prospect was the formation of a Handbook committee to put together the publication of a new breed book. It is 40 years since the last publication and with a new century definitely time for an update. This project was undertaken by Dallas Smith, Anne Anderson, Brad Anderson and Gary Phillips. This resulted in the release of a 200 page publication with over 48 colour photos at the 2002 Sydney Royal Easter Show.
3. This Website was another project to utilise modern technology which would showcase our club and its members to the world.
4. To introduce a regular National Show, the first of which was held in Albury, NSW on the last weekend of June, 2002. Following the succes of this show (647 entries) another is to be held in June 2005 (see News page)
There are already several regional Wyandotte Clubs in Australia, namely,
The Hunter Valley Wyandotte Club, NSW
The Central West Wyandotte Club, NSW
The Wyandotte Club of Victoria
The Central Victorian Wyandotte Club
The Western Australian Wyandotte Fanciers Association
The Wyandotte Club of Tasmania
The Wyandotte Club of Queensland
The South Australian Wyandotte Club, (which has recently been re-formed)
These are all clubs working for the advancement of the Wyandotte and affiliated with the Wyandotte Club of Australia.
If you have an interest in Wyandottes, no matter where you live we would like to hear from you so we can be a truly Australia wide club.