About/Bio
My Name is Neil Armitage. I hope you like this site, I do have a feedback form if you would like to respond.
I grew up living in Africa and came back to England in the early 1990's to further my education.
I currently live in Yorkshire with a very understanding wife and work for a conservation charity called the National Trust.
I have kept poultry for more years than I care to remember including Guinea Fowl, Ducks and Turkeys in addition to around 300 chickens from 22 different breeds.
I regularly attend poultry shows and have successfully shown both birds and eggs.
I attend industry events whenever I can to help me stay abreast of the current commercial trends.
I don't receive any sponsorship or accept third party content on the website, nor do I accept paid links or products to review although I do publish a list of the products I use myself. I do use display advertising to help with the costs of running the site.
I love to try new things out and below is the result of a thirty day experiment into egg yolk colour.
My hens are kept in 6 and a half acres of fantastic Yorkshire countryside and I am a firm believer in things being allowed to roam free. I also have a large allotment and grow a lot of my own food.
The Barnevelder was my first breed and I successfully bred Silver laced Barnevelders in both the large fowl and bantam.
Over the years I've seen and made a great many mistakes with chickens and essentially that is what drives me to write about poultry. It isn't after all my skills with the pen!
Below: I like to film chickens in detail, here is my Rosecomb bantam from the Great Yorkshire show.
I also raise La Bresse Gauloise, a heritage meat bird with a long history. I have kept them for around 10 years now.
I am also very lucky to have a science background and be married to a Chemistry Teacher and have access to some scientific equipment to help with my research into chickens.
This is an analytical balance accurate to the ten thousandth of a gram. This Wyandotte bantam hackle feather is just 119 ten thousandths of a gram.
I have also been doing some research into how much calcium is absorbed by the chick from the shell during incubation.
Contact Me:
By far the best way to contact me is by email - webmaster@clucking.net.
I host a resources group on LinkedIn where I share quality poultry resources - https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12678637/
Alternatively you can reach out to me on twitter - https://twitter.com/themuttsknutts or @themuttsknutts.
Our Pinterest pages - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/neil0armitage/
Out YouTube channel. - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb3oqaTPzOZbillU4J2Duzg
Some of our pictures, images and video are available under creative commons licencing - https://www.flickr.com/people/96919536@N06/
About Me:
I raise rare breed hens in Yorkshire, mostly Barnevelders and these days only to order.
Hatching eggs are posted to UK postcodes and some EU countries.
All the Images you see in these pages are of my own birds unless labelled otherwise.
Find Me:
We are located in Steeton, West Yorks, BD206NX.
Please note we are not a shop and all visits and collections are by appointment only.