Elly Vogelaar

Elly in 1999 when judging chickens

Being editor of the digital magazine Aviculture Europe, I am always searching for interesting information on chickens. I hit Elio's website Summa Gallicana several years ago and I found so many interesting things that I bookmarked the site and every now and then I spend some time looking at all the wonderful information.

I cannot understand Italian but I used the Babel Fish free online text and web page language translation tools - although that doesn't always work out as it should.

Both being devoted to chickens and able to write in English, we started in 2009 to discuss by email all sorts of chicken questions. Elio even allows me to be parasitical on his historical researches and occasionally add to them. I am proud to call him my friend.

Since childhood I am fond of chickens and the first ‘lessons’ about poultry came from my uncle, who had a poultry farm with Exchequer Leghorns. At the time when I got married and my husband built me a chicken house as a birthday present, I could only buy 'hybrid' chickens, while I remembered all the beautiful 'pure breeds' from my childhood. That is when I started searching, first for the old breeds, then in books, reading more and more on chickens. One day I was given the opportunity to become editor of the (former) Dutch magazine Avicultura, and later of the digital magazine Aviculture Europe.

I am also a poultry judge, licensed to judge Bantam Breeds (not Large Fowl). I am a B-Judge; in Holland, you have to take an exam for each breed. When A-Judge you are allowed to judge all breeds.

But my main efforts are devoted to writing on chickens, which I have been doing for some 15 years now. I like to dig deep in history and unravel the backgrounds of old breeds, but I also like to write about small daily pleasures and problems when keeping chickens.