Magazine of the Week: Practical Poultry by Nick Bryans

Peridocials are a massive market, yet most of their content is the kind of acquired taste that the 4,000 television channels out there have deemed too niche a demographic to produce. So we’re talking about a special brand of odd. Most of the mainstream mags are like a lesson in stereotyping and sexism, with magazines aimed at blokes tending to be an amalgamation of tits, cars and more tits, whilst women’s ‘glossies’ are for the most part a mélange of haircuts, Topshop ads and methods for finding the perfect man. They really have honed in on society’s base instincts. The problem you have however is you need something to read for those long train journeys. You can’t buy a newspaper because the Daily Mail is the spawn of satan, The Telegraph employ Daniel Hannan and James Delingpole, The Sun is The Sun, The Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch and The Guardian don’t pay tax. So therefore you have to find a magazine where the content doesn’t make your brain hurt. So I decided to plump for ‘Practical Poultry’.

Looks like a page turner.

It claims to be ‘The UK’s bestselling poultry magazine’, beating off stiff competition from, I dunno, Cockerel Digest? Turkey Monthly? Chicken Tonight? It’s basically a monthly press of all the latest tips and products to enter the sphere of chicken breeding. It’s, odd, to say the least.

This edition includes a buying guide for the Sumatra, a type of Indonesian cockerel, saying what to look for when purchasing one. Now this is a vital guide because let me tell you, when buying cock, the last thing you want to do is get shafted. One tip is that ear lobes need to be as small as possible, which is probably why the ‘tunnels’ craze never really took off amongst the Indonesian Sumatra community. The guide states that the Sumatra is the ‘poultry equivalent of a luxury indulgence’, so it’s probably the sort of bird that the Duke of Edinburgh eats every Sunday. Then he goes and does other posh stuff, probably. Like, light a Cuban cigar with a tenner. And kick a homeless person. Bloody posh people…

Practical poultry also runs a Q and A section, which is a bit like Dear Deirdre but for problems with a misbehaving cock. So exactly like Dear Deirdre then, I guess. One reader has a problem with his Polish bantam (I wonder how much one of those weighs?) being noisy. I should add, a polish bantam looks exactly like a drably coloured feather duster. Eerily similar. The reader is told that all chickens are noisy, and maybe let it live in the house. Joined up thinking or what!

Posh houses for poultry. For those owners who think that chickens need a class system.

The gallery section sees readers send pictures of their birds into the magazine (no, not those sort of ‘birds’. This isn’t Readers Wives). Now, most of the pictures display the owner’s children with their poultry, you know, because it’s all nice and not remotely trite. Some nutters however like to be a bit inventive in this section, including one picture someone sent in of an egg their hen laid. Just a photo of an egg. That someone sent to a magazine. Worrying. Slightly more worrying though was one reader, who sent in a snap of her chicken reading a newspaper. Now I have an issue with this. The humanisation of animals is a slippery slope; it starts as a few funny pictures people take and send to publications, and it escalates into bestiality scandals. I’ve seen the big eared boys on farms. One person who agrees with me is Sue Thomas, who in her letter ‘Santa Shocker’ was very annoyed by people dressing up their pets;

I see no harm in encouraging children to keep poultry. However, I do draw the line when a reputable magazine such as this one publishes a photograph of a chicken dressed up in a Santa suit.

You see. This is what happens. It’s all fun and games until your chicken is getting employed by the local shopping centre and forced to listen to god-awful children harp on about which set of Meccano they want this year (Meccano is still in fashion, right?).

One edition not enough? Well you can order back copies of Practical Poultry at the prize of just 4 English pounds! And with such raunchy back-titles as ‘Wet Hens’, it really sells itself.

Naturally with a magazine of this nature, it goes fucking weird, including one column devoted to a talking chicken called Gertrude McCluck. In her column ‘Chicken in Charge’ she address other chickens (or as she refers to them, her ‘Poultry Pals’). Ok, this just moved into Ed Guin territory.

Now that my shanks have thawed from the cold, damp winter, I’m looking forward to running my toes over green grass and munching some fresh bugs again.

Christ, there’s porn that’s less graphic than that.

As with any slightly odd magazine, the greatest parts to it tend to be the adverts near the back. After all, if you’re mental enough to buy this, what other bonkers stuff would you purchase? Some of the highlights include Beryl’s Friendly Bacteria (with the tagline ‘She’s a wise old bird!’) and Chris Ashton’s book Domestic Geese. Chris himself says that;

If you’re a Geese enthusiast [seek medical help?], then you might be interested to learn that there’s now a revised, paperback edition of Domestic Geese!

You might well be, geese fans. You might well be.

Well Practical Poultry was quite a read. Full of tips for breeding poultry and an endless amount of opportunity for cock related crude humour and puns. But if poultry isn’t your thing, you can also purchase the sister publication ‘Practical Pigs’! The essential guide for keeping and rearing pigs! This week it has a spread about Oxford Sandy’s, which are ‘a brilliant first-timer pig!’

Or you could not. Up to you, really.

Caption Competition. That's gotta be top 3, minimum.

Comments

1. Tim Lake says:

   April 2, 2011 at 1:10 pm

   Any mention of what is in those big sheds that no-one is allowed in? Is it really 50-foot high chickens?
2. Suggy says:

   May 8, 2011 at 8:12 am

   Whats wrong with a picture of a chicken reading a newspaper? I may be so bold as to say the people who submit these pictures aren’t the nutters, but self righteous judgementalists like yourself. Lighten up a little. No chicken is being harmed and people are having fun. Tolerance people, tolerance

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